PEOPLE MENTIONED IN CAPE COD: GOVERNOR WILLIAM MASTER BUBBLE BRADFORD 1 NARRATIVE HISTORY AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY 1. This Master Bubble monicker is courtesy of Thomas Morton.
1590 March: William Bradford was born. NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT The People of Cape Cod: Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project
Lemay, Joseph A. Leo, NEW ENGLAND S ANNOYANCES : AMERICA S FIRST FOLK SONG (Newark NJ: U of Delaware P, 1985), pages 43-44, 54, 60 passim: If barley be wanting to make into malt, We must be contented, and think it no fault; For we can make liquor to sweeten our lips, Of pumpkins and parsnips and walnut tree chips.... Hey down, down, hey down derry down... And of our green corn-stalks we make our best beer, We put it in barrels to drink all the year: Yet I am as healthy, I verily think, Who make the spring-water my commonest drink.... Hey down, down, hey down derry down... Stanzas 11 and 12 concern New England s drinks liquor, beer, and water. Since English and European water was often polluted, people did not commonly drink it. The usual English drink was small beer. Water was considered, in general, an unhealthy drink. But American water was different [Dean Albertson, Puritan Liquor in the Planting of New England, New England Quarterly 23 (1950):477-90]. The quantity and quality of New England water became an important topic for almost all New England writers. Bradford says that one objection made against the Puritans proposed move to America was that the change of aire, diate, and drinking of water, would infecte their bodies with sore sickneses, and greevous diseases. So the promotion writers tried to reassure prospective emigrants. Captain John Smith [TRAVELS AND WORKS OF CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. Edinburgh: John Grant, 1910, pages 954-5], William Bradford [HISTORY OF PLYMOUTH PLANTATION 1620-1647, Boston MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1912, Volume I, pages 57, 164, and 363-4], and William Wood [NEW ENGLAND S PROSPECT (1634), Amherst MA: U of Massachusetts P, 1977, page 37], among others [Henry Martin Dexter, MOURT S RELATION OR JOURNAL OF THE PLANTATION AT PLYMOUTH, Boston MA: J.K. Wiggin, 1865, page 18], praise the water. In a long discussion, Wood says that New England s sweet waters are better than the Old World s: It is thought there can be no better water in the world. yet dare I not prefer it before good beer as some have done, but any man will choose it before bad beer, whey, or buttermilk. The early colonists continued to regard beer as more healthful. Martha Lyon (who had emigrated to New England in 1631) wrote John Winthrop in 1648/9 that she was ill, but her husband did what he can for me... for he drinks water that I might drink bere [WINTHROP PAPERS, edited by Allyn Bailey Forbes, et al., Boston MA: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1929-1947, Volume V, page 323]. One anti-virginia ballad voices the traditional preference: Instead of drinking Beer, I drink the water clear, / In the Land of Virginny, O; / Which makes me pale and wan [The Trappan d Maiden in Firth, AMERICAN GARLAND, page 52]. In [Edward Johnson s] New England s Annoyances, the most striking fact about the description of drinks is the emphasis upon the worst makeshift possibilities for making liquor and beer. Liquor from pumpkins and parsnips and walnut tree chips is surely an abominable folk recipe (I cannot find it anywhere). Henry Thoreau was so taken by it that he made it a touchstone for the idea of a New Englander s making do with the local produce [WALDEN; OR, LIFE IN THE WOODS, leaf 85b of draft C].
July: 1620 The Pilgrims 2 sailed out in their marginally seaworthy Speedwell from Leyden in the Netherlands toward England. Thomas Weston, assisted by John Carver and Robert Cushman, had hired this ship and the Mayflower to undertake to plant a colony in Northern Virginia (this would not have been farther to the north than the mouth of the Hudson River) and when this one would prove unseaworthy, would pack as many of the people aboard the Mayflower as it could possibly contain. So they lefte that goodly & Pleasant citie, which had been ther resting place, nere 12 years; but they knew they were pilgrimes, & looked not much on these things; but lift up their eyes to the heavens, their dearest cuntrie; and quieted their spirits. William Bradford Bradford, William: Of Plymouth Plantation Chapter 9: Of their voyage, and how they passed the sea, and of their safe arrival at Cape Cod September 6. These troubles being blown over, and now all being compact together in one ship, they put to sea again with a prosperous wind, which continued divers days together, which was some encouragement unto them; yet according to the usual manner many were afflicted with sea sickness. And I may not omit here a special work of God s providence. There was a proud and very profane young man, one of the sea-men, of a lusty, able body, which made him the more haughty; he would always be condemning the poor people in their sickness, and cursing them daily with grievous execrations, and did not let to tell them, that he hoped to help to cast half of them overboard before they came to their journey s end, and to make merry with what they had; and if he were by any gently reproved, he would curse and swear most bitterly. But it pleased God before they came half seas over, to smite this young man with a grievous disease, of which he died in a desperate manner, and so was himself the first that was thrown overboard. Thus his curses light on his own head; and it was an astonishment to all his fellows, for they noted it to be the just hand of God upon him. After they had enjoyed fair winds and weather for a season, they were encountered many times with cross winds, and met with many fierce storms, with which the ship was shroudly shaken, and her upper works made very leaky; and one of the main beams in the mid ships was bowed and cracked, which put them in some fear that the ship could not be able to perform the voyage. So some of the chief of the company, perceiving the mariners to fear the sufficiency of the ship, as appeared by their mutterings, they entered into serious consultation with the master and other officers of the ship, to consider in time of the danger; and 2. These people were Brownists, separatists from the Anglican Church. Their congregation was from Scrooby in Nottinghamshire and had lived in exile in Holland for some years, first at Amsterdam and then at Leyden, and after this sail back to England aboard the Speedwell, they were going to sail toward the Virginia coast of the New World aboard the Mayflower. (Two-thirds of the settlers aboard the Mayflower, however, were actually not of this congregation but were mere economic refugees, with the religious separatists referring to them as strangers. )
And although beer can be made from corn, one authority considers it the least desirable method: There was not sufficient barley mash produced, however, to slake the thirst of the entire colony, so they learned to derive a passable beer malt from oats, rye, old wheat, and even corn [Filmer Mood, John Winthrop, Jr. on Indian Corne, New England Quarterly 10 (1937):121-33, on pages 131-3]. Robert Child mentions beer made from corn in his agricultural tract, DEFECTS AND REMEDIES OF ENGLISH HUSBANDRY [George Lyman Kittredge, Dr. Robert Child the Remonstrant, PUBLICATIONS OF THE COLONIAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA 21 (1919):1-146, at page 110]. When John Winthrop, Jr., wrote a scientific essay on Indian Corne for Robert Boyle in 1662, describing, inter alia, two ways to make beer from corn neither method used green corn stalks [Raymond P. Stearns, SCIENCE IN THE BRITISH COLONIES OF AMERICA, Urbana IL: U of Illinois P, 1970, pages 128-9]. But Robert Beverly, writing in his HISTORY AND PRESENT STATE OF VIRGINIA at the opening of the eighteenth century, confirms that the poorer sort could brew beer from the green stalks of Indian corn cut small and bruised [Chapel Hill NC: U of North Carolina P, 1947, page 293]. And Peter Kalm, in the mideighteenth century also testified that the malt of maize tastes exactly like that of barley, although blue corn was considered better than other kinds for malting [Esther Louise Larson, Peter Kalm s Description of Maize, Agricultural History 9(1935):98-117 on page 113]. (One of the numerous indications that the song dates from the colony s earliest years is the lack of any mention of apple cider a standard American drink after apple orchards became common in the midseventeenth century.) [Albertson, Puritan Liquor, page 480; Walcott, Husbandry, page 250; and the colonial Maryland folk ditty in J.A. Leo Lemay, MEN OF LETTERS IN COLONIAL MARYLAND, Knoxville TN: U of Tennessee P, 1972, page vii]... Stanzas 11 and 12 further develop the portrait of New Englanders as hillbillies. Here the New Englanders anticipate that favorite Southern folk hero, the moonshiner, but instead of using corn, the New Englanders brew an incredible concoction Of pumpkins and parsnips and walnut tree chips. this, I submit, is the fictive world of Hairless Joe, Lonesome Pine, and Kickapoo Joy Juice [9]. The beer was almost as outlandish as the liquor. Although most New England beer was brewed in the standard manner, from barley, beer can be made from various vegetables and corn; and although there are two usual ways to make acceptable beer from corn, these hardscrabble New England rustics make their best beer in the worst possible way from green cornstalks. In stanza 12 s last couplet, the author uses the first person singular for the first and only time in the song when he reveals that he himself is not among the hard-drinking hillbillies described in the last six lines: Yet I am as healthy, I verily think, / Who make the spring water my commonest drink. This sober even ascetic note marks the song s turn away from the portrait of the New Englanders as Snuffy Smiths backwoods bumpkins dressed in ragged, patched, and repatched old clothes who pull their caps down over their noses in the winter, hoe their corn in the spring, eat their pumpkins at morning and noon, and drink their own strange moonshine throughout the year. That self-caricature was the first identity that New Englanders popularly adopted... The author s most brilliant stroke is his portrait of the New Englander as a hardscrabbler. Two major identities for Americans had already been well established, the planter-farmer and the rustic-hick. The earliest name for an American was a planter. The Virginia legislature repeatedly calls the actual settlers in America planters, i.e., those who go out to found a colony. The first planters were as celebrated, in the different circumstances of their own day, as the earliest astronauts are in this time.
