The first thing they did was to go ashore near the end of Cape Cod, where the Pilgrim Mothers did their much-needed washing. The Cape was a long, low, sandy arm of land extending far out to sea. The ship’s carpenter worked to finish the shallop, or small sailboat, which he had started to build during the voyage. It was intended for the purpose of sailing in shallow water to find a good place to live, where there were trees for shelter and springs of water and, if possible, a good, safe harbor in which the Mayflower and all coming ships might stay at anchor.
The Pilgrims held a meeting in the cabin of the Mayflower and signed a paper which they called “The Compact,” by which they agreed to live and be governed. They elected John Carver, the oldest man in the company, governor. Although they are called “The Pilgrim Fathers,” they were nearly all young or middle-aged men. Elder Brewster, the minister, was about forty years old, and Myles Standish was thirty-six. William Bradford, who wrote the story of the settlement in his diary, and John Alden, the cooper, were still younger.
The Pilgrims chose twenty of their number to go along the shore of Cape Cod toward the mainland to find a place to build their cabins and spend the winter, for it was late in November and very cold. While waiting for the shallop to be finished, this Pilgrim “Lookout Committee,” led by Myles Standish, started out afoot on their great search, not knowing what might happen to them. Captain John Smith had explored that part of the country after he lived two years at Jamestown, Virginia; he had made a map of all that region which he named New England. The men went ashore from the Mayflower and had walked along the Cape a mile or more when they saw a party of Indians with a dog coming toward them. When the red men saw the white strangers they hid in the bushes and whistled to their dog, which followed them out of sight. Myles Standish and his men tried to catch up with the Indians and speak with them, but they were afraid of the strangers who wore helmets and armor over their bodies and thighs, and carried “fire-sticks,” as the Indians called the guns.
The Pilgrims followed the natives about ten miles without seeing them again. Then they built a hasty camp of logs and brush in which eighteen men slept while three stood on guard outside. Nothing happened that night to disturb them.
Next day they saw wild ducks and deer and discovered a kettle and some fresh mounds of earth, “which,” William Bradford wrote in his diary, “we digged up, and found a fine, great, new basket, full of very fair corn of this year, with some six and thirty goodly ears of corn, some yellow, and some red, and other mixed with blue. The basket was round and narrow at the top. It held about three or four bushels, which was as much as two of us could lift up from the ground, and was very handsomely and cunningly made. But, whilst we were busy about all these things, we were in suspense what to do with it, and at length, after much talk, we concluded to take as much corn as we could carry away with us; and when our shallop came, if we could find any of the people, we would satisfy [pay] them for their corn. The rest we buried again; for we were so laden with armor that we could carry no more.”
