“Doubtless, brethren, we must find that there hath been much provocation offered to these Pequens and Narraganseds. We know somewhat of John Oldhame”—
“And naught that’s good,” muttered Standish in his red beard.
—“and we may be sure there was cause of complaint on the part of the Block Islanders before they so assaulted him. Jonathan Brewster hath held our post on the Connecticut River—Windsor, as the settlers from the Bay have named the place—for some four years now, and there has been no trouble worth the mention”—
“Save when the Narragansetts chased our friend Massasoit into the trading-house at Sowams, and I sent a runner for powder, but the enemy ran faster the other way than he,” put in Standish. “And mind you, though John Winthrop let us have the powder out of his private store, that sour-visaged Dudley hauled him over the coals for it. Ever niggardly and domineering is the Bay, and my counsel is, let them fight out their own battles for themselves. When Plymouth has cause to complain of the savages, Pequens or who you please, I’ll lead a handful of Plymouth men out to give them a lesson, and till then I say let-a-be. You have my counsel, Governor.”
“And mine jumps with it, sir,” added John Jenney heartily, but Winslow shook his head thoughtfully.
“It were but poor policy for us to fall out with our brethren of the Bay, seeing that they are so much stronger than we, and it may well chance that we shall need their countenance in some quarrel”—
“Like that of Kennebec when we called upon them to help us drive out the Frenchmen who had seized our post, and they did most civilly decline,” suggested Standish, and Prence added,—
“Ay, that was but a scurvy trick they played us then.”
And so the council went on, debating the question warmly, and yet with a brotherly love and harmony covering all differences, until in the end it was resolved that Winslow the diplomatist should be sent as envoy to Boston to declare in the first place the willingness of Plymouth to help her younger but more powerful sister against the common foe, yet at the same time bringing forward various causes of complaint as yet unredressed, and demanding more consideration in the future. These complaints were, first, the refusal of the Bay government to help Plymouth against the French who had seized her trading-post at Kennebec; second, their allowing their people to fraternize and trade with the usurpers; third, the insult and injury done to the Pilgrims at Windsor in Connecticut, where a great body of people from Watertown and Cambridge had swooped down upon the land bought by Plymouth from the Indians, and occupied by them as a trading-post, retaining forcible possession of it, and encouraged by the Bay to do so.