rather to return then to cast themselves into a desperate and inevitable peril. And truly there was great distraction and difference of opinion among the mariners themselves; fain would they do what could be done for their wages sake, (being now half the seas over,) and on the other hand they were loath to hazard their lives too desperately. But in examining of all opinions, the master and others affirmed they knew the ship to be strong and firm under water; and for the buckling of the main beam, there was a great iron screw the passengers brought out of Holland, which would raise the beam into his place; the which being done, the carpenter and master affirmed that with a post put under it, set firm in the lower deck, and other-ways bound, he would make it sufficient. And as for the decks and upper works they would caulk them as well as they could, and though with the working of the ship they would not long keep staunch, yet there would otherwise be no great danger, if they did not overpress her with sails. So they committed themselves to the will of God, and resolved to proceed. In sundry of these storms the winds were so fierce, and the seas so high, as they could not bear a knot of sail, but were forced to hull, for divers days together. And in one of them, as they thus lay at hull, in a mighty storm, a lusty young man (called John Howland) coming upon some occasion above the gratings, was, with a seele of the ship thrown into the sea; but it pleased God that he caught hold of the topsail halyards, which hung overboard, and ran out at length; yet he held his hold (though he was sundry fathoms under water) till he was hauled up by the same rope to the brim of the water, and then with a boat hook and other means got into the ship again, and his life saved; and though he was something ill with it, yet he lived many years after, and became a profitable member both in church and commonwealth. In all this voyage their died but one of the passengers, which was William Butten, a youth, servant to Samuel Fuller, when they drew near the coast. But to omit other things, (that I may be brief,) after long beating at sea they fell with that land which is called Cape Cod; the which being made and certainly known to be it, they were not a little joyful. After some deliberation had amongst themselves and with the master of the ship, they tacked about and resolved to stand for the southward (the wind and weather being fair) to find some place about Hudson s River for their habitation. But after they had sailed that course about half a day, they fell amongst dangerous shoals and roaring breakers, and they were so far entangled therewith as they conceived themselves in great danger; and the wind shrinking upon them withal, they resolved to bear up again for the Cape, and thought themselves happy to get out of those dangers before night overtook them, as by God s providence they did. And the next day they got into the Capeharbor where they rid in safety. A word or two by the way of this cape; it was thus first named by Captain Gosnold and his company, Anno. 1602, and after by Captain Smith was called Cape James; but it retains the former name amongst seamen. Also that point which first showed these dangerous shoals unto them, they called Point Care, and Tucker s Terror; but the French and Dutch to this day call it Malabar, by reason of those perilous shoals, and the losses they have suffered there. Being thus arrived in a good harbor and brought safe to land, they fell upon their knees and blessed the God of heaven, who had brought them over the vast and furious ocean, and delivered
them from all the perils and miseries thereof, again to set their feet on the firm and stable earth, their proper element. And no marvel if they were thus joyful, seeing wise Seneca was so affected with sailing a few miles on the coast of his own Italy; as he affirmed, that he had rather remain twenty years on his way by land, then pass by sea to any place in a short time; so tedious and dreadful was the same unto him. But here I cannot but stay and make a pause, and stand half amazed at this poor people s present condition; and so I think will the reader too, when he well considers the same. Being thus passed the vast ocean, and a sea of troubles before in their preparation (as may be remembered by that which went before), they had now no friends to welcome them, nor inns to entertain or refresh their weather-beaten bodies, no houses or much less towns to repair to, to seek for succor. It is recorded in scripture as a mercy to the apostle and his shipwrecked company, that the barbarians showed no small kindness in refreshing them, but these savage barbarians, when they met with them (as after will appear) were readier to fill their sides full of arrows then otherwise. And for the season it was winter, and they that know the winters of that country know them to be sharp and violent and subject to cruel and fierce storms, dangerous to travel to known places, much more to search an unknown coast. Besides, what could they see but a hideous and desolate wilderness, full of wild beasts and wild men? and what multitudes there might be of them they knew not. Neither could they, as it were, go up to the top of Pigsah, to view from this wilderness a more goodly country to feed their hopes; for which way soever they turned their eyes (save upward to the heavens) they could have little solace or content in respect of any outward objects. For summer being done, all things stand upon them with a weather-beaten face; and the whole country, full of woods and thickets, represented a wild and savage hew. If they looked behind them, there was the mighty ocean which they had passed, and was now as a main bar and gulf to separate them from all the civil parts of the world. If it be said they had a ship to succor them, it is true; but what heard they daily from the master and company? But that with speed they should look out a place with their shallop, where they would be at some near distance; for the season was such as he would not stir from thence till a safe harbor was discovered by them where they would be, and he might go without danger; and that victuals consumed apace, but he must and would keep sufficient for themselves and their return. Yea, it was muttered by some, that if they got not a place in time, they would turn them and their goods ashore and leave them. Let it also be considered what weak hopes of supply and succor they left behind them, that might bear up their minds in this sad condition and trials they were under; and they could not but be very small. It is true, indeed, the affections and love of their brethren at Leyden was cordial and entire towards them, but they had little power to help them, or themselves; and how the case stood between them and the merchants at their coming away, hath already been declared. What could now sustain them but the spirit of God and his grace? May not and ought not the children of these fathers rightly say: Our fathers were Englishmen which came over this great ocean, and were ready to perish in this wilderness; but they cried unto the Lord, and he heard their voice, and looked on their
adversity, etc. Let them therefore praise the Lord, because he is good, and his mercies endure forever. Yea, let them which have been redeemed of the Lord, show how he hath delivered them from the hand of the oppressor. When they wandered in the desert wilderness out of the way, and found no city to dwell in, both hungry, and thirsty, their soul was overwhelmed in them. Let them confess before the Lord his loving kindness, and his wonderful works before the sons of men.
November 21 (November 11 on the Julian or Old Style calendar, which during the 16th and 17th Centuries, and the first half of the 18th Century, was ten days behind the Gregorian or New Style Calendar), 3 Saturday: The Mayflower anchored in Provincetown harbor at the tip of Cape Cod, and the intrusives signed their compact and went ashore. READ THE FULL TEXT Bad weather and a near shipwreck had caused them to alter their plans to proceed on west toward Long Island and the Hudson River. While the Mayflower was in Provincetown Harbor with the Pilgrims searching out a suitable place to settle, Susanna White would give birth to a boy who they named Peregrine, the name meaning one who journeys to foreign lands. The English had a skirmish with the Nauset. The Mayflower would remain in American waters for that winter, its crew suffering the cold along with the Pilgrims, almost half of 3. For information on calendar conversion, see: ON CONVERTING DATES
these folks dying. 4 Alden, John Allerton, Isaac Mary (Norris) Allerton, wife Bartholomew Allerton, son Remember Allerton, daughter Mary Allerton, daughter Allerton, John Billington, John Eleanor Billington, wife John Billington, son Francis Billington, son William Bradford Dorothy (May) Bradford, wife Brewster, William Mary Brewster, wife Love Brewster, son Wrestling Brewster, son Britteridge, Richard Browne, Peter Button, William Carter, Robert Carver, John Katherine (Leggett) (White) Carver, wife Chilton, James Susanna (Furner?) Chilton, wife Mary Chilton, daughter Clarke, Richard Cooke, Francis John Cooke, son Cooper, Humility Crackstone, John 4. In addition to the live birth mentioned above, Mary Allerton would give birth to a stillborn boy just as the first houses were being built at Plymouth. Refer to William Bradford, OF PLIMOTH PLANTATION, written 1630-1654, original at Massachusetts State Library, Boston.
John Crackstone, son Eaton, Francis Sarah Eaton, wife Samuel Eaton, son English, Thomas Fletcher, Moses Fuller, Edward Mrs. Edward Fuller, wife Samuel Fuller, son Fuller, Samuel Gardinar, Richard Goodman, John Holbeck, William Hooke, John Stephen Hopkins Elizabeth (Fisher) Hopkins, wife Giles Hopkins, son by first marriage Constance Hopkins, daughter by first marriage Damaris Hopkins, daughter Oceanus Hopkins, born en route, would soon die Doty, Edward, servant of Stephen Hopkins Leister, Edward, servant of Stephen Hopkins Howland, John Langmore, John Latham, William Margesson, Edmund Martin, Christopher Mary (Prower) Martin, wife Minter, Desire More, Ellen Jasper More, brother THE HOPKINS FAMILY Richard More, brother [Captain Richard More of Salem] Mary More, sister 5 Mullins, William Alice Mullins, wife Priscilla Mullins, daughter Joseph Mullins, son Priest, Degory Prower, Solomon Rigsdale, John 5. When, after the Mayflower had sailed in September, Katherine More had appeared before Sir James Lee, Lord Chief Justice of England, to find out what was happening to her four children, the desperate mother had been informed only that: The said Samuell upon good and deliberate advise thought fitt to settle his estate upon a more hopeful issue and to provide for the educacon and maintenance of these children in a place remote from these partes where these great blotts and blemishes may fall upon them and therefore took the opportunity of sendinge them when such yonge ones as they went over with honest and religeous people.
Alice Rigsdale, wife Rogers, Thomas Joseph Rogers, son Samson, Henry Soule, George Standish, Myles (military leader of the Plymouth colony) Rose Standish, wife Story, Elias Thompson, Edward Tilley, Edward Ann (Cooper) Tilley, wife Tilley, John Joan (Hurst) (Rogers) Tilley, wife Elizabeth Tilley, daughter Tinker, Thomas Mrs. Thomas Tinker, wife boy Tinker, son Trevore, William Turner, John boy Turner, son boy Turner, son Warren, Richard White, William Susanna White, wife Resolved White, son Wilder, Roger Williams, Thomas Winslow, Edward EDWARD WINSLOW Elizabeth Barker Winslow, wife Winslow, Gilbert Mr. Ely Dorothy, maidservant of John Carver
