[8]. Mourt’s Relation.
[9]. Bradford’s History of Plymouth Plantation, ch. 3.
[10]. The England and Holland of the Pilgrims, Henry M. Dexter and Morton Dexter, Boston, 1905.
[11]. Eighteenth Annual Dinner of Mayflower Society, Nov. 20, 1913.
Chapter II
COMMUNAL AND FAMILY LIFE IN PLYMOUTH 1621-1623
Spring and summer came to bless them for their endurance and unconscious heroism. Then they could appreciate the verdict of their leaders, who chose the site of Plymouth as a “hopeful place,” with running brooks, vines of sassafras and strawberry, fruit trees, fish and wild fowl and “clay excellent for pots and will wash like soap.”[[12]] So early was the spring in 1621 that on March the third there was a thunder storm and “the birds sang in the woods most pleasantly.” On March the sixteenth, Samoset came with Indian greeting. This visit must have been one of mixed sentiments for the women and we can read more than the mere words in the sentence, “We lodged him that night at Stephen Hopkins’ house and watched him.”[[13]] Perhaps it was in deference to the women that the men gave Samoset a hat, a pair of stockings, shoes, a shirt and a piece of cloth to tie about his waist. Samoset returned soon with Squanto or Tisquantum, the only survivor of the Patuxet tribe of Indians which had perished of a pestilence at Plymouth three years before. He shared with Hobomok the friendship of the settlers for many years and both Indians gave excellent service. Through the influence of Squanto the treaty was made in the spring of 1621 with Massasoit, the first League of Nations to preserve peace in the new world.
Squanto showed the men how to plant alewives or herring as fertilizer for the Indian corn. He taught the boys and girls how to gather clams and mussels on the shore and to “tread eels” in the water that is still called Eel River. He gathered wild strawberries and sassafras for the women and they prepared a “brew” which almost equalled their ale of old England. The friendly Indians assisted the men, as the seasons opened, in hunting wild turkeys, ducks and an occasional deer, welcome additions to the store of fish, sea-biscuits and cheese. We are told[[14]] that Squanto brought also a dog from his Indian friends as a gift to the settlement. Already there were, at least, two dogs, probably brought from Holland or England, a mastiff and a spaniel[[15]] to give comfort and companionship to the women and children, and to go with the men into the woods for timber and game.
It seems paradoxical to speak of child-life in this hard-pressed, serious-minded colony, but it was there and, doubtless, it was normal in its joyous and adventuresome impulses. Under eighteen years of age were the girls, Remember and Mary Allerton, Constance and Damaris Hopkins, Elizabeth Tilley and, possibly, Desire Minter and Humility Cooper. The boys were Bartholomew Allerton, who “learned to sound the drum,” John Crakston, William Latham, Giles Hopkins, John and Francis Billington, Richard More, Henry Sampson, John Cooke, Resolved White, Samuel Fuller, Love and Wrestling Brewster and the babies, Oceanus Hopkins and Peregrine White. With the exception of Wrestling Brewster and Oceanus Hopkins, all these children lived to ripe old age,—a credit not alone to their hardy constitutions, but also to the care which the Plymouth women bestowed upon their households.