Miles Standish, the Puritan Captain

by John S. C. Abbott

“It is against my conscience that you should play while others work. If your religious convictions constrain you to observe Christmas, you should keep the day religiously, at home or in the church. But there must be no gambling or revelry on that day.”

This settled the question, and there were no more demands for an idle or riotous Christmas.

Soon after the departure of the Fortune, in the depth of winter, painful rumors came that the powerful Narragansets, under their redoubtable Chief, Canonicus, were assuming a threatening attitude. The English had now about fifty men capable of bearing arms, and not a large supply of ammunition. The Narragansets could bring against them five thousand warriors. They occupied the region extending from the western shores of Narraganset Bay to Pawcatuck River, and the tribe was estimated to number about thirty thousand. The Pilgrims, all counted, men, women and children, were less than one hundred in number. This was a fearful cloud of war with which they thus found themselves menaced.

While such was the position of affairs, one day a strange Indian entered the settlement. It soon appeared that he was a Narraganset. He seemed not a little embarrassed, and enquired for Squantum, the interpreter. It seemed some relief to him to learn that he was absent. He then left for him a bundle of arrows, wrapped up in the skin of a rattlesnake, and was hastily departing, when Governor Bradford, wishing to know the significance of this strange conduct, ordered Captain Standish to detain him. He was arrested and entrusted to the safe keeping of Mr. Winslow and Mr. Hopkins. Captain Standish gave orders that he should be treated with the utmost kindness, supplied with everything he needed, and while assured that he should not be harmed, Mr. Winslow and Mr. Hopkins should endeavor to obtain from him a full and minute account of the object of his strange mission.

At first he was so terrified that he could scarcely speak a word. But gradually regaining composure, he stated that the messenger who had been sent to the Pilgrims in the summer with terms of peace, had brought back such tidings of the weakness of the colony that Canonicus was encouraged to seek its destruction; that he was angry in consequence of the alliance of the colonists with his enemies, the Wampanoags; that he professed to despise the meanness of the presents sent to him by the Governor, and scorned to receive them; and that the arrows and the rattlesnake skin were to be understood as his declaration of war.

It is worthy of notice that this savage chieftain should have had such a sense of honor as to send this warning to his foes, instead of treacherously falling upon them when unprepared. And it is also remarkable that this challenge should have been so similar to that which, in ancient days, the Scythian prince sent to Darius, which consisted of five arrows.

When the Governor and Captain Standish were informed of the results of the interview, they justly regarded their captive as an innocent messenger, whom, in accordance with all the laws of war, they were to hold unharmed. They therefore, after offering him food, which he refused to eat, set him at liberty, directing him to say to Canonicus, that while they wished to live at peace with all men, and while they had done him no harm, they were indignant in view of his threatenings, had no fear of his power, and bade him defiance.

A violent storm was raging. But, notwithstanding the storm and the entreaties of the Pilgrims, that he would remain with them until it should abate, he refused to accept of their hospitality, and soon disappeared, travelling with all speed through one of the trails of the drenched and surging forest.

The Pilgrims held a council. It was deemed important that no timidity whatever should be manifested, but that they should present a bold front to their foes. In the mean time Squantum had returned to aid them with his counsel. After some deliberation, they sent a friendly Indian, as a messenger, to Canonicus, returning to him his rattlesnake skin, filled with powder and bullets. This was a defiance which would be understood. The superstitious savage chief was quite alarmed by this response. Squantum, who appears to have been quite a meddling, unscrupulous man, had declared to the Indians that the English had a box in which they kept the plague, and that if the Indians offended them they would let the awful scourge loose. They still retained a very vivid recollection of the horrors of the pestilence which had swept over them.

Canonicus feared that the snake-skin contained some secret and fatal charm for his destruction. He dared not touch it. He dared not attempt to destroy it. He dared not allow it to remain in his house or country. And thus it was conveyed from place to place until finally it was returned whole to the colony at Plymouth.