Thoreau entered these quotations in his Journal after October 15, 1849: The 11th of Nov (all old style) they set ashore 15 or 16 men, well armed, with some to fetch wood ; as also to see what the land was, and what inhabitants they could meet with They found the ground or earth to be sand hills, much like the downs in Holland, but much better; the crust of the earth a spit s depth, excellent black earth: (We found that the crust of the earth was gone and that there was no soil except in a swamp called the shank painter, and a few other small swamps full of water unless the inhabitants might affirm that there was some under the sand in their front yards which we should not have thought from appearances The land had completely lost its upper crust & instead of black earth it was all yellow & white sand. we did not see enough to fill a flower pot unless it were the coarse swamp muck full of root & water.): all wooded with oaks, pines, sassafras, juniper, birch, holly, some ash, walnut: the wood for the most part open and without underwood, fit either to go or ride in. (We saw no trees only a few small specimens of some of the above kinds, on the sand hills near the town, all thick shrubbery & underwood without any larger wood above it, very unfit either to go or ride in, but the greater part of the land was a perfect desert of yellow sand, rippled like waves by the wind in which only a littl beech-grass grew here and there.) At night our people returned, but found not any person, nor habitation; (As we have said we found a populous town, and the side walk was crowded with many more persons; sailors who belonged to the mackerel fleet in the harbor) and laded their boat with juniper, which smelled very sweet and strong, and of which we burnt the most part of the time we lay there. (We saw no wood to burn but a little that was brought from the eastward, but were warmed at Fullers hotel by hard coal brought from Pensylvania) On Wednesday the 15 of Nov. sixteen men were set ashore to see whether the land might be fit for them to seat in or no, with every man his musket, sword, and corslet, under the conduct of Capt. Miles Standish; unto whom was adjoined, for counsel and advice, Wm Bradford, Stephen Hopkins, & Edward Tilley. and when they had ordered themselves in order of a single file, and marched about the space of a mile by the sea, they espied five or six people, with a dog, coming towards them, who were savages; who, when they saw them, ran into the woods, and whistled the dog after them. They soon afterwards saw many traces of these savages their cornfields & graves & houses &c. (We saw no savages but we were informed by a very old white man that he could remember when there were a few in this neighborhood, and on the high bank in Truro, looking for traces of them we picked up an Indian s arrowhead.) They say we marched through boughs and bushes, and under hills and vallies, which tore our very armor in pieces, &c & again About ten o clock we came into a deep valley, full of brush, wood-gaile, and long grass, through which we found little paths or tracks: (We marched over the same region but we saw neither bush nor wood-gale nor any herb almost but a little beach and poverty grass & sorrel enough to color the surface, it was a particularly barren & desolate moorland which seemed good for nothing but to hold the cape together not a shrub to tear our clothes against if we would where a sheep would loose none of its fleece provided it found enough herbage to sustain it.) And all the while they could not find any fresh water which, say they we greatly desired and stood in need of; for we brought neither beer nor water with us, and our victuals was only biscuit and Holland cheese, and a little bottle of aquavitae, so as we were sore athirst. This makes me think that those pilgrims were no great travellers for (We did not think it necessary to carry either beer or water with us but if we can drink at a pond or brook once a day we can get along very well, and our victuals were a little home-made bread & butter which we brought along with us and some doughnuts which were left from our breakfast of the day before. We had no bottle of aquavitae, nor anything whatever in a bottle.) But at the last mentioned valley they say we saw a deer & found springs of fresh water, and sat us down and drunk our first New England water, with as much delight as ever we drunk drink in all our lives. (We saw no wild animal but one fox in these parts, and drank at a shallow pond in the sand.) A little further on they found a heap of sand newly made we might see, say they, how they paddled it with their hands; which we digged up, and in it we found a little old basket full of fair Indian Corn; And digged further and found a fine great new basket, full of very fair corn of this year, with some six and thirty goodly ears of corn, some yellow & some red, and others mixed with blue, which was a very goodly sight. And afterward they found a bag of beans & more corn So as we had in all about ten bushels, which will serve us sufficiently for seed. (We saw thereabouts some fair fields of Ind. corn left out to ripen for it was not so late in the season but all yellow & also beans, remarkably good we thought to grow in that sand. To the Pilgrims I think have not given the most trustworthy account of the Cape They exaggerated the fairness & attractiveness of the land for they were glad to get to any land at all after that anxious voyage every thing appeared to them of the color of the rose and had the scent of Juniper or sassafras They do not speak like navigators Archer who acompanied Gosnold has given a truer account on the whole. They looked at the land of the New world with infant s eyes, in describing the country described their own feelings & hopes. How different is the account given by Capt John Smith who speaks like an old traveller voyager & soldier as he was, who had seen too much of the world to exaggerate a part of it. He was Silenus & we the boys Chromis & Mnasilus who listened to his stories. about sunsquawl & sea-clams
& wars & shipwrecks & the principles of things. until long after vesper made her appearance.? Nec tantùm Phoebo gaudet Parnassia rupes, Nec tantùm Rhodope miratur et Ismarus Orphea. Quid loquar? aut Scyllam Nisi, quam fama secuta est, Candida succinctam latrantibus inguina monstris, Dulichias vexâsse rates, et gurgite in alto Ah! timidos nautas canibus lacerâsse marinis? As we wandered say they, we came to a tree where a young sprit was bowed down over a bow (?), and some acorns strewed underneath. Stephen Hopkins said, it had been to catch some deer. So, as we were looking at it, William Bradford being in the rear, who came looking also upon it, and as he went about it gave a sudden jerk up, and he was immediately caught by the leg. It was a very pretty device, made with a rope of their own making, and having a noose as artificially made as any roper in England can make, and as like ours as can be; which we brought away with us. In the end we got out of the wood and were fallen about a mile too high above the creek; where we saw three bucks, but we had rather have had one of them. We also did spring three couple of partridges; and as we came along by the creek, we saw great flocks of wild geese and ducks, but they were very fearful of us. (We saw none of these things there but the same old man of whom we have spoken, remembered when there were a few deer in those parts as well as a great many wild fowl of all various kinds) N.E. {MS torn} violent {MS torn} December 6 (November 26, old style), Sunday: The intrusives staged their worship services aboard the Mayflower at anchor in Provincetown harbor. 6 December 18 (December 8, Old Style), Friday: The intrusives and the indigenes first encountered one another (unless, that is, there had been prior observations by the Patuxet, which had gone undetected). The intrusives then coasted round, and ran in under the lee of Clark s Island in Plymouth Harbor, in a north-easter that evening. As Henry Thoreau would record the event in his journal in August 1851 while bumming around on the coast, On Friday night Dec 8th o.s. the Pilgrims exploring in the shallop landed on Clark s Island (so called from the Master s mate of the May Flower) where they spent 3 nights & kept their first sabbath. 7 BOSTON HARBOR MOURT S RELATION 6. According to Jill Lepore s Plymouth Rocked: Of Pilgrims, Puritans, and professors in The New Yorker for April 24, 2006, pages 164-70, in all probability it was during this month of December that Dorothy May Bradford committed suicide: William Bradford s distressed wife, Dorothy, who had left her three-year-old son behind in Holland... in sight of land, fell or more likely threw herself over the gunwales, and drowned.
Clark s Island 8 Sunday night On Friday night Dec 8th o.s. the Pilgrims exploring in the shallop landed on Clark s Island (so called from the Master s mate of the May Flower) where they spent 3 nights & kept their first sabbath. On Monday or the 11th o.s. they landed on the rock. This island contains about 86 acres and was once covered with red cedars which were sold at Boston for gate posts I saw a few left one 2 ft in diameter at the ground which was probably standing when the pilgrims came. Ed. Watson who could remember them nearly fifty years had observed but little change in them. Hutchinson calls this one of the best islands in Mass. Bay. The Town kept it at first as a sacred place but finally sold it in 1690 to Sam. Lucas, Elkanah Watson, & Geo. Morton... Mr Thomas Russel who cannot be 70 at whose house on Leyden st. I took tea & spent the evening told me that he remembered to have seen Ebeneezer Cobb a nat. of Plymouth who died in Kingston in 1801 aged 107 who remembered to have had personal knowledge of Peregrine White saw him an old man riding on horse back (he lived to be 83) White was born at Cape Cod harbor before the Pilgrims got to Plymouth C. Sturgis s mother told me the same of herself at the same time. She remembered Cobb sitting in an arm chair like the one she herself occupied with his silver locks falling about his shoulders twirling one thumb over the other Russell told me that he once bought some primitive woodland in P. which was sold at auction the bigest Pitch pines 2 ft diameter for 8 shillings an acre If he had bought enough it would have been a pasture. There is still forest in this town which the axe has not touched says Geo. Bradford. According to Thatchers Hist. of P. there were 11,662 acres of woodland in 31. or 20 miles square. Pilgrims first saw Bil. sea about Jan 1st visited it Jan 8th. The oldest stone in the Plymouth Burying ground 1681 (Coles? hill where those who died the first winter were buried said to have been levelled & sown to conceal loss from Indians.) Oldest on our hill 1677 In Mrs Plympton s Garden on Leyden st. running down to Town Brook. Saw an abundance of pears gathered excellent June-eating apples saw a large lilack about 8 inches diameter Methinks a soil may improve when at length it has shaded itself with vegetation. Wm S Russel the Registrer at the Court House showed the oldest Town records. for all are preserved on 1st page a plan of Leyden st dated Dec. 1620 with names of settlers. They have a great many folios. The writing plain. Saw the charter granted by the Plymouth Company to the Pilgrims signed by Warwick date 1629 & the box in which it was brought over with the seal. Pilgrim Hall They used to crack off pieces of the Forefathers Rock for visitors with a cold chisel till the town forebade it. The stone remaining at wharf is about 7 ft square. Saw 2 old arm chairs that came over in the May flower. the large picture by Sargent. Standish s sword. gun barrel with which Philip was killed mug & pocket-book of Clark the mate Iron pot of Standish. Old pipe tongs. Ind relics a flayer a pot or mortar of a kind of fire proof stone very hard only 7 or 8 inches long. A Commission from Cromwell to Winslow? his signature torn off. They talk of a monument on the rock. The burying hill 165 ft high. Manomet 394 ft high by state map. Saw more pears at Washburn s garden. No graves of Pilgrims. Seaweed generally used along shore Saw the Prinos Glaber inkberry at Bil. sea. Sandy plain with oaks of various kinds cut in less than 20 yrs No communication with Sandwich P end of world 50 miles thither by rail road Old. Colony road poor property. Nothing saves P. but the rock. Fern-leaved beach KING PHILLIP PLYMOUTH ROCK OLIVER CROMWELL MYLES STANDISH 7. It is believed that the name of the 1st mate of the Mayflower was Thomas Clark. 8. Clark s Island: Bear in mind, Thoreau was a-botanizing here on the grounds of another former racial concentration camp for Christian Indians like the one on Deer Island in Boston harbor.
TIME Magazine, at the end of 1991, got this picture from the Granger Collection to use to illustrate their Columbus Special about how certain strange and divisive people are now insisting on the celebration of American diversity: The Patuxents were not altogether mistaken about the Pilgrims
December 22 (December 12, Old Style), Tuesday: The intrusives started back from the continental coast toward where the Mayflower was moored out at the tip of Cape Cod, and presumably reached there during the day or evening. When the people we would come to term Pilgrims stepped onto the sands at Plymouth, we find in the manuscript of William Bradford s OF PLIMOTH PLANTATION which is now at the Massachusetts State House no indication of any particular boulder upon which they were stepping ashore. Incidentally, the Pilgrims, landing at Plymouth, were relying on a book by John Smith. 9 9. A DESCRIPTION OF NEW ENGLAND, based on his 1614 explorations on land and on his coastal survey, printed in London in 1616. CAMBRIDGE HISTORY OF ENGLISH AND AMERICAN LITERATURE
December 30 (December 20, according to the Old Style dating system then in use), Wednesday: The intrusives went ashore a third time, and some settled near Burial Hill and town Brook for the night while others stayed aboard the Mayflower. The Old Comers (as they knew themselves, although we term them the Pilgrim Fathers ) decided to settle on the beach at a location variously known as Ompaam or Accomack or Patuxet. They renamed this place Plymouth. 10 In the manuscript of William Bradford s OF PLIMOTH PLANTATION which is now at the Massachusetts State House, we find no mention of any particular boulder upon which they stepped ashore. PLYMOUTH ROCK 10. A sketch by William Bradford entitled The meersteads & garden plots of which came first layed out 1620 is the only known map of the earliest town layout. The original sketch was found bound into the front of a manuscript volume entitled PLIMOUTHS GREAT BOOK OF DEEDS OF LANDS ENROLLED FROM ANO 1627 TO ANO 1651. The first part of this volume is in the handwriting of Governor Bradford, as is the map. The volume now comprises Volume 12 of the Plymouth Colony Records: DEEDS, &C. VOL. 1 1620-1651. The sketch in question shows seven lots, which face the streete and are bisected by a high way. The lots are located on what Bradford terms The south Side, The north Side being essentially bare. The lots on the south side above the highway carry the names Peter Brown, John Goodman, and Mr. Wm Brewster while those below the highway carry the names John Billington, Isaak Allerton, Francis Cooke, and Edward Winslow.
