Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

78

LANDING OF THE PILGRIMS.

This instrument was signed by the men, forty-one in number; and they, with their families, amounted to one hundred and one persons. As soon as their covenant or contract was signed, Mr. John Carver was unanimously chosen their governor for one year

[ocr errors]

The inclemency of the season was very unfavourable to their undertaking. Several days were spent in searching for a suitable place to land, and much hardship was endured by those who went in the boats for this purpose. Some traces of the Indians were discovered-a heap of maize, a burial place, and four or five deserted wigwams. On the 8th of December, Carver, Bradford, Winslow, Standish, and eight or ten seamen, being on shore near Namskeket, on Great Meadow Creek, were assailed by a party of Indians, who welcomed them with the war whoop, and a flight of arrows. On the same day, they were near being wrecked in their shallop as they were seeking a harbour. They escaped this danger, however, and landed at night on a small island. Here they kept the Christian Sabbath with strict observance, and on the day following, December 11, found the long sought harbour, to which, in grateful remembrance of the friends they had left at their last port in England, they gave the name of Plymouth.

In a few days the Mayflower was safely moored in Plymouth harbour; the surrounding country was then explored, and a high ground facing the bay, where the land was cleared and the water good, was selected for building.

On the morning of the 20th of December, 1620, after imploring the divine guidance and blessing, the Pilgrims landed on the rock of Plymouth. The spot which their footsteps first touched, on this memorable occasion, has ever since bee regarded by their descendants as sacred, and the day is still celebrated with all the enthusiasm of religion and patriotism.

When the landing of the Pilgrims was effected, their difficulties and distresses were but just begun. We are to recollect that it was in the depth of a New England winter, that their company was already suffering with colds, lung fevers, and incipient consumptions, contracted by their exposure to snow, rain, and the beating surf, in exploring the coast; that their stock of provisions was scanty; and that the care of their wives and children was added to hardships which manhood was hardly able to encounter.

Who was chosen governor ?

8th of December?

What passed on the 11th ?

What befell a party of them on the When did the Pilgrims land?

[merged small][merged small][graphic][merged small]

The month of January was spent in erecting such tenements as their scanty means afforded. Sickness attended them, and mortality thinned their numbers through the winter and it was not until the spring was far advanced that health revisited the remnant of the colony. Half their number had perished. Carver, their first governor, died in March, and William Bradford was chosen to succeed him.

Privation and want were still to be endured. A reinforcement of emigrants, which came out in the autumn of 1621, brought no supply of provisions, and the colony was compelled to subsist, for six months longer, on half allowance. The scarcity of provisions continued, with only occasional relief, for two years longer.

A mistaken policy, or a desire to conform to the simplicity of apostolic times, had induced the Pilgrims to adopt the system of community of property. This was one of the causes of scarcity. In the spring of 1623, each family was allowed a parcel of ground to cultivate for itself; and after the harvest of that year, no general want of food was experienced.

A profitable commerce was established with the Indians. European trinkets were exchanged for furs, and the colonists were at length enabled to barter corn with them for the products of the chase. The Indians were not numerous in the vicinity of Plymouth, for before the arrival of the English, a sweeping pestilence had carried off whole tribes of them, but

How was their first winter passed?
When did Carver die ?
Who succeeded him?

When did a reinforcement arrive?
What cause of distress remaine
for how long a time?

What mistake was made by the Pil
grims?

Wh was it rectified? How?
With whom did they trade?

In what commodities?

What had thinned the Indians?

[blocks in formation]

enough were left to render a sort of military organisation necessary for the defence of the colony, and Captain Miles Standish, a man of great courage and fortitude, obtained the chief command.

In March, 1621, the colonists were visited by Samoset, a chief of the Wampanoags, who bade them welcome, and in the name of his tribe gave them permission to occupy the soil, which there was no one of the original possessors alive to claim.

In the same month, Massasoit, the greatest king of the neighbouring Indians, paid them a visit, and entered into a league of friendship, which was inviolably observed for upwards of fifty years.

This event was followed by others of the same character. A sachem who had threatened hostilities was compelled to sue for peace, and nine chiefs subscribed an instrument of submission to King James. Canonicus, the sachem of the Narragansetts, sent a bundle of arrows wrapped in a rattlesnake's skin to the governor, in token of defiance; but Bradford coolly stuffed the skin with powder and shot, and returned it. The Indian's courage failed at the sight of this unequivocal symbol; and he followed the example of his countrymen by subscribing a treaty of peace.

