“But whereas your people come very often, and very many together, unto us, bringing for the most part their wives and children with them, they are welcome. Yet we being but strangers, as yet, at Patuxet, or New Plymouth, and not knowing how our corn may prosper, can no longer give them such entertainment as we have done, and as we desire still to do. Yet if you will be pleased to come yourself, or any special friend of yours desires to see us, coming from you, they shall be welcome.
“And to the end that we may know them from others, our Governor has sent you a copper chain, desiring that if any messenger should come from you to us, we may know him by his bringing it with him, and may give credit to his message accordingly.”
They then added the following, which we record with pleasure, as showing the conscientiousness of these remarkable men:
“At our first arrival at Paomet, called by us Cape Cod, we found there corn buried in the ground, and finding no inhabitants, but some graves of the dead newly buried, took the corn, resolving that if ever we could hear of any that had right thereunto, to make satisfaction to the full for it. Yet since we understand the owners thereof had fled, for fear of us, our desire is either to pay them with the like quantity of corn, or with English meal, or any other commodities we have, which they may desire. We request that some of your men may signify so much unto them, and we will content him for his pains.
“Last of all, our Governor requested one favor of him, which was that he would exchange some of their corn for seed, with us, that we might make trial which was best agreed with the soil where we live.”
It was a warm and sunny day when the two Pilgrims, with their Indian guide, set out on their adventurous journey through the forest. The Indians, in their movements from place to place, however numerous the party, always went, with moccasined feet, in single file, one following after the other. The forests were threaded with many of these narrow paths, or trails, which had thus been trodden by them through countless generations. These paths were as well known by them, and almost as distinctly marked, as the paved roads of the Old World which had resounded with the tramp of the Roman legions. Indian instinct had, ages ago, selected these routes, often through glooms which no rays of the sun ever penetrated, and again through scenes of marvellous picturesque beauty, beneath frowning mountains, along the margin of crystal lakes, and upon the banks of sparkling rivulets.
Much to the annoyance of the two Pilgrims appointed upon this mission a party of ten or twelve lazy Indians, men, women and children, uninvited, persistently tagged after them, often very vexatiously intrusive, and ever clamorous to share their food.
The first day they travelled about fifteen miles, to an Indian village called Namasket. It was situated upon a branch of what is now called the Taunton River, within the limits of the present town of Middleborough.
“Thither we came,” writes Mr. Winslow, “about three o’clock after noon; the inhabitants entertaining us with joy, in the best manner they could, giving us a kind of bread called by them maizium,[12] and the spawn of shads, which they then got in abundance, insomuch that they gave us spoons to eat them. With these they boiled musty acorns; but of the shads we ate heartily.”
These Indians had probably all heard of the wonderful power of the muskets of the white men, though, perhaps, none of them had ever seen the effects accomplished by powder and ball. The crows troubled their corn fields, and it was almost impossible for the Indians to get near enough to these wary animals to hit them with the arrow. They begged their guests to show them the power of their guns by shooting some of these crows. There was one upon a tree at the distance of about two hundred and forty feet. With intense interest the Indians watched as they saw one of the Pilgrims take deliberate aim at the bird, and when they heard the report, and saw the bird fall dead, struck by an invisible shaft, their astonishment passed all bounds. Several crows were thus shot, exciting the admiration and awe of all the savage beholders.