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1621 In Plymouth colony, Governor John Carver died and was succeeded by William Bradford (until 1657). The Narragansett sachem Canonicus sent a war challenge to Plymouth in the form of some arrows wrapped in a snakeskin. Governor Bradford sent back gunpowder wrapped in the same snakeskin, and the Narragansett, after much puzzled discussion among themselves, decided that for the moment they would leave these strange people alone. The English took the precaution of building a fort, but this crisis which might well have destroyed the tiny Plymouth colony was ended through the timely intervention of other enemies who forced the Narragansett of Rhode Island to turn their attentions elsewhere. LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD? NO, THAT S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN S STORIES. LIFE ISN T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD. January 21, Thursday, 1621 (January 11, 1620 or 1620/1621 Old Style): While at work, William Bradford was taken ill. MAYFLOWER August: The Nauset returned John Billington, Jr. to the English colonists. Ousamequin Yellow Feather (Massasoit) was attacked by the Narragansett; Conbatant tried to incite the Americans against the English but failed when the English supported the Massasoit. The Narragansett sent peace offers to Plymouth. Epenow made peace with Plymouth. After the First Comers made peace with Massasoit, another Wampanoag named Hobomok, who could speak some English, had come to live just outside of the walls of Plymouth. At this point William Bradford described him as follows: And there was another Indian called Hobomok, a proper lusty man, and a man of account for his valour and parts amongst the Indians, and continued very faithfully and constant to the English till he died. Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project Governor William Bradford
Winter: Plymouth Governor Bah-Humbug William Bradford granted two men permission to not work on Christmas Day. Then the governor actually caught them tossing a ball back and forth! He confiscated their ball and informed them that they could remain in the colony only if they were better instructed. Christmas arrived on the American continent with the first Europeans, but the festivities of those days would not be recognizable as Christmas celebrations today. Originally a combination of the Roman Saturnalia feast in honor of the birth of the Sun and fourth-century Christian celebration of the birth of the Son, Jesus, Christmas arrived in the New World from Christian Europe as a rowdy, drunken, feasting sort of holiday. 11 11. Baker, Lisa B. CHRISTIANITY, SECULARIZATION, AND CHRISTMAS IN THE UNITED STATES 1850 AND TODAY. Religious Studies/Sociology Senior Thesis for Professors Gary Herion and Ed Ambrose, May 1999
1623 August: Massasoit (Ousamequin Yellow Feather), four other sachems, and 120 other Americans were invited to Governor William Bradford s wedding. DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD. The People of Cape Cod: Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project
1625 Edward Winslow became an Assistant to the Governor of the Plymouth colony. He would hold this office every year, except that during 1633, 1635, and 1344 he would be Governor in place of William Bradford. The Plymouth colony population reached 180. CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT The People of Cape Cod: Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project
1627 March 19, Monday (1626, Old Style): Governor William Bradford wrote to the government of the Dutch at New Amsterdam, expressing the appreciation felt by the Pilgrims for the decent treatment they had received while living in the Netherlands. THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT May 22, Tuesday (Old Style): At Plymouth, a division of the cattle was schemed. (The 1st cattle having been brought from England to New England in 1624, these cattle had had only two or three years to multiply. The actual division of the herd would take place on June 14th.) At a publique court held the 22th of May it was concluded by the whole Companie, that the cattell wch were the Companies, to wit, the Cowes & the Goates should be equall devided to all the psonts of the same company & soe kept untill the expiration of ten yeares after the date above written & that every one should well and sufficiently pvid for there owne pt under penalty of forfeiting the same. That the old stock with halfe th increase should remaine for comon use to be devided at thend of the said terme or otherwise as ocation falleth out, & the other halfe to be their owne for ever. Uppon wch agreement they were equally devided by lotts soe as the burthen of keeping the males then beeing should be borne for common use by those to whose lot the best Cowes should fall & so the lotts fell as followeth. thirteene psonts being pportioned to one lot. The first lot fell to ffrancis Cooke & his Companie Joyned to him his wife Hester Cooke To this lot fell the least of the 4 black Heyfers Came in the Jacob, and two shee goats. 3 John Cooke 4 Jacob Cooke 5 Jane Cooke 6 Hester Cooke 7 Mary Cooke 8 Moses Simonson 9 Phillip Delanoy 10 Experience Michaell 11 John ffance 12 Joshua Pratt Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project Governor William Bradford
13 Phinihas Pratt The second lot fel to Mr Isaac Allerton & his Companie ioyned to him his wife ffeare Allerton. To this lot fell the Greate Black cow came in the Ann to which they must keepe the lesser of the two steers, and two shee goats. 3 Bartholomew Allerton 4 Remember Allerton 5 Mary Allerton 6 Sarah Allerton 7 Godber Godberson 8 Sarah Godberson 9 Samuel Godberson 10 Marra Priest 11 Sarah Priest 12 Edward Bumpasse 13 John Crackstone The third lot fell to Capt Standish & his companie Joyned to him his wife To this lot fell the Red Cow wch belongeth to the poore of the Colonye to wch they must keepe her Calfe of this yeare being a Bull for the Companie. Also to this lott Came too she goats. 2 Barbara Standish 3 Charles Standish 4 Allexander Standish 5 John Standish 6 Edward Winslow 7 Susanna Winslow 8 Edward Winslow 9 John Winslow 10 Resolved White 11 Perigrine White 12 Abraham Peirce 13 Thomas Clarke The fourth lot fell to John Howland & his company Joyned to him his wife To this lot fell one of the 4 heyfers Came in the Jacob Called Raghorne. 2 Elizabeth Howland 3 John Howland Junor 4 Desire Howland 5 William Wright 6 Thomas Morton Juror 7 John Alden 8 Priscilla Alden 9 Elizabeth Alden 10 Clemont Briggs 11 Edward Dolton [Doty] 12 Edward Holdman 13 Joh. Alden
The fift lot fell to Mr Willm Brewster & his companie Joyned to him To this lot ffell one of the fower Heyfers Came in the Jacob Caled the Blind Heyfer & two shee goats. 2 Love Brewster 3 Wrestling Brewster 4 Richard More 5 Henri Samson 6 Johnathan Brewster 7 Lucrecia Brewster 8 Willm Brewster 9 Mary Brewster 10 Thomas Prince 11 Pacience Prince 12 Rebecka Prince 13 Humillyty Cooper The sixt lott fell to John Shaw & his companie Joyned To this lot fell the lesser of the black Cowes Came at first in the Ann wth which they must keepe the bigest of the 2 steers. Also to this lot was two shee goats. 1 to him 2 John Adams 3 Eliner Adams 4 James Adams 5 John Winslow 6 Mary Winslow 7 Willm Basset 8 Elizabeth Bassett 9 Willyam Basset Junor 10 Elyzabeth Basset Junor 11 ffrancis Sprage 12 Anna Sprage 13 Mercye Sprage The seaventh lott fell to Steven Hopkins & his companie Joyned to him his wife To this lott fell A Black weining Calfe to wch was aded the Calfe of this yeare to come of the black Cow, wch fell to John Shaw & his Companie, wch pveing a bull they were to keepe it ungelt 5 years for common use & after to make there best of it. Nothing belongeth of thes too, for ye copanye of ye first stock: but only halfe ye Increase. To this lott ther fell two shee goats: which goats they possess on the like terms which others doe their cattell. 2 Elizabeth Hopkins 3 Gyles Hopkins 4 Caleb Hopkins 5 Deborah Hopkins 6 Nickolas Snow 7 Constance Snow 8 William Pallmer 9 ffrances Pallmer
10 Willm Pallmer Jnor 11 John Billington Senor 12 Hellen Billington 13 ffrancis Billington The eaight lott fell to Samuell ffuller & his company Joyned to him his wife To this lott fell A Red Heyfer Came of the Cow wch belongeth to the poore of the Colony & so is of that Consideration. (vizt) thes psonts nominated, to have halfe the Increase, the other halfe, with the ould stock, to remain for the use of the poore. To this lott also two shee goats. 2 Bridget ffuller 3 Samuell ffuller Junior 4 Peeter Browne 5 Martha Browne 6 Mary Browne 7 John fford 8 Martha fford 9 Anthony Anable 10 Jane Anable 11 Sarah Anable 12 Hanah Anable 13 Damaris Hopkins The ninth lot fell to Richard Warren & his companie Joyned wth him his wife To this lot fell one of the 4 black Heyfers that came in the Jacob caled the smooth horned Heyfer and two shee goats. 2 Elizabeth Warren 3 Nathaniell Warren 4 Joseph Warren 5 Mary Warren 6 Anna Warren 7 Sara Warren 8 Elizabeth Warren 9 Abigail Warren 10 John Billington 11 George Sowle 12 Mary Sowle 13 Zakariah Sowle The tenth lot fell to ffrancis Eaton & those Joyned wth him his wife To this lott ffell an heyfer of the last yeare called the white belyd heyfer & two shee goats. 2 Christian Eaton 3 Samuell Eaton 4 Rahell Eaton 5 Stephen Tracie 6 Triphosa Tracie 7 Sarah Tracie 8 Rebecka Tracie
9 Ralph Wallen 10 Joyce Wallen 11 Sarah Morton 12 Robert Bartlet 13 Tho: Prence. The eleventh lott ffell to the Governor Mr William Bradford and those with him, to wit, his wife To this lott fell An heyfer of the last yeare wch was of the Greate white back cow that was brought over in the Ann, & two shee goats. 2 Alles Bradford and 3 William Bradford, Junior 4 Mercy Bradford 5 Joseph Rogers 6 Thomas Cushman 7 William Latham 8 Manases Kempton 9 Julian Kempton 10 Nathaniel Morton 11 John Morton 12 Ephraim Morton 13 Patience Morton The twelveth lott fell to John Jene & his companie joyned to him his wife To this lott fell the greate white backt cow wch was brought over with the first in the Ann, to wch cow the keepeing of the bull was joyned for thes psonts to pvide for. heere also two shee goats. 2 Sarah Jene 3 Samuell Jene 4 Abigaill Jene 5 Sara Jene 6 Robert Hickes 7 Margret Hickes 8 Samuell Hickes 9 Ephraim Hickes 10 Lidya Hickes 11 Phebe Hickes 12 Stephen Deane 13 Edward Banges 1627, May the 22. It was farther agreed at the same Court: That if anie of the cattell should by acsident miscarie or be lost or Hurt: that the same should be taken knowledg of by Indifferent men: and Judged whether the losse came by the neglegence or default of those betrusted and if they were found faulty, that then such should be forced to make satisfaction for the companies, as also their partners dammage.
October 1, Monday (Old Style): Governor William Bradford wrote again to the government of the Dutch in New Amsterdam, thanking the Dutch for their ongoing hospitality to the Pilgrims. Dutch West India Company secretary Isaak de Rasières would travel to New Plymouth to arrange a trade arrangement. The Plymouth Company would send goods valued at 56,170 guilders to New Amsterdam and would receive in exchange 7,520 beaver pelts and 370 otter skins, valued at 56,420 guilders.
1628 May 1, Thursday (Old Style): There were only seven whites at Thomas Morton s trading post (Mount Wollaston or Merrymount). Morton had transformed an 80-foot pine into a maypole, upsetting the authorities at Plymouth. William Bradford complained that at this trading post they would entertaine any, how vile soever, and all ye scume of ye countrie or any discontents would flock to him from all places, but Morton would be attacked in June not because he sold firearms but because he had gone native. It was an issue of style. Captain Myles Standish would be put in charge of the attack on the settlement (William Jeffrey and Burslem of Agawam would be assessed 2 towards the expenses of his expedition). The Plymouth authorities would arrest Morton. When they disposed of what he had at his plantation, they would do so, and know they were doing so, on charges that would be untenable at law in England. 12 Then they would abandoned him for an entire chill month on one of the Isles of Shoals 13 with only his thinne suite to keep him from the cold and damp and only his bare hands with which to find a way to feed himself and defend himself hoping that he would die before a returning fishing vessel picked him up for farther transport to England and trial. 12. The warrant for his arrest is not to be found among their colonial records because they knew it to be preposterous and illegal on its face. 13. As they would take him out to the island, they would torch his home ashore in such manner as to ensure that he sighted the rising smoke.