1623

Another colony was the means of involving the Plymouth settlers in an Indian war. Weston, one of the London adventurers, had been induced, by the hope of a lucrative trade, to obtain a patent for land near Weymouth in Massachusetts Bay, and sent over a company of sixty men, who settled on the soil, intruded themselves on the hospitality of the Plymouth colony, were idle and dissolute, and finally exasperated the Indians so much by their repeated aggressions, that a plot was formed for the entire extermination of the English. This plot was revealed by Massasoit. The governor, on receiving intelligence of it, ordered Standish to take a party with him to the new settlement, and, if he should discover signs of a plot, to fall on the conspirators. Standish took but eight men; and, proceeding at once to the scene of action, was insulted and threatened by the natives. Watching a favourable opportunity, he attacked them, killed several, and put the rest to flight. The Indian wo

Who was the military leader of the
Pilgrims?

Who visited them?

Who made a treaty with them?

What events followed?

Tell the story of Canonicus.

What is said of the Weymouth colony?

Or he Indians?
Of-Stamch?

[merged small][merged small][graphic][merged small]

men were treated kindly, and sent away. This decisive action broke up the conspiracy, and dispersed the tribes who had formed it. The Weymouth colony was soon after abandoned, and the settlers returned to England.

The London merchants, who had lent money to the Pilgrims on their departure from England, had been admitted to a sort of partnership in the colony, which was afterwards productive of much inconvenience. These merchants used their power for the purpose of making severe restrictions and exactions. They refused a passage to Mr. Robinson, who wished to join his friends in Plymouth; endeavoured to force upon the colony a clergyman whose religious opinions were at variance with their own; and even attempted to injure their commerce by rivalry, extorting from them exorbitant profits on supplies, and excessive usury on money. The emigrants bore all this patiently, and at last succeeded in buying out the entire rights of the London adventurers, and relieving themselves from debt, and its unpleasant consequences.

The first patent of Plymouth had been taken out at the instance of Sir Ferdinand Gorges, in the name of John Pierce, as trustee for the adventurers. When the enterprise assumed a promising aspect, this man secretly procured another patent of larger extent, for his own benefit, intending to hold the adventurers as his tenants.

He accordingly sent out ships for New England; but they were driven back repeatedly by storms; and the losses he

What was the end of the Weymouth | How were their exactions ended? colony? How did the trustee of the Pilgrims abuse his trust?

What is said of the London merchants?

What misfortunes befell him?

82

GOVERNMENT OF THE OLD COLONY.

underwent compelled him to sell his patent and his property to the company.

A patent was afterwards granted for the lands about the Kennebec river, where a trading establishment had been formed; but no charter could ever be obtained from the king, who still retained his hostility to the Puritans.

The population of the old colony, at Plymouth, increased slowly. Ten years after the first settlement there were only three hundred inhabitants. But they had spread over a wide territory, and become firmly rooted in the soil.

The government of the old colony was strictly republican. The governor was elected by the people, and restricted by a council of five, and afterwards of seven, assistants. The legislature was at first composed of the whole body of the people. But, as the population increased, they adopted the representative system.

CHAPTER XI.

PROGRESS OF THE NEW ENGLAND COLONIES.

THE old Plymouth company for the planting, ruling, ordering, and governing New England, in America,' whose extensive and very exclusive charter has already been mentioned, had made no other use of its inordinate privileges than an attempt to exclude from the trade and fisheries all who would not pay the company a heavy tax. No monopoly could be more odious to the people of England than this. Their privileges were violently assailed in the house of commons, and the patentees were finally compelled tc relinquish their claims. They continued, however, to issue patents for portions of their immense territory, to different companies and individuals.

One of these having been granted to Robert Gorges, the son of Sir Ferdinand, for a tract extending ten miles on Massachusetts Bay, and thirty miles into the interior, he was appointed by the company lieutenant-general of New Eng

For what country was a patent after- |
wards granted?

What is said of the population of the
Plymouth colony
What is said of the government?

What use did the old Plymouth com-
pany make of its charter?
Who opposed their claims?
Were they abandoned?

What practice did they continue?
What is said of Gorges's patent?

« ZurückWeiter »