PLYMOUTH HARBOR.
[This is reduced from a map given in Dr. Dexter’s edition of Mourt’s Relation. The Common House of the first comers was situated on Leyden Street, which left the shore just south of the rock and ran to the top of Burial Hill, and it is the lots on the south side of this street that Bradford marked out in the fac-simile of the first page of the record given on another page. The “highway” as marked on that plan led to the south to the Town Brook. The Common House, if it had been designated on that draft, would have been put next “Peter Brown;” on the plan here given it would be on the north side of the brook, about where the meridian crosses it, though the engraver has put the designation on the opposite side of the water. It was not till about 1630, or ten years after their landing, that the Plymouth settlers began to spread around the bay, beyond the circuit of mutual protection. Still for a year or two they scattered merely for summer sojourns, to work lands which had been granted them. About 1632 Duxbury began to receive as permanent residents several of the “Mayflower” people. Standish settled on the shore southeast of Captain’s Hill, thus attaching his military title to the neighboring eminence, and though his grave is not known, it is probable that he was buried, in 1656, on his farm. His house stood, it is supposed, nearly ten years longer, and was probably enlarged by his son, Alexander Standish, who was, there is some reason to believe, a trader, and he may have been the town clerk of Duxbury. Its records begin in 1666, and the tradition that connects the destruction of the earlier records with that of this house derives some color from the traces of fire which have been discovered about its site. (Sabbath at Home, May, 1867.) The house now known as the Standish house was built afterwards by Alexander, the son. Elder Brewster became Standish’s neighbor a little later, and lived east of the hill.
Alden settled near the arm of the sea just west of Powder Point, and George Soule on the Point itself; Peter Brown also settled in Duxbury. Still farther to the north, beyond the scope of the map, Edward Winslow established his estate of Careswell, where in our day Daniel Webster lived and died, in Marshfield. John Howland found a home at Rocky Nook. Isaac Allerton removed to New Haven, and Governor Bradford during his last years was almost the only one of those who came in the first ship who still lived in the village about the rock. (Cf. Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc. xi. 478.)—Ed.]
Prepared to report favorably, the explorers returned to the ship, which by the end of the week was safely anchored in the chosen haven. The selection of a site and the preparation of materials, in uncertain weather, delayed till Monday, the 25th, the beginning of “the first house, for common use, to receive them and their goods.” Before the new year, house-lots were assigned to families, and by the middle of January most of the company had left the ship for a home on land. But the exposures incident to founding a colony in the dead of a New England winter (though later experience showed that this was a comparatively mild one) told severely on all; and before summer came one half of the number, most of them adult males, had fallen by the way.[484] Yet when the “Mayflower” sailed homewards in April, not one of the colonists went in her, so sweet was the taste of freedom, even under the shadow of death.
An avowed motive of the emigration was the hope of converting the natives; but more than three months elapsed before any intercourse with the Indians began. Traces of their propinquity had been numerous, and at length, on March 16/26, a savage visited the settlement, announcing himself in broken English as Samoset, a native of “the eastern parts,” or the coast of Maine, where contact with English fishermen had led to some knowledge of their language. From Samoset the colonists learned that the Indian name of their settlement was Patuxet, and that about four years before a kind of plague had destroyed most of the inhabitants of that region, so that there were now none to hinder their taking possession or to assert a claim to the territory. They learned also that their nearest neighbors were the Wampanoags, the headquarters of whose chief sachem, Massasoit, were some thirty miles to the southwestward, near the eastern shore of Narragansett Bay. The next week Samoset brought in Squanto, formerly of Patuxet, who had been taken to England in 1614 by Hunt, and who was now willing to act as interpreter in a visit from Massasoit; the latter followed an hour later and contracted unhesitatingly a treaty of peace and alliance, which was observed for fifty-four years.
THE SWORDS.
[This group is preserved in the cabinet of the Massachusetts Historical Society, and all but two of the swords are associated with Plymouth history. The middle sword is that of Governor Carver. On the left, descending, are those of General John Winslow, Captain Miles Standish, and Governor Brooks of Massachusetts. On the right are those, in a like descending order, of Sir William Pepperrell, Elder Brewster, and Colonel Benjamin Church, the Plymouth hero of Philip’s War. Another Standish sword is preserved in Pilgrim Hall in Plymouth, and is figured in the group of Pilgrim relics on another page, as well as in Bartlett’s Pilgrim Fathers, p. 177. Concerning those above represented, see Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., i. 88, 114.—Ed.]