[75]This is not impossible with Indian corn, but exceedingly unlikely.
[76]Hobomok was a Wampanoag, from west of Plymouth; Squanto, the last of the Indians formerly living around Patuxet, had died in 1622.
[77]William Bradford married his second wife, Alice, daughter of Alexander Carpenter, widow of Edward Southworth, Aug. 14, 1623.
[78]Saw. “Say” is an obsolete equivalent.
[79]Thomas Weston, the London merchant who originally promoted the Company of Adventurers for New Plymouth in 1620. He wanted profit from the business and, when his patience wore thin with a complete settlement, sent out the private all-male colony which Altham here refers to. Without family considerations, the men were expected to stick to money-making activities like trade with the Indians and grow food for themselves in their spare time. The colony was planted at Wessagusset in present Weymouth, Mass., after sixty or so “lusty men” had lived at the charge of the Pilgrims during the summer of 1622. Weston was devoted to America as well as profit and shady deals, though, and went to Virginia and Maryland as a planter for several years before dying in England, deep in debt. C. M. Andrews, Colonial Period of American History (1934), 1, 261-265, 330-331.
[80]Capt. Standish and his company went to the Wessagusset settlement to warn the men of the conspiracy. After days of cautious waiting and veiled exchange of threats with some of the leading Massachusetts Indians, Standish got four of them into a room with about an equal number of his men and assassinated three, including Pecksuot and Wituwamat, whose head he took to Plymouth. In other ambuscades, with some aid by Weston’s men, the Pilgrim expeditionary force killed several others. The Wessagusset settlers, who had been reduced to great want and dependence on the Indians, abandoned their place, most going to the Maine coast to work for the fishermen and get passage back to England. The story is told most fully in Edward Winslow, “Winslow’s Relation,” in Young (ed.), Chronicles of the Pilgrim Fathers (“Everyman’s Library,” 1936), 313-332, or some other edition of Winslow’s Good News from New England.
[81]Flag.
[82]Adventurers and Planters were both members of the Company under the terms of the agreement made in 1620. Settlers were accounted as having put in the value of a £10 share.
[83]Ralph Hawtry, husband of Altham’s sister Mary.
[84]Samuel Purchas, Hakluytus Posthumus or Purchas His Pilgrimes (London, 1625), 4 vol. The books had been announced as early as 1621.