1629 January 13, Tuesday (1628, Old Style): Charter of the Colony of New Plymouth Granted to William Bradford and His Associates. READ THE FULL TEXT
1630 According to Ned Bunker s MAKING HASTE FROM BABYLON / THE MAYFLOWER PILGRIMS AND THEIR WORLD: A NEW HISTORY (Alfred A. Knopf, 2010), during the 1620s a single beaver pelt from the New World continent had been selling for a phenomenal amount, roughly the same as what it cost to rent nine acres of English farmland for a year. The New Comers to Plymouth (or, more precisely, their financial backers in the Old World) were counting on being able to capitalize on this furry gold and in fact, during the decade of the 1630s the new colony on Plymouth bay would be able to send something like 2,000 beaver pelts back to England. Captain Christopher Levett, early English explorer of the New England Coast, an agent for Sir Ferdinando Gorges as well as a member for the crown s Plymouth Council for New England, was making a desultory attempt to establish a colony in Maine but died aboard ship after having met with Governor John Winthrop in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. At about this point the population of this new colony reached 300 while the population of the Virginia colony was at 30, but the population of the New England coast would quickly undergo a radical alteration because conflict in England between the Puritan and the Crown factions would drive many of the Puritans overseas in an attempt to establish a Bible Commonwealth. Within this decade, some 20,000 of the Puritan persuasion would make the crossing, while the Pilgrims already in the New England colonies moved out into remote farms, their Great Lots, and began to raise livestock to herd toward the coast and sell as food to these more recent immigrants. According to William Bradford s OF PLYMOUTH PLANTATION, published later, New England weather was being discovered to be just about as bitchy and contrary as a passel of Cavaliers: And for the season it was winter, and they that know the winters of that country know them to be sharp and violent, and subject to cruel and fierce storms, dangerous to search an unknown coast. In Europe, this would be another poor harvest year. Everybody talks about the weather and nobody ever does anything about it! 14
CAPE COD: Very different is the general and off-hand account given by Captain John Smith, who was on this coast six years earlier, and speaks like an old traveller, voyager, and soldier, who had seen too much of the world to exaggerate, or even to dwell long, on a part of it. In his Description of New England, printed in 1616, after speaking of Accomack, since called Plymouth, he says: Cape Cod is the next presents itself, which is only a headland of high hills of sand, overgrown with shrubby pines, hurts, and such trash, but an excellent harbor for all weathers. This Cape is made by the main sea on the one side, and a great bay on the other, in form of a sickle. Champlain had already written, Which we named Cap Blanc (Cape White), because they were sands and downs (sables et dunes) which appeared thus. When the Pilgrims get to Plymouth their reporter says again, The land for the crust of the earth is a spit s depth, that would seem to be their recipe for an earth s crust, excellent black mould and fat in some places. However, according to Bradford himself, whom some consider the author of part of Mourt s Relation, they who came over in the Fortune the next year were somewhat daunted when they came into the harbor of Cape Cod, and there saw nothing but a naked and barren place. They soon found out their mistake with respect to the goodness of Plymouth soil. Yet when at length, some years later, when they were fully satisfied of the poorness of the place which they had chosen, the greater part, says Bradford, consented to a removal to a place called Nausett, they agreed to remove all together to Nauset, now Eastham, which was jumping out of the frying-pan into the fire; and some of the most respectable of the inhabitants of Plymouth did actually remove thither accordingly. JOHN SMITH CHAMPLAIN 14. This weather report would be picked up and replayed by Nathaniel Hawthorne upon an appropriate occasion, his adventure to the Brook Farm community of West Roxbury MA in April of 1841: Here is thy poor husband in a polar Paradise! I know not how to interpret this aspect of Nature whether it be of good or evil omen to our enterprise. But I reflect that the Plymouth pilgrims arrived in the midst of storm and stept ashore upon mountain snow-drifts; and nevertheless they prospered, and became a great people and doubtless it will be the same with us. Belovedest, I have not yet taken my first lesson in agriculture, as thou mayest well suppose except that I went to see our cows foddered, yesterday afternoon. We have eight of our own; and the number is now increased by a transcendental heifer, belonging to Miss Margaret Fuller. She is very fractious, I believe, and apt to kick over the milk pail. Thou knowest best, whether, in these traits of character, she resembles her mistress.
CAPE COD: It must be confessed that the Pilgrims possessed but few of the qualities of the modern pioneer. They were not the ancestors of the American backwoodsmen. They did not go at once into the woods with their axes. They were a family and church, and were more anxious to keep together, though it were on the sand, than to explore and colonize a New World. When the abovementioned company removed to Eastham, the church at Plymouth was left, to use Bradford s expression, like an ancient mother grown old, and forsaken of her children. Though they landed on Clark s Island in Plymouth harbor, the 9th of December (O.S.), and the 16th all hands came to Plymouth, and the 18th they rambled about the mainland, and the 19th decided to settle there, it was the 8th of January before Francis Billington went with one of the master s mates to look at the magnificent pond or lake now called Billington Sea, about two miles distant, which he had discovered from the top of a tree, and mistook for a great sea. And the 7th of March Master Carver with five others went to the great ponds which seem to be excellent fishing, both which points are within the compass of an ordinary afternoon s ramble, however wild the country. It is true they were busy at first about their building, and were hindered in that by much foul weather; but a party of emigrants to California or Oregon, with no less work on their hands, and more hostile Indians would do as much exploring the first afternoon, and the Sieur de Champlain would have sought an interview with the savages, and examined the country as far as the Connecticut, and made a map of it, before Billington had climbed his tree. Or contrast them only with the French searching for copper about the Bay of Fundy in 1603, tracing up small streams with Indian guides. Nevertheless, the Pilgrims were pioneers, and the ancestors of pioneers, in a far grander enterprise. CHAMPLAIN Thoreau would write in his journal on December 6, 1856:...When I speak of the otter to our oldest village Dr--who should be ex. officio an naturalist he is greatly surprised not knowing that such an animal is found in these parts. & I have to remind him that the Pilgrims sent home many otter skins in the first vessels that returned together with beaver, mink, & black-fox skins--& 1156 pounds of otter skins in the years 1631-2-3-4-5 & 6 which also 125-30 lbs of beaver skin brought 14 or 15 shillings a pound. ^ V. Bradford s History.
1640 March 2, Monday (1639, Old Style): William Bradford, &c. Surrender of the Patent of Plymouth Colony to the Freeman. READ THE FULL TEXT
1642 September 8, Thursday (Old Style): A horrible case of bestiality had been committed by a farm imbecile in Duxbury, and on this day he and his barnyard playmates were offed and pitched together into a pit. This would be described by William Bradford in OF PLYMOUTH PLANTATION (Book II, Chapter XXXII). There was a youth whose name was Thomas Granger... this year detected of buggery, and indicted for the same, with a mare, a cow, two goats, five sheep, two calves, and a turkey. Horrible it is to mention but the truth of history requires it... He was first discovered by one who accidently saw his lewd practice toward the mare... And whereas some of the sheep could not be so well known by his description of them, others with them were brought before him and he declared which were and which were not... A very sad spectacle it was. For first the mare and then the cow and the rest of the lesser cattle were killed before his face, according to the law, Leviticus XX.15; and then he himself was executed. This Granger youth had been born in about 1625 and would have been sixteen or seventeen in the year of his offing (the 1st hanging in the Plymouth colony). He had been a servant to Love Brewster. He needed to reassure the investigators that his wickedness did not originate from a New-World satanic contamination, but had come to him by way of two men who had newly arrived from merrie England, who had enjoyed copulating there with mares. Knowing that the evil was a foreign one helped reassure the investigators. We may note in passing that there was no mention made of any attempt to punish the only American involved in this sad episode, that turkey so perhaps by the point of discovery it had already been gobbled. 15 Because in a later timeframe we must deal with TWO YEARS BEFORE THE MAST which the author, Richard Henry Dana, Jr., referred to as a boy s book, I am intrigued by this barnyard hierarchy, first the mare and then the cow and the rest of the lesser cattle. Swine would seem at the very bottom of the list of desirability as sexual partners for humans, and yet buried in that early-19th-century sailor-boy adventure narrative you will discover a reference to the practice of the older married black cook aboard the vessel on which Dana had sailed, the Pilgrim, of surreptitious nocturnal visits to the ship s sow during their long all-male voyage around the Horn to the California coast stations such as Santa Barbara and back to Boston harbor with a load of dried cowhide. This is randy material which is often missed by current readers, or for sure the book would not be on the shelves of Junior High School libraries! Dana s tale is not only of bestiality, but represents, of course, the blackest racism. However, it has only recently crossed my mind that Dana s describing the encounters as with a sow go along with his describing the encounters as with the only black man before the mast of this vessel, 15. One imagines that this sort of event would require that the turkey had already been domesticated in New England, and that the turkey being copulated with was a barnyard fowl. Other records confirm that at the very latest by 1672 the turkey was being raised as a barnyard animal in New England.
the only older man, the only married man as equivalently derogatory in intent. We are also of course dealing with Red/White contaminations, as for instance when, on the grounds of Mount Hope, Rhode Island after the Native American leader King Phillip was killed there, an English man would be discovered in a thicket copulating with his mare. He would be branded with the letter P on his forehead, which indicated not the red Phillip the King whose signature on land sale documents had been a P, but instead Polluted. 16 In England it was the church that had jurisdiction over sexual crime, and this was governed by way of Penitential Books which catalogued in Latin in the minutest detail the forbidden acts and the punishments to be meted out by the ecclesiastical courts. Five penitential codes contain some 22 paragraphs defining every conceivable form of punishable sexual act. 16. It does not seem to have been much studied, what attitudes native American tribes of the temperate region took toward bestiality. In some non-european cultures, sexual acts between humans and animals have not been accompanied by any taboo. Hopi Indians and Kupfer Eskimos come to mind, in America, and the Kusaia in Africa. Francisco Guerra characterized the majority of Peruvian jugs with sexual motifs as depicting heterosexual acts whether genital, oral, anal, or other, with 6% of such jugs depicting bestiality as opposed to 3% depicting same-sex encounters. Masai boys once used donkeys, routinely, for sexual release.
1650 Governor William Bradford recorded in OF PLYMOUTH PLANTATION that Peter Brown, a carpenter who had been unmarried when he had come on the Mayflower in 1620 and drawn his house lot in Plymouth with the rest, soon afterward had accompanied Bradford, Standish, and Winslow to the neighboring settlement of Duxbury. He had died during 1633 and Standish and Brewster had taken his inventory on October 10, 1633. This Peter Brown had married twice and had two children by each wife, and as of this writing by Governor Bradford, both of those by the 1st wife had been married and one of them had given him two grandchildren. Although, for his 1st wife, conjecture assigns him the widow Ford who had come in the Fortune during 1621, such a 1st marriage must have occurred after the land division in 1624 and, at the division of cattle during 1627, he has associated with him Martha Brown and Mary Brown, who were perhaps his wife and his daughter. He is the ancestor of Captain John Brown of Harpers Ferry in that one of his descendants in the main line would be the Captain John Brown of the Connecticut militia who would die of disease in the revolutionary service in 1776. This revolutionary captain would marry Hannah Owen, of Welsh origin; and their son Owen Brown would marry Ruth Mills, of Dutch origin. Owen Brown would leave a brief autobiographical writing beginning with My life has been of little worth, mostly filled up with vanity and including the information that In 1800, May 9, John was born, one hundred years after his great-grandfather; nothing else very uncommon. This John born on May 9, 1800 was of course the John Brown of Harpers Ferry. Although the writing states We lived in peace with all mankind, so far as I know, this Owen Brown was one of that early school of abolitionists whom Hopkins and Edwards enlightened and in 1798, soon after Connecticut abolished slavery, he apparently participated in the forcible rescue of some slaves who were being claimed there by a Virginia clergyman.
