At this offer, one man and a woman that were wounded went home with us, Squanto and many other known friends accompanying us, and offering all help that might be by carriage of any thing we had to ease us. So that, by God’s good providence, we safely returned home the morrow night after we set forth.
A
RELATION OF OUR
Voyage to the Massachusets,
and what happened there.
It seemed good to the company in general, that though the Massachusets had often threatened us (as we were informed), yet we should go amongst them, partly to see the country, partly to make peace with them, and partly to procure their truck. For these ends the governors chose ten men fit for the purpose, and sent Squanto and two other savages to bring us to speech with the people, and interpret for us.
We set out about midnight,[104] the tide then serving for us. We supposing it to be nearer than it is, thought to be there the next morning betimes, but it proved well near twenty leagues from New Plymouth.
We came into the bottom of the bay,[105] but being late we anchored and lay in the shallop, not having seen any of the people. The next morning we put in for the shore. There we found many lobsters that had been gathered together by the savages, which we made ready under a cliff. The captain set two sentinels behind the cliff to the landward to secure the shallop, and taking a guide with him and four of our company, went to seek the inhabitants; where they met a woman coming for her lobsters, they told her of them, and contented her for them. She told them where the people were. Squanto went to them; the rest returned, having direction which way to bring the shallop to them.
The sachem or governor of this place, is called Obbatinewat, and though he lives in the bottom of the Massachusetts Bay, yet he is under Massasoit. He used us very kindly; he told us he durst not then remain in any settled place, for fear of the Tarentines.[106] Also the Squaw Sachem,[107] or Massachusets’ queen, was an enemy to him.
We told him of divers sachems that had acknowledged themselves to be King James his men, and if he also would submit himself, we would be his safeguard from his enemies, which he did, and went along with us to bring us to the Squaw Sachem. Again we crossed the bay, which is very large and hath at least fifty islands in it, but the certain number is not known to the inhabitants. Night it was before we came to that side of the bay where this people were. On shore the savages went but found nobody. That night also we rid at anchor aboard the shallop.
On the morrow we went ashore, all but two men, and marched in arms up in the country. Having gone three miles we came to a place where corn had been newly gathered, a house pulled down, and the people gone. A mile from hence, Nanepashemet, their king, in his life-time had lived. His house was not like others, but a scaffold was largely built, with poles and planks some six feet from ground, and the house upon that, being situated on the top of a hill.
Not far from hence, in a bottom, we came to a fort built by their deceased king, the manner thus: there were poles some thirty or forty feet long, stuck in the ground as thick as they could be set one by another, and with these they enclosed a ring some forty of fifty feet over. A trench breast high was digged on each side; one way there was to go into it with a bridge; in the midst of this palisade stood the frame of a house wherein, being dead, he lay buried.