Ah yes. Those wonderful Pilgrims.
October 29th, 2006With Thanksgiving only weeks away, I thought this would be a great time to share a tidbit from a book I have been reading. From The First Frontier – A History of How America Began by R.V. Coleman.
[The context here is the struggle the Plymouth settlement had to maintain the validity of its charter or right to exist as a colony. In addition to this tension there was the problem of other colonies which competed with Plymouth for, say, the Indian fur trade.]
…And at the very time that Gorges, in England, was defending his colonization program, one of the existing colonies in New England was going to pieces. Weston’s men at Wessagusset had put up substantial living quarters and storehouses; they had received sufficient supplies from the Charity; they had traded with the Indians for some corn. But they apparently did not know how to manage what they had; Governor Bradford of nearby Plymouth heard that their overseer wasted the supplies “keeping Indean women,” how truly he knew not. Plymouth could not help them, so the overseer took one of their boats and, like Winslow the year before, went to Monhegan to see what he could get. While he was gone some of the men ran away to live with the Indians and one, Phinehas Pratt, ran away to Plymouth, where he told a wild story of an impending massacre by the Indians.
To Bradford, Winslow, and others at Plymouth, this was the last straw in a long line of grievances against Wessagusset. From its beginning that settlement had been a sore spot with them. Weston, they felt, should have been spending his money on supplies for Plymouth instead of starting a new colony next door. Nor did the make-up of his colony approve itself to them. The men at Wessagusset were “rude fellows,” not at all interested in their own salvation and inclined to laugh at the brand of salvation practiced at Plymouth. Also, the plantation at Wessagusset was monopolizing the fur trade from the Massachusetts Bay region. Now, to top it all, there was this threat of an Indian attack, which might extend to Plymouth – and all because of the shiftlessness of the Wessagusset people. It was time for Plymouth to act.
Promptly Captain Miles Standish with a number of men started for Wessagusset. There they found Weston’s colonists associating with the Indians on friendly terms and unaware that any danger existed. However, the Plymouth captain had been sent to do a job and he did it. Luring four of the naked Indian leaders into a room and locking the door, Standish and his men, who were doubtless encased in armor, hacked three of them to pieces. The other, a boy of eighteen, they hanged. This beginning was followed up by killing a few more of the Indians after which the rest ran away, giving evidence of unfriendliness, which of course proved that they had intended to massacre the whites. With the Indians hostile the only immediate source of food for Weston’s men was cut off. Standish offered them the choice of going to Plymouth or elsewhere. The majority elected to embark on their boat for Monhegan. The buildings were left standing. What happened to their equipment and store of furs is not clear. It was clear, however, that Weston’s colony was at an end.
Standish, after seeing the departing colonists well out of Massachusetts Bay, “took leave and returned to Plymouth; whither he came in safety, blessed by God! and brought the head of Wituwamat with him.” Wituwamat was one of the Indians that Standish’s men had butchered. The head was taken “to the fort, and there set up” – for reasons that seemed obvious to Winslow as he told the story in a little book entitled Good Newes from New England. The more reticent Bradford did not mention this particular incident in his History of Plymouth Plantation.
- Coleman pp. 151-154.
Coleman’s source for this story was Winslow’s Good Newes from New England (1634), the title page of which reads in part: “Shewing the wondrous providence and goodnes of God, in their preservation and continuance, being delivered from many apparent deaths and dangers.”
Doesn’t it do your heart good to know that they at least credited God for their butchery? Yeah, me too. What profound faith. Sigh.
