Now and then the colonists killed some game, but they had to be careful and not waste their powder and shot. One day they shot and cooked an eagle; but, as Bradford wrote in his journal, it was "woefully tough." They could not often shoot a bear or a deer. They obtained some corn of the Indians by trading such trifles as they could best spare. The records tell us that once a Pilgrim bartered a little dog for a peck of corn.
65. The Daily Fare becomes scant; Hardships increased by Hunger.—By and by all the other food failed, so that their main article of diet was corn. This they made into meal by pounding it on smooth stones. But even this supply from the Indians was often scanty and uncertain, so that at times they were without it until, after a year or two, they raised their own crops.
The rest of their provisions they obtained from the ocean—clams, lobsters, and various kinds of fish. But their fishing boat was so frail and their hooks and nets were so poor that this source many times disappointed them.
Thus, the two articles on which they chiefly depended being Indian corn and sea-food, they were sometimes entirely destitute, unable to obtain either.
What a condition! "I have seen men," wrote one of the Pilgrims, "stagger by reason of faintness for want of food; they knew not at night where to have a bit in the morning." They were so badly off that if it were possible for a friend to visit them, the best they could offer him would be a piece of fish and some water!
Pilgrims watching the Return of the Mayflower.
Such was the daily living of the first Pilgrim settlers in this country. Such were a few of the hardships they bravely and patiently endured. And yet, strange to say, when the Mayflower sailed for home in the early spring, as we have before stated, not one of these stout-hearted men and women returned in her to England.