So now in this strait, they wasted no time in technical deliberation. Justice to themselves, to Squanto, to Massasoit, demanded action, prompt, efficient. Impunity was a bounty on offence. They were too weak to dare let an insult go unpunished. Besides, it was remembered that “if they should suffer their friends and messengers to be thus wronged, they would have none to cleave unto them, or bring them intelligence, or do them any good service afterwards, while next their foes would fall upon themselves. Whereupon it was resolved to send Standish and fourteen men well armed, and to go and fall upon the Indian village at Namasket at night; and if they found that Squanto was killed, to cut off Corbitant’s head, but not to hurt any not concerned in the murder. Habbamak was asked if he would go and be their guide. He said he would, and bring them to the very spot, and point out Corbitant. So they set out on the evening of August 14th, 1621.”[250]
The night was dark and tempestuous. Habbamak himself was often puzzled to find the path, and at times groped blindly. Towards midnight the little army halted and made a supper in the dark. As they were now near Namasket, the final preparations for the assault were made. Knapsacks were thrown aside, and each man received his specific directions. The plan was to surround the wigwam of Corbitant and seize him ere he could escape. None were to be injured unless an attempt to escape was made.[251]
The march was now resumed. Cautiously and silently they trod in the footsteps of their dusky guide, casting furtive glances into the enveloping gloom, and pausing momentarily to listen and to watch. At length the Indian village was reached. There it lay, calm and oblivious of danger, the eyes of its inmates sealed in sleep. Softly but swiftly the assailants stole like spectres half round the drowsy town, and instructed by Habbamak, the wigwam of the hostile sachem was surrounded. Then came another brief pause, and each man’s heart seemed throbbing in his throat, so new and so exciting was the situation. The signal followed; the hut was entered; its inmates, still half asleep, were deprived of speech by fright and drowsiness. Soon, however, they regained their senses, and great commotion ensued. Standish asked if Corbitant was there. Unable or unwilling to reply, several of the aroused Indians essayed to pass the guard. Then the guns of the invaders increased the hubbub, and flashed angrily in the pitchy darkness. The women, rushing to Habbamak, called him “Friend, friend!” The boys, noticing that no injury was attempted against the squaws, shouted, “I am a girl, I am a girl!”[252]
After a time silence was regained. Standish, speaking through the lips of Habbamak, explained the object of the assault, and again demanded to know the whereabouts of Corbitant. Reassured, the Indians said that the wily sachem, fearing some revengeful action, had decamped; that Squanto and Tokamahamon had not yet been murdered, but were held as captives in a neighboring wigwam.[253]
The friendly sachems were speedily released, and while their deliverers heartily rejoiced over their escape, they regretted that of Corbitant.[254] The whole party breakfasted with Squanto; after which the Namasket Indians were assembled, and Standish informed them of his determination to hunt Corbitant, and to punish all who should plot evil against the colony, or who should presume to contend against the authority of Massasoit. He also regretted that any had been wounded in the night attack, and invited those who pleased to accompany him back to Plymouth, where an English physician would heal their hurts. Three, two men and a squaw, accepted this invitation, and tarrying until their wounds were dressed, medicined, and cured, they were then dismissed in peace.[255]
This expedition, so successful and so bloodless, had a prodigious effect. By some system of primitive telegraphing, the news of it, and of the awful fire-weapons of the pale-faces, spread throughout the forests. The red men did not want such “medicine men” for their foes. Nine sachems, representing jurisdictions which extended from Charles River to Buzzard’s Bay, came to Plymouth and made their submission.[256] The Indians of an island which the settlers had never seen, sent to sue for their friendship;[257] and Corbitant himself, though too shy to come near Plymouth in person, used the mediation of Massasoit to make his peace.[258]
The result was, broader amity and firmer peace. But the Pilgrims conquered as much by their moderation and self-command as by their energetic heroism. The anxious care with which they treated the injured warriors of their midnight raid, and the candor of their speech, placated resentment and inspired respect. Still the basis of this feeling was a knowledge that the white men would not suffer insult; and it has been finely said, that if we justly estimate it, there was more of sound policy and gallant daring in the midnight raid of this handful of strangers, than has marked many a deed of arms which historians have delighted to record, and to which nations still look back with exultant pride.[259]
Just as autumn began to smile, the Pilgrims made another expedition. This had a twofold purpose: to explore the country, and to cement a peace with the northeastern tribes.[260]
Entering the shallop at midnight, Standish and nine others, with three Indians to interpret, of whom Squanto was one, embarked with the ebb-tide.[261] They sailed along the coast to the bay on which Boston now stands, called in the contemporaneous record, Massachusetts Bay.[262] “On the second morning after leaving Plymouth, they landed upon a beach under a cliff, and received the submission of a chief on promising to be ‘a safeguard from his enemies.’ They surveyed the ‘fifty islands’ of Boston harbor; and passing the night on board their boat, went on shore again the following day and walked a few miles into the country. They observed land which had been cultivated, two forts in decay, untenanted huts, and other tokens of recent depopulation. They noted ‘the fair entrance’ of the river Charles, and ‘harbors for shipping’ than which ‘better could not be.’ They conciliated the few natives whom they met, and traded with them for some skins. They learned that the principal personage in the neighborhood was the female chief, or ‘squaw sachem’ of the Massachusetts; that this tribe had suffered from the hostile incursions of the Tarratines, and that its people owed a certain allegiance to Massasoit. The third evening, by ‘a light moon,’ the party set sail for home, which they reached before the following noon. The accounts they brought of the seat of their explorations naturally led their friends to ‘wish they had been seated there;’”[263] but “the Lord, who assigns to all men the bounds of their habitations,” remarks Bradford, “had appointed it for another use.”[264] The party “found the Lord to be with them in all their ways, and to bless their outgoings and incomings, for which let his holy name have the praise for ever to all posterity.”[265]
Standish and his friends had returned on the 22d of September. Their services were needed; the nodding crops were to be reaped, and all “began now to gather in the small harvest they had.”[266] The husbandry of the year proved a prosperous beginning. The rivers supplied manure in abundance, and the weather had been not unfavorable.[267] “All the summer there was no want.” While “some were thus employed in affairs abroad, others were exercised” in domestic avocations, in “fishing for cod and bass and other fish, of which they took great store, giving every family its portion.”[268]