Old Cape Cod

by Mary Rogers Bangs

CHAPTER III
THE TOWNS

I

Whether just or not, the summary punishment dealt out by Standish all but destroyed the natives’ confidence in the whites; and as such a situation was particularly bad for trade, the whites, too, got their reward. Yet the Indians, when occasion offered, were ready to be kind. In December, 1626, the ship Sparrowhawk, London to Virginia, as far out of her reckoning as the Mayflower had been, bumped over the shoals of Monomoyick and grounded on the flats. Her master was ill, crew and passengers knew not where they were, and being out of “wood, water, and beer,” had run her, head on, for the first land that hove in sight. Night was falling, and as canoes made out from the shore, “they stood on their guard.” But the Indians gave them a friendly hail, asked if they were “the governor of Plymouth’s men,” offered to carry letters to Plymouth, and supplied their needs of the moment. Plymouth duly notified, the Governor led out a relief expedition, and, it being no season to round the Cape, landed at Namskaket, a creek between Brewster and Orleans, “whence it was not much above two miles across the Cape to the bay where the ship lay. The Indians carried the things we brought overland to the ship.” The Governor bought corn from the natives for the strangers, loaded more for his own use, and returned to Plymouth. But hardly was he there than a second message came that the ship, fitted out to proceed, had been shattered by a great storm; and the upshot was that the travellers, bag and baggage, came to Plymouth and visited there until the spring. The region of the wreck was called “Old Ship Harbor,” men had forgotten why until, two hundred and thirty-seven years later, shifting sands disclosed the hull of the Sparrowhawk. And at another time the natives had opportunity to show their good-will when Richard Garratt and his company from Boston, which was rival of Plymouth for the native corn supply, were cast away on the Cape in a bitter winter storm; and all would have perished there had it not been for the savages who decently buried the dead, though the ground was frozen deep, and, having nursed the survivors back to life, guided them to Plymouth.

Plymouth trade, not Only with the mother country, but with other colonies, grew apace. As early as 1627, in order to facilitate communication to the southward with the Indians and with the Dutch settlement on the Hudson, the Pilgrims may be said to have made the first move toward a Cape Cod Canal. “To avoid the compassing of Cape Cod and those dangerous shoals,” wrote Bradford, “and so to make any voyage to the southward in much shorter time and with less danger,” they established a trading post with a farm to support it, and built a pinnace, at Manomet on the river flowing into Buzzard’s Bay. Their route lay by boat from Plymouth to Scusset Harbor, where they landed their goods for a portage overland of three or four miles to the navigable waters of the river and the coasting vessel there. And in September of that same year, Isaac de Rasieres, secretary of the Dutch Government at New Amsterdam, landed at Manomet with sugar, stuffs, and other commodities, and was duly convoyed to Plymouth in a vessel sent out by the Governor for such purpose. De Rasieres entered Plymouth in state, “honorably attended by the noise of his trumpeters,” and wrote a fine account of the town which is preserved for our interest.

The colony, by 1637, had grown to comprise the towns of Plymouth, Duxbury, and Scituate; in no long time it included the present counties of Plymouth, Bristol, and Barnstable, and a bit of Rhode Island. Traders, fishermen, an adventurer now and again had visited the Cape, even a few settlers, unauthorized by Plymouth, had broken ground there; but up to 1637 its early history is indissolubly bound up with that of Plymouth. In April of that year the first settlement was organized at Sandwich when certain men of Saugus, who were of a broader mind than their neighbors of Massachusetts Bay, wished to emigrate to the milder rule of Plymouth. Under due restrictions, they were granted the privilege to “view a place to sit down, and have sufficient land for three score families.” They chose Sandwich. And with the first ten of Saugus came fifty others of Saugus and Duxbury and Plymouth. All was duly regulated; and two men who were found clearing ground without permission, and without having fetched their families, were charged with “disorderly keeping house alone.” If the Saugus men expected a free hand in their new home, they were to be undeceived: the chief ordering of their affairs was from Plymouth, and in 1638 certain prominent townsmen were fined as “being deficient in arms” and for not having their swine ringed. It was the law of the colony “that no persons shall be allowed to become housekeepers until they are completely provided with arms and ammunition; nor shall any be allowed to become housekeepers, or to build any cottage or dwelling, without permission from the governor and assistants.” Rightly, no doubt, Plymouth meant to avoid the danger of any such disorderly element as had infested Weymouth.

A FIRST COMER

In March John Alden and Miles Standish were directed to go to Sandwich, “with all convenient speed, and set forth the bounds of the land granted there.” In October Thomas Prince and again Miles Standish were appointed to pass upon questions affecting land tenure. Complaint, however, seems to have been then not so much in regard to the division of land as to certain members of the community who were deemed “unfit for church society.” And for the adjustment of future dangers, “evils or discords that may happen in the disposal of lands or other occasions within the town,” it was agreed that some one of the Governor’s Council should sit, in an advisory capacity, with the town committee to determine who should be permitted to hold land. John Alden and Miles Standish served many times as such advisers; in 1650 Standish received a tract of some forty acres for his trouble in settling land disputes. It is interesting that Freeman, historian of Cape Cod, claims Priscilla Mullins for Barnstable, and allows us to suppose that the visits there of Alden and Standish led to the acquaintance that ended in the discomfiture of Standish, and to the particular glory of Priscilla, with her thrust: “Why don’t you speak for yourself, John?” Another love story is told by Amos Otis, in his “Barnstable Families,” of Thomas Hatch, who was among the first landowners in Yarmouth and Barnstable, a widower and rival with another for the hand of a neighbor’s daughter. All three were expert reapers, and Grace agreed to marry the man who should worst her in the field. Three equal portions were set off and the contest began; but when Grace saw that she was likely to come out ahead, with Thomas a bad third, she slyly cut over into his plot; and he, fired by such encouragement, justified her favor.

The system of government and land tenure in the later settlements were patterned after Plymouth: there were individual holdings of land and common lands which from time to time were apportioned to the townsmen, not only in accord with “necessity and ability,” but “estate and quality”: fertile ground, one might guess, for difference of opinion. By 1651, at Sandwich, “the conditions on which the grant of the township was made having been fulfilled, a deed of the plantation was executed by Governor Bradford to Mr. Edmund Freeman, who made conveyance to his associates,” a process which resembled the taking over of Plymouth from the Merchant Adventurers of London.

Within a few years, on the general conditions of settlement granted to Sandwich, the four original townships of the Cape came into being. Scattering colonists had broken the ground. In 1638 “liberty was granted to Stephen Hopkins [one of the Mayflower men] to erect a house at Mattacheese and cut hay there this year to winter his cattle—provided, however, that it be not to withdraw him from the town of Plymouth.” Two other men were granted a like privilege. The rich salt meadows of the Cape were coveted by Plymouth for cattle, which seem to have been brought over from England first by Edward Winslow in a voyage made in 1624; and it was not uncommon later for cattle to be sent out to the colony as a speculation, for one half the profits of their increase.