1657 May 9, Saturday (Old Style): William Bradford died. Professor Jill Lepore has commented on his life and his writing of the history of his Plymouth settlement in Plymouth Rocked: Of Pilgrims, Puritans, and professors in The New Yorker for April 24, 2006, pages 164-70: William Bradford, the governor and first chronicler of the Plymouth plantation... crossed what he called the vast and furious ocean on board the Mayflower, a hundred-and-eighty-ton, three-masted, square-rigged merchant vessel, its cramped berths filled with forty other religious dissenters who wanted to separate from the Church of England, and some sixty rather less pious passengers who were in search of nothing so much as adventure. Bradford called these profane passengers Strangers, but to modern sensibilities they can feel more familiar than, say, William Brewster, who brought along a son named Wrestling, short for wrestling with God. The colony that William Bradford helped plant on the windswept western shore of Cape Cod Bay was tiny, and it shrank before it grew; by 1650, its population had not yet reached a thousand. Plymouth Colony was Bradford s colony. Between 1621 and 1656, he was elected governor every year but five. Passionate, selftaught, and bold beyond measure, Bradford was the one who called his people Pilgrims. He was also a poet, though not a very good one: Providence and the Pilgrim FROM my years young in days of youth, God did make known to me his truth, And call d me from my native place For to enjoy the means of grace. In wilderness he did me guide, And in strange lands for me provide. In fears and wants, through weal and woe, A pilgrim, passed I to and fro: Oft left of them whom I did trust; How vain it is to rest on dust! A man of sorrows I have been, And many changes I have seen. Wars, wants, peace, plenty, have I known; And some advanc d, others thrown down. The humble poor, cheerful and glad; Rich, discontent, sower and sad: When fears and sorrows have been mixt, Consolations came betwixt. Faint not, poor soul, in God still trust, Fear not the things thou suffer must; For, whom he loves he doth chastise, And then all tears wipes from their eyes. Farewell, dear children, whom I love, Your better Father is above: When I am gone, he can supply; To him I leave you when I die. Fear him in truth, walk in his ways, And he will bless you all your days.
My days are spent, old age is come, My strength it fails, my glass near run. Now I will wait, when work is done, Until my happy change shall come, When from my labors I shall rest, With Christ above for to be blest. Bradford began writing his history in 1630, the year the Englishman John Winthrop founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Winthrop s colonists are more commonly called Puritans, because they wanted to purify the Anglican Church, but the Pilgrims were Puritans, too and nobody more so, as Morison once put it. The distinction between Pilgrims and Puritans is a nineteenthcentury invention; in truth, their doctrinal differences were slight. Still, the rivalry between the two colonies was intense, and to Plymouth s disadvantage. By 1641, more than twenty thousand colonists had settled in Massachusetts, entirely dwarfing the Old Colony. (In 1691, Plymouth became part of Massachusetts.)... Try as he might, Bradford just couldn t find the time to catch his past up with his present. He died in 1657, at the age of sixty-seven, his history unfinished.
1702 The Reverend Cotton Mather (son of Increase and grandson of Richard) wrote in MAGNALIA CHRISTI AMERICANA; OR THE ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY OF NEW-ENGLAND that:...we can hardly tell where any of em [the Narragansett?] are left alive upon the face of the earth. MATHER S MAGNALIA, I MATHER S MAGNALIA, II The Reverend s opus presented Mistress Mary Rowlandson s captivity and escape narrative from the Reverend Rowlandson s perspective, as how his wife s captivity had tested his faith, and how her return to him
had demonstrated that his faith had been superior to the evil she had been forced to endure. This is in sharp contrast with Mrs. Rowlandson s own story, which she frames within her separation from and her reunion with her daughter upon free cost, that is to say, without the need for the paying of a money ransom. This Right Reverend also wrote in 1702 of the Salem witch trials: The devils which had been so played withal, and, it may be, by some few criminals more explicitly engaged and imployed, now broke in upon the country, after as astonishing a manner as was ever heard of. Some scores of people, first about Salem, the centre and first-born of all the towns in the colony, and afterwards in several other places, were arrested with many preternatural vexations upon their bodies, and a variety of cruel torments, which were evidently inflicted from the dæmons of the invisible world... Flashy people may burlesque these things, but when hundreds of the most sober people in a country where they have as much mother-wit certainly as the rest of mankind, know them to be true, nothing but the absurd and froward spirit of Sadducism can question them. This Right Reverend, a white man who wouldn t quit, wrote: Barbaris pro libertate erepta fidem Jesu Christi, et vitam hominibus dignam reddamus. which translates literally if approximately as: So what if we are reducing these savages to slavery? In exchange for their liberty on this continent, our white rule bestows upon them not only the religion of Jesus Christ but also a decent manner of existence!
A GENERAL INTRODUCTION, IN THE REVEREND COTTON MATHER S 1702 MAGNALIA CHRISTII AMERICANA; OR, THE ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY OF NEW-ENGLAND Dicam hoc propter utilitatem eorum qui Lecturi sunt hoc opus. Theodoret. 1. I WRITE the Wonders of the CHRISTIAN RELIGION, flying from the Depravations of Europe, to the American Strand. And, assisted by the Holy Author of that Religion, I do, with all Conscience of Truth, required therein by Him, who is the Truth itself, Report the Wonderful Displays of His Infinite Power, Wisdom, Goodness, and Faithfulness, wherewith His Divine Providence hath Irradiated an Indian Wilderness. I Relate the Considerable Matters, that produced and attended the First Settlement of COLONIES, which have been Renowned for the Degree of REFORMATION, Professed and Attained by Evangelical Churches, erected in those Ends of the Earth: And a field being thus prepared, I proceed unto a Relation of the Considerable Matters which have been acted thereupon. I first introduce the Actors, that have, in a more exemplary manner served those Colonies; and give Remarkable Occurrences, in the exemplary LIVES of many Magistrates, and more Ministers, who so Lived, as to leave unto Posterity, Examples worthy of Everlasting Remembrance. I add hereunto, the Notables of the only Protestant University, that ever shone in that Hemisphere of the New World; with particular Instances of Criolians, in our Biography, provoking the whole World, with vertuous Objects of Emulation. I introduce then, the Actions of a more Eminent Importance, that have signalized those Colonies; Whether the Establishments, directed by their Synods; with a Rich Variety of Synodical and Ecclesiastical Determinations; or, the Disturbances, with which they have been from all sorts of Temptations and Enemies Tempestuated; and the Methods by which they have still weathered out each Horrible Tempest. And into the midst of these Actions, I interpose an entire Book, wherein there is, with all possible Veracity, a Collection made, of Memorable Occurrences, and amazing Judgments and Mercies, befalling many particular Persons among the People of New-England. Let my Readers expect all that I have promised them, in this Bill of Fare; and it may be they will find themselves entertained with yet many other Passages, above and beyond their Expectation, deserving likewise a room in History: In all which, there will be nothing, but the Author s too mean way of preparing so great Entertainments, to Reproach the Invitation... 3. It is the History of these PROTESTANTS, that is here attempted: PROTESTANTS that highly honoured and affected The Church of ENGLAND, and humbly Petition to be a Part of it: But by the Mistake of a few powerful Brethren, driven to seek a place for the Exercise of the Protestant Religion, according to the Light of their Consciences, in the Desarts of America. And in this Attempt I have proposed, not only to preserve and secure the Interest of Religion, in the Churches of that little Country NEW-ENGLAND, so far as the Lord Jesus Christ may please to Bless it for that End, but also to offer unto the Churches of the Reformation, abroad in the World, some small Memorials, that may be serviceable unto the Designs of Reformation, whereto, I believe, they are quickly to be awakened... Tho the Reformed Churches in the American Regions, have, by very Injurious Representations of their Brethren (all which they desire to Forget and Forgive!) been many times thrown into a Dung-Cart; yet, as they have been a precious Odour to God in Christ, so, I hope, they will be a precious Odour unto His People; and not only Precious, but Useful also, when the History of them shall come to be considered. A Reformation of the Church is coming on, and I cannot but thereupon say, with the dying Cyrus
to his Children in Xenophon... Learn from the things that have been done already, for this is the best way of Learning, The Reader hath here an Account of The Things that have been done already... Thus I do not say, That the Churches of New-England are the most Regular that can be; yet I do say, and am sure, That they are very like unto those that were in the First Ages of Christianity. And if I assert, That in the Reformation of the Church, the State of it in those First Ages, is to be not a little considered, the Great Peter Ramus, among others, has emboldened me... In short, The First Age was the Golden Age: To return unto That, will make a Man a Protestant, and I may add, a Puritan. Tis possible, That our Lord Jesus Christ carried some Thousands of Reformers into the Retirements of an American Desart, on purpose, that, with an opportunity granted unto many of his Faithful Servants, to enjoy the precious Liberty of their Ministry, tho in the midst of many Temptations all their days, He might there, To them first, and then By them, give a Specimen of many Good Things, which He would have His Churches elsewhere aspire and arise unto: And This being done, He knows whether there be not all done, that New-England was planted for; and whether the Plantation may not, soon after this, Come to Nothing. Upon that Expression in the Sacred Scripture, Cast the unprofitable Servant into Outer Darkness, it hath been imagined by some, That the Regiones Extere of America, are the Tenebr Exteriores, which the Unprofitable are there condemned unto. No doubt, the Authors of those Ecclesiastical Impositions and Severities, which drove the English Christians into the Dark Regions of America, esteemed those Christians to be a very unprofitable sort of Creatures. But behold, ye European Churches, There are Golden Candlesticks [more than twice Seven Times Seven!] in the midst of this Outer Darkness: unto the upright Children of Abraham, here hath arisen Light in Darkness. And let us humbly speak it, it shall be Profitable for you to consider the Light, which from the midst of this Outer Darkness, is now to be Darted over unto the other side of the Atlantick Ocean. But we must therewithal ask your Prayers, that these Golden Candlesticks may not quickly be Removed out of their place! 4. But whether New England may Live any where else or no, it must Live in our History!...
GALEACIUS SECUNDUS: THE LIFE OF WILLIAM BRADFORD, ESQ., GOVERNER OF PLYMOUTH COLONY Somnos illius vigilantia defendit; omnium otium, illius Labor; omnium Delitias, illius Industria; omnium vacationem, illius occupatio. 1. It has been a matter of some observation, that although Yorkshire be one of the largest shires in England; yet, for all the fires of martyrdom which were kindled in the days of Queen Mary, it afforded no more fuel than one poor Leaf; namely, John Leaf, an apprentice, who suffered for the doctrine of the Reformation at the same time and stake with the famous John Bradford. But when the reign of Queen Elizabeth would not admit the Reformation of worship to proceed unto those degrees, which were proposed and pursued by no small number of the faithful in those days, Yorkshire was not the least of the shires in England that afforded suffering witnesses thereunto. The Churches there gathered were quickly molested with such a raging persecution, that if the spirit of separation in them did carry them unto a further extream than it should have done, one blameable cause thereof will be found in the extremity of that persecution. Their troubles made that cold country too hot for them, so that they were under a necessity to seek a retreat in the Low Countries; and yet the watchful malice and fury of their adversaries rendered it almost impossible for them to find what they sought. For them to leave their native soil, their lands and their friends, and go into a strange place, where they must hear foreign language, and live meanly and hardly, and in other employments than that of husbandry, wherein they had been educated, these must needs have been such discouragements as could have been conquered by none, save those who sought first the kingdom of God, and the righteousness thereof. But that which would have made these discouragements the more unconquerable unto an ordinary faith, was the terrible zeal of their enemies to guard all ports, and search all ships, that none of them should be carried off. I will not relate the sad things of this kind then seen and felt by this people of God; but only exemplifie those trials with one short story. Divers of this people having hired a Dutchman, then lying at Hull, to carry them over to Holland, he promised faithfully to take them in between Grimsly and Hill; but they coming to the place a day or two too soon, the appearance of such a multitude alarmed the officers of the town adjoining, who came with a great body of soldiers to seize upon them. Now it happened that one boat full of men had been carried aboard, while the women were yet in a bark that lay aground in a creek at low water. The Dutchman perceiving the storm that was thus beginning ashore, swore by the sacrament that he would stay no longer for any of them; and so taking the advantage of a fair wind then blowing, he put out to sea for Zealand. The women thus left near Grimsly-common, bereaved of their husbands, who had been hurried from them, and forsaken of their neighbors, of whom none durst in this fright stay with them, were a very rueful spectacle; some crying for fear, some shaking for cold, all dragged by troops of armed and angry men from one Justice to another, till not knowing what to do with them, they even dismissed them to shift as well as they could for themselves. But by their singular afflictions, and by their Christian behaviours, the cause for which they exposed themselves did gain considerably. In the mean time, the men at sea found reason to be glad that their families were not with them, for they were surprized with an horrible tempest, which held them for fourteen days together, in seven whereof they saw not sun, moon or star, but were driven upon the coast of Norway. The mariners often despaired of life, and once with doleful shrieks gave over all, as thinking the vessel was foundred: but the vessel rose again, and when the mariners with sunk hearts often cried out, We sink! we sink! the passengers, without such distraction of mind, even while the water was running into their mouths and ears, would cheerfully shout, Yet, Lord, thou canst save! Yet, Lord, thou canst save! And the Lord accordingly brought them at last safe unto their desired haven: and not long after helped their distressed relations thither after them, where indeed they found upon almost all accounts a new world, but a world in which they found that they must live like strangers and pilgrims. 2. Among those devout people was our William Bradford, who was born Anno 1588, in an obscure village called
Ansterfield, where the people were as unacquainted with the Bible, as the Jews do seem to have been a part of it in the days of Josiah; a most ignorant and licentious people, and like unto their priest. Here, and in some other places, he had a comfortable inheritance left him of his honest parents, who died while he was yet a child, and cast him on the education, first of his grand parents, and then of his uncles, who devoted him, like his ancestors, unto the affairs of husbandry. Soon a long sickness kept him, as he would afterwards thankfully say, from the vanities of youth, and had made him the fitter for what he was afterwards to undergo. When he was about a dozen years old, the reading of the Scriptures began to cause great impressions upon him; and those impressions were much assisted and improved, when he came to enjoy Mr. Richard Clifton s illuminating ministry, not far from his abode; he was then also further befriended, by being brought into the company and fellowship of such as were then called professors; though the young man that brought him into it did after become a prophane and wicked apostate. Nor could the wrath of his uncles, nor the scoff of his neighbours, now turned upon him, as one of the Puritans, divert him from his pious inclinations. 3. At last, beholding how fearfully the evangelical and apostolical church-form whereinto the churches of the primitive times were cast by the good spirit of God, had been deformed by the apostasy of the succeeding times; and what little progress the Reformation had yet made in many parts of Christendom towards its recovery, he set himself by reading, by discourse, by prayer, to learn whether it was not his duty to withdraw from the communion of the parish-assemblies and engage with some society of the faithful, that should keep close unto the written word of God, as the rule of their worship. And after many distresses of mind concerning it, he took up a very deliberate and understanding resolution, of doing so; which resolution he cheerfully prosecuted, although the provoked rage of his friends tried all the ways imaginable to reclaim him from it, unto all whom his answer was: Were I like to endanger my life, or consume my estate by any ungodly courses, your counsels to me were very seasonable; but you know that I have been diligent and provident in my calling, and not only desirous to augment what I have, but also to enjoy it in your company; to part from which will be as great a cross as can befal me. Nevertheless, to keep a good conscience, and walk in such a way as God as prescribed in his Word, is a thing which I must prefer before you all, and above life it self. Wherefore, since tis for a good cause that I am like to suffer the disasters which you lay before me, you have no cause to be either angry with me, or sorry for me; yea, I am not only willing to part with every thing that is dear to me in this world for this cause, but I am also thankful that God has given me an heart to do, and will accept me so to suffer for him. Some lamented him, some derided him, all disswaded him: nevertheless, the more they did it, the more fixed he was in his purpose to seek the ordinances of the gospel, where they should be dispensed with most of the commanded purity; and the sudden deaths of the chief relations which thus lay at him, quickly after convinced him what a folly it had been to have quitted his profession, in expectation of any satisfaction from them. So to Holland he attempted a removal. 4. Having with a great company of Christians hired a ship to transport them for Holland, the master perfidiously betrayed them into the hands of those persecutors, who rifled and ransacked their goods, and clapped their persons into prison at Boston, where they lay for a month together. But Mr. Bradford being a young man of about eighteen, was dismissed sooner than the rest, so that within a while he had opportunity with some others to get over to Zealand, through perils, both by land, and sea not inconsiderable; where he was not long ashore ere a viper seized on his hand that is, an officer who carried him unto the magistrates, unto whom an envious passenger had accused him as having fled out of England. When the magistrates understood the true cause of his coming thither, they were well satisfied with him; and so he repaired joyfully unto his brethren at Amsterdam, where the difficulties to which he afterwards stooped in learning and serving of a Frenchman at the working of silks, were abundantly compensated by the delight wherewith he sat under the shadow of our Lord, in his purely dispensed ordinances. At the end of two years, he did, being of age to do it, convert his estate in England into money; but setting up for himself, he found some of his designs by the providence of God frowned upon, which he judged a correction bestowed by God upon him for certain decays of internal piety, whereunto he had fallen; the consumption of his estate he thought came to prevent a consumption in his virtue. But after he had resided
in Holland about half a score years, he was one of those who bore a part in the hazardous and generous enterprise of removing into New-England, with part of the English church at Leyden, where, at their first landing, his dearest consort accidentally falling overboard was drowned in the harbour; and the rest of his days were spent in the service, and the temptations, of that American wilderness. 5. Here was Mr. Bradford, in the year 1621, unanimously chosen the governour of the plantation: the difficulties whereof were such, that if he had not been a person of more than ordinary piety, wisdom and courage, he must have sunk under them. He had, with a laudable industry, been laying up a treasure of experiences, and he had now occasion to use it: indeed, nothing but an experienced man could have been suitable to the necessities of the people. The potent nations of the Indians, into whose country they were come, would have cut them off, if the blessing of God upon his conduct had not quelled them; and if his prudence, justice, and moderation had not overruled them, they had been ruined by their own distempers. One specimen of his demeanour is to this day particularly spoken of. A company of young fellows that were newly arrived, were very unwilling to comply with the governour s order for working abroad on the publick account; and therefore on Christmas-day, when he had called upon them, they excused themselves, with a pretence that it was against their conscience to work on such a day. The governour gave them no answer, only that he would spare them till they were better informed; but by and by he found them all at play in the street, sporting themselves with various diversions; whereupon commanding the instruments of their games to be taken away from them, he effectually gave them to understand. That it was against his conscience that they should play whilst other were at work: and that if they had any devotion to the day, they should show it at home in the exercises of religion, and not in the streets with pasttime and frolicks, and this gentle reproof put a final stop to all such disorders for the future. 6. For two years together after the beginning of the colony, whereof he was now governour, the poor people had a great experiment of man s not living by bread alone; for when they were left all together without one morsel of bread for many months one after another, still the good providence of God relieved them, and supplied them, and this for the most part out of the sea. In this low condition of affairs, there was no little exercise for the prudence and patience of the governour, who chearfully bore his part in all: and, that industry might not flag, he quickly set himself to settle propriety among the new-planters; foreseeing that while the whole country laboured upon a common stock, the husbandry and business of the plantation could not flourish, as Plato and others long since dreamed that it would, if a community were established. Certainly, if the spirit which dwelt in the old puritans, had not inspired these new-planters, they had sunk under the burden of these difficulties; but our Bradford had a double portion of that spirit. 7. The plantation was quickly thrown into a storm that almost overwhelmed it, by the unhappy actions of a minister sent over from England by the adventurers concerned for the plantation; but by the blessing of Heaven on the conduct of the governour, they weathered out that storm. Only the adventurers hereupon breaking to pieces, threw up all their concealments with the infant colony; whereof they gave this as one reason, That the planters dissembled with his Majesty and their friends in their petition, wherein they declared for a churchdiscipline, agreeing with the French and others of the reforming churches in Europe. Whereas twas now urged, that they had admitted into their communion a person who at his admission utterly renounced the Churches of England, (which person, by the way, was that very man who had made the complaints against them,) and therefore, though they denied the name of Brownists, yet they were the thing. In answer hereunto, the very words written by the governour were these: Whereas you tax us with dissembling about the French discipline, you do us wrong, for we both hold and practice the discipline of the French and other Reformed Churches (as they have published the same in the Harmony of Confessions) according to our means, in effect and substance. But whereas you would tie us up to the French discipline in every circumstance, you derogate from the liberty we have in Christ Jesus. The Apostle Paul would have none to follow him in any thing, but wherein he follows Christ; much less ought any Christian or church in the world to do it. The French may err, we may err, and other churches may err, and doubtless do in many circumstances. That honour therefore belongs only to the infallible Word of God, and pure Testament of Christ, to be propounded and followed as the only rule and pattern for direction herein to all churches and
Christians. And it is too great arrogancy for any man or church to think that he or they have so sounded the Word of God unto the bottom, as precisely to set down the church s discipline without error in substance or circumstances, that no other without blame may digress or differ in any thing from the same. And it is not difficult to shew that the Reformed Churches differ in many circumstances among themselves. By which words it appears how far he was free from that rigid spirit of separation, which broke to pieces the Separatists themselves in the Low Countries, unto the great scandal of the reforming churches. He was indeed a person of a well-tempered spirit, or else it had been scarce possible for him to have kept the affairs of Plymouth in so good a temper for thirty-seven years together; in every one of which he was chosen their governour, except the three years wherein Mr. Winslow, and the two years wherein Mr. Prince, at the choice of the people, took a turn with him. 8. The leader of a people in a wilderness had need be a Moses; and if a Moses had not led the people of Plymouth Colony, when this worthy person was their governour, the people had never with so much unanimity and importunity still called him to lead them. Among many instances thereof, let this one piece of self-denial be told for a memorial of him, wheresoever this History shall be considered: The Patent of the Colony was taken in his name, running in these terms: To William Bradford his heirs, associates, and assigns. But when the number of freemen was much increased, and many new townships erected, the General Court there desired of Mr. Bradford, that he would make a surrender of the same into their hands, which he willingly and presently assented unto, and confirmed it according to their desire by his hand and seal, reserving no more for himself than was his proportion, with others, by agreement. But as he found the providence of Heaven many ways recompensing his many acts of self-denial, so he gave this testimony to the faithfulness of the divine promises: That he has forsaken friends, houses and lands for the sake of the gospel, and the Lord gave them him again. Here he prospered in his estate; and besides a worthy son which he had by a former wife, he had also two sons and a daughter by another, whom he married in this land. 9. He was a person for study as well as action; and hence, not withstanding the difficulties through which he had passed in his youth, he attained unto a notable skill in languages: The Dutch tongue was become almost as vernacular to him as the English; the French tongue he could also manage; the Latin and the Greek he had mastered; but the Hebrew he most of all studied, Because, he said, he would see with his own eyes the ancient oracles of God in their native beauty. He was also well skilled in History, in Antiquity, and in Philosophy; and for Theology he became so versed in it, that he was an irrefragable disputant against the errors, especially those of Anabaptism, which with trouble he saw rising in his colony; wherefore he wrote some significant things for the confutation of those errors. But the crown of all was his holy, prayerful, watchful, and fruitful walk with God, wherein he was very exemplary. 10. At length he fell into an indisposition of body, which rendered him unhealthy for a whole winter; and as the spring advanced, his health yet more declined; yet he felt himself not what he counted sick, till one day; in the night after which, the God of heaven so filled his mind with ineffable consulations, that he seemed little short of Paul, rapt up unto the unutterable entertainments of Paradise. The next morning he told his friends, That the good Spirit of God had given him a pledge of his happiness in another world, and the first-fruits of his eternal glory; and on the day following he died, May 9, 1657, in the 69th year of his age lamented by all the colonies of New-England, as a common blessing and father to them all. O mihi si Similis Contingat Clausula Vitae! Plato s brief description of a governour, is all that I will now leave as his character in an MEN are but FLOCKS: BRADFORD beheld their need, And long did them at once both rule and feed. Epitaph
THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project Governor William Bradford
1774 The legend began to become popular that the 10-ton glacial boulder, behind which the Old Comers (as they knew themselves, although we have come to term them Pilgrim Fathers ) decided to settle on the beach at Plymouth in December 1620, was the rock upon which these intrusives had stepped ashore from the boat of the Mayflower nine days previously. This 10-ton erratic began to be known as the Plymouth Rock, and the landing day began to be known as Forefathers Day. This is despite the fact that they could find no mention of such a rock, in the manuscript of William Bradford s HISTORY OF PLYMOUTH PLANTATION which is now at the Massachusetts State House. The Sons of Liberty organization of tax resisters decided to use this rock as a symbol of separatism from the mother country, despite the fact that in their day it lay underneath a wharf. In 1774 a group of Liberty Boys led by the militia Colonel Theophilus Cotton attempted to pry up this granite slab, in order to move it away from the tides, but it broke in half. They rolled the top half to the town square and used it as the end of a retaining wall propping up an embankment near an elm tree, but the rock rapidly diminished in size as eggsized chunks were sold to raise funds at $1. 50 each.
In this year Charles Blascowitch recorded the configuration of the Plymouth coastline: The heads of the Emerson families in the various towns of Massachusetts having all declared firmly against the giving of aid and comfort to the enemy through the drinking of English tea, it was an occasion of great shock when the Reverend Joseph Emerson of Pepperell came to Malden unexpectedly one day, and caught his 72-year-old mother, Madam Mary Moody Emerson, in the act of brewing herself a pot of tea: He was much displeased. His Mother was hurt. She never got over it that he wasn t willing that his Mother should take tea when she needed it.
1846 A copy of a MS by Governor William Bradford of Plimouth Colony turned up in the library of the Lord Bishop of London.
CAPE COD: Very different is the general and off-hand account given by Captain John Smith, who was on this coast six years earlier, and speaks like an old traveller, voyager, and soldier, who had seen too much of the world to exaggerate, or even to dwell long, on a part of it. In his Description of New England, printed in 1616, after speaking of Accomack, since called Plymouth, he says: Cape Cod is the next presents itself, which is only a headland of high hills of sand, overgrown with shrubby pines, hurts, and such trash, but an excellent harbor for all weathers. This Cape is made by the main sea on the one side, and a great bay on the other, in form of a sickle. Champlain had already written, Which we named Cap Blanc (Cape White), because they were sands and downs (sables et dunes) which appeared thus. When the Pilgrims get to Plymouth their reporter says again, The land for the crust of the earth is a spit s depth, that would seem to be their recipe for an earth s crust, excellent black mould and fat in some places. However, according to Bradford himself, whom some consider the author of part of Mourt s Relation, they who came over in the Fortune the next year were somewhat daunted when they came into the harbor of Cape Cod, and there saw nothing but a naked and barren place. They soon found out their mistake with respect to the goodness of Plymouth soil. Yet when at length, some years later, when they were fully satisfied of the poorness of the place which they had chosen, the greater part, says Bradford, consented to a removal to a place called Nausett, they agreed to remove all together to Nauset, now Eastham, which was jumping out of the frying-pan into the fire; and some of the most respectable of the inhabitants of Plymouth did actually remove thither accordingly. JOHN SMITH CHAMPLAIN
CAPE COD: It must be confessed that the Pilgrims possessed but few of the qualities of the modern pioneer. They were not the ancestors of the American backwoodsmen. They did not go at once into the woods with their axes. They were a family and church, and were more anxious to keep together, though it were on the sand, than to explore and colonize a New World. When the abovementioned company removed to Eastham, the church at Plymouth was left, to use Bradford s expression, like an ancient mother grown old, and forsaken of her children. Though they landed on Clark s Island in Plymouth harbor, the 9th of December (O.S.), and the 16th all hands came to Plymouth, and the 18th they rambled about the mainland, and the 19th decided to settle there, it was the 8th of January before Francis Billington went with one of the master s mates to look at the magnificent pond or lake now called Billington Sea, about two miles distant, which he had discovered from the top of a tree, and mistook for a great sea. And the 7th of March Master Carver with five others went to the great ponds which seem to be excellent fishing, both which points are within the compass of an ordinary afternoon s ramble, however wild the country. It is true they were busy at first about their building, and were hindered in that by much foul weather; but a party of emigrants to California or Oregon, with no less work on their hands, and more hostile Indians would do as much exploring the first afternoon, and the Sieur de Champlain would have sought an interview with the savages, and examined the country as far as the Connecticut, and made a map of it, before Billington had climbed his tree. Or contrast them only with the French searching for copper about the Bay of Fundy in 1603, tracing up small streams with Indian guides. Nevertheless, the Pilgrims were pioneers, and the ancestors of pioneers, in a far grander enterprise. CHAMPLAIN WHAT I M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MIND YOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF The People of Cape Cod: Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project
1856 The MS by Governor William Bradford of the Plimouth Colony which had been turned up in the library of the Lord Bishop of London in 1846, OF PLIMOTH PLANTATION, was published, but inadvertently with 16 lines AS FIRST PUBLISHED omitted that had pertained to the year 1621. In those omitted lines, Governor Bradford had described how Squanto had taught the Brownists that except they got fish and set with it in these old grounds it would come to nothing. Unfortunate for this nice story, which would become in our storybooks an instruction to bury a dead herring with each hill of maize that is planted, such a method of horticulture simply will not work. (You are urged to try the experiment yourself, and verify this at first hand. What prevents this method from working is a temporary differential local demand for nitrogen, the fish decaying at the wrong time denying this entirely to the developing plants just at the point at which they are in need of it.)... Afterwards they (as many as were able) began to plant their corn, in which service Squanto stood them in great stead, showing them both the manner how to set it, and after how to dress and tend it. Also he told them, except they got fish and set with it (in these old grounds) it would come to nothing, and he showed them that in the middle of April they should have store enough come up the brook, by which they began to build, and taught them how to take it, and where to get other provisions necessary for them; all which they found true by trial and experience...
CAMBRIDGE HISTORY OF ENGLISH AND AMERICAN LITERATURE READ BRADFORD TEXT
1857 Publication of a text that Henry Thoreau would refer to in CAPE COD, in three volumes, the Reverend John Stetson Barry s THE HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS... (Boston: Phillips, Sampson, and Company). JOHN STETSON BARRY I JOHN STETSON BARRY II JOHN STETSON BARRY III While engaged in research on this project, the Reverend had discovered the existence, and the current location, of a manuscript by early governor William Bradford describing the initial years of the Plimouth Colony!
CAPE COD: It is remarkable that there is not in English any adequate or correct account of the French exploration of what is now the coast of New England, between 1604 and 1608, though it is conceded that they then made the first permanent European settlement on the continent of North America north of St. Augustine. If the lions had been the painters it would have been otherwise. This omission is probably to be accounted for partly by the fact that the early edition of Champlain s Voyages had not been consulted for this purpose. This contains by far the most particular, and, I think, the most interesting chapter of what we may call the Ante-Pilgrim history of New England, extending to one hundred and sixty pages quarto; but appears to be unknown equally to the historian and the orator on Plymouth Rock. Bancroft does not mention Champlain at all among the authorities for De Monts expedition, nor does he say that he ever visited the coast of New England. Though he bore the title of pilot to De Monts, he was, in another sense, the leading spirit, as well as the historian of the expedition. Holmes, Hildreth, and Barry, and apparently all our historians who mention Champlain, refer to the edition of 1632, in which all the separate charts of our harbors, &c., and about one half the narrative, are omitted; for the author explored so many lands afterward that he could afford to forget a part of what he had done. Hildreth, speaking of De Monts s expedition, says that he looked into the Penobscot [in 1605], which Pring had discovered two years before, saying nothing about Champlain s extensive exploration of it for De Monts in 1604 (Holmes says 1608, and refers to Purchas); also that he followed in the track of Pring along the coast to Cape Cod, which he called Malabarre. (Haliburton had made the same statement before him in 1829. He called it Cap Blanc, and Malle Barre (the Bad Bar) was the name given to a harbor on the east side of the Cape.) Pring says nothing about a river there. Belknap says that Weymouth discovered it in 1605. Sir F. Gorges says, in his narration (Maine Hist. Coll., Vol. II. p. 19), 1658, that Pring in 1606 made a perfect discovery of all the rivers and harbors. This is the most I can find. Bancroft makes Champlain to have discovered more western rivers in Maine, not naming the Penobscot; he, however, must have been the discoverer of distances on this river (see Belknap, p. 147). Pring was absent from England only about six months, and sailed by this part of Cape Cod (Malebarre) because it yielded no sassafras, while the French, who probably had not heard of Pring, were patiently for years exploring the coast in search of a place of settlement, sounding and surveying its harbors. ÆSOP XENOPHANES CHAMPLAIN WEBSTER BANCROFT HILDRETH HOLMES HALIBURTON BELKNAP GORGES
1912 A complete scholarly edition of William Bradford s OF PLIMOTH PLANTATION included those lines which had previously, inadvertently, been omitted. CAMBRIDGE HISTORY OF ENGLISH AND AMERICAN LITERATURE READ BRADFORD TEXT MAGISTERIAL HISTORY IS FANTASIZING, HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project Governor William Bradford
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ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT GENERATION HOTLINE This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by a human. Such is not the case. Instead, someone has requested that we pull it out of the hat of a pirate who has grown out of the shoulder of our pet parrot Laura (as above). What these chronological lists are: they are research reports compiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of modules which we term the Kouroo Contexture (this is data mining). To respond to such a request for information we merely push a button.