The return of Leif and the account his sailors gave naturally caused intense excitement in that quiet community. In the spring of 1002 Thorvald Ericson, taking his brother’s ship and probably some of Leif’s crew as guides, sailed on another voyage to Vinland. His object was to make a more thorough exploration of the country. Thirty men made up Thorvald’s party. Nothing is told of their voyage until they reached Leif’s booths in Vinland. There they laid up their ship and remained quietly through the winter, living by hunting and fishing. The next year was spent in exploring the lands to the south. The second summer they turned their steps northward and in this northern expedition Thorvald was killed in a battle with the natives. His comrades buried him on the headland where he had proposed to settle. “There you shall bury me,” he told them after he had received his death wound, “and place a cross at my head and another at my feet, and the place shall be called Crossness ever after.” The winter of 1004-5 was passed in Leifsbooths gathering cargo for the return voyage. In the spring they sailed back to Greenland carrying large quantities of grapes as their companions had done. Because of Thorvald’s death the accounts of his voyage are probably more meagre than they otherwise would have been.
In 1007 the most important of the Norse expeditions sailed from Greenland. Its leader was Thorfinn Karlsefni. Thorfinn was both seaman and merchant. Sailing from Iceland to Greenland on a trading voyage, he had wintered at Brattahlid and there married his wife Gudrid. Naturally there had been much talk of Vinland the Good during the long Arctic winter and in the spring an expedition to explore the new country was fitted out. It consisted of three ships manned by one hundred and sixty men. With it went Gudrid and six other women, for it was proposed to colonize the land. Thorfinn spent the winter amid great hardships, caused by cold and lack of food, on what may have been one of the islands of Buzzard’s Bay. There his son Snorri was born, as far as we know the first child of European parents born upon the shores of the American continent. In the spring, coming at last to the place “where a river flowed down from the land into a lake and then into the sea,” they waited for the high tide, as Leif had done, sailed into the mouth of the river and called the place Hop.[5] On the lowlands about them were self-sown fields of grain; on the high ground the wild grapes grew in great profusion. Deer and other wild animals roamed through the forests. The brooks as well as the bay were filled with fish. They dug pits upon the beach before the high tide came and when the tide fell the pits were leaping with fish. Just so today flounders may be caught along the Narragansett shores. The booths that Leif’s party had put up could not accommodate the new comers and additional houses were built inland above the lake. No snow fell during the winter. The cattle they had brought with them needed no protection and lived by grazing. None of the privations of the previous winter were experienced, and all things went well until the Skraelings, or natives, appeared. At first the Skraelings came only for trading. They wished to exchange skins for goods, being especially anxious to obtain little strips of scarlet cloth, and willingly giving a whole skin for the smallest strip. The Norsemen benevolently attempted to satisfy the desires of all by tearing the cloth into smaller and yet smaller pieces as the supply diminished. While the bartering was going on one of the bulls Thorfinn had brought with him appeared upon the scene, bellowing loudly. Thereupon the savages rushed to their canoes and paddled away as quickly as possible. A month later they reappeared, this time not to barter but to fight. In the combat that followed two Northmen fell and many of the Skraelings were killed. This battle convinced Thorfinn that the lands though excellent in quality would be undesirable for a colony by reason of the hostility of the natives. He therefore turned his keels northward and