At last, in March, 1621, an Indian came boldly into camp, and, in broken English, bade the strangers "welcome." It was found that his name was Samoset, and that he came from Monhegan, an island distant about a day's sail towards the east, where he had picked up a few English words from the fishermen who frequented that region. In a short time he returned, bringing Squanto, or Tisquantum, stolen by Hunt seven years before, and restored to his country in 1620 by Sir Ferdinando Gorges. Squanto, who could speak English, stated that Massasoit was near at hand, and on invitation that chief appeared, and soon a treaty of peace and friendship was concluded; after which Massasoit returned to his town of Sowams, forty miles distant, while Squanto continued with the colonists and made himself useful in many ways.[2 ]
In the beginning of April, 1621, the Mayflower went back to England, and the colonists planted corn in the fields once tilled by Indians whom the pestilence had destroyed. While engaged in this work the governor, John Carver, died, and his place was supplied by William Bradford, with Isaac Allerton as assistant or councilman. During the summer the settlers were very busy. They fitted up their cabins, amassed a good supply of beaver, and harvested a fair crop of corn. In the fall a ship arrived, bringing thirty-five new settlers poorly provided. It also brought a patent, dated June 1, 1621, from the Council for New England, made out to John Pierce, by whom the original patent from the London Company had been obtained. The patent did not define the territorial limits, but allowed one hundred acres for every emigrant and fifteen hundred acres for public buildings, in the same proportion of one hundred acres to every workman.[3 ]
The ship tarried only fourteen days, and returned with a large cargo of clapboard and beaver skins of the value of £500, which was, however, captured on the way to England by a French cruiser. After the departure the governor distributed the new-comers among the different families, and because of the necessity of sharing with them, put everybody on half allowance. The prospect for the winter was not hopeful, for to the danger from starvation was added danger from the Indians.
West of the Pokanokets were the Narragansetts, a tribe of two thousand warriors, whose chief, Canonicus, sent to Plymouth in January, 1622, a bundle of arrows tied with a snake's skin, signifying a challenge of war. Bradford knew that it was fatal to hesitate or show fear, and he promptly stuffed the snake's skin with bullets and returned it to the sender with some threatening words. This answer alarmed Canonicus, who thought that the snake's skin must be conjured, and he did not pursue the matter further. But the colonists took warning, and the whole settlement was enclosed with a paling, and strict military watch was maintained. Thus the winter passed and the spring came, but without the hoped-for assistance from the merchant partners in England.[4 ]
On the contrary, the arrival in May, 1622, "without a bite of bread," of sixty-seven other persons, sent out on his own account under a grant from the Council for New England, by Thomas Weston, one of the partners, plunged them into dire distress, from which they were happily saved by a ship-captain, John Huddleston, from the colony on James River, who shared his supplies with them, and thus enabled them to "make shift till corn was ripe again." Weston's emigrants were a loose set, and before they left in August they stole most of the green corn, and thus Plymouth was threatened with another famine. Fortunately, about this time another ship from Virginia, bearing the secretary of state, John Pory, arrived, and sold the colonists a supply of truck for trading; by which they bought from the Indians not only corn, but beaver, which proved afterwards a source of much profit.
Weston's people removed to Wessagusset (modern Weymouth), on Massachusetts Bay, where they conducted themselves in so reckless a manner that they ran the double risk of starvation and destruction from savages. To save them, Bradford, in March, 1623, despatched a company under Captain Miles Standish, who brought them corn and killed several of the Indians. Then Standish helped Weston's "rude fellows" aboard ship and saw them safely off to sea. Shortly after Weston came over to look after his emigrants, fell into the hands of the Indians, escaped to Plymouth, where the colonists helped him away, and returned in October, 1623, to create more disturbance.
Weston was not the only one of the partners that gave the colonists trouble. John Pierce took advantage of the prominence given him by the patent issued in his name for the benefit of all, to get a new one which made him sole actual owner of the territory. His partners resented this injustice, and the Council for New England, in March, 1623, was induced to revoke the grant to Pierce.[5 ]
About this time Bradford made a great change in the industrial system of the colony. At Plymouth, as at Jamestown, communism was found to breed "confusion and discontent," and he tried the experiment of assigning to every family, in proportion to its size, a tract of land. In July, 1623, arrived sixty other settlers, and the old planters feared another period of starvation. Nevertheless, when harvest-time arrived, the wisdom of Bradford's appeal to private interest was demonstrated, for instead of misery and scarcity there was joyfulness, and "plentie of corn." Later experience was equally convincing, for, as Bradford wrote many years after, "any general wante or famine hath not been known amongst them since to this day."
While the Pilgrim fathers were overcoming their difficulties in Massachusetts, the Council for New England were struggling with the London Company to maintain the monopoly of fishing and fur trading on the North Atlantic coast granted to them by their charter. The London Company complained to the king in 1620 and to Parliament in 1621, but the king refused any relief, and prevented Parliament from interfering by dissolving it.[6 ] Thereupon, the Council for New England, appreciating the danger, made a grand effort to accomplish something in America. As a preliminary step they induced the king to publish a proclamation, November 6, 1622, against all unlicensed trading and other infringements upon the rights granted them,[7 ] and shortly afterwards sent out Francis West as admiral to reduce the fishermen on the coast to obedience. West came to America, but found them "stuberne fellows,"[8 ] and he returned in about a year to England without effecting anything.
During his absence the Council for New England set to work to send out a colony under Robert Gorges, son of Sir Ferdinando; and, June 29, 1623, a division was made among twenty patentees, of the North Atlantic coast from the Bay of Fundy to Narragansett Bay.[9 ] In September, 1623, Gorges arrived at Plymouth attended by an Episcopal minister, William Morell, and a company of settlers, whom he planted at Wessagusset. He remained in New England throughout the winter, and in the effort to exert his authority had a long wrangle with Weston. In the spring of 1624 he received news from his father that discouraged his further stay. It seems that in March, 1624, a committee of Parliament, at the head of which was Sir Edward Coke, had reported the charter of the Council for New England as a national grievance, which so discouraged the patentees that most of them abandoned the enterprise, and it became, in the language of the elder Gorges, "a carcass in a manner breathless."[10 ] After Robert Gorges' departure most of his party dispersed, some going to England and some to Virginia, but a few remained at Wessagusset, which was never entirely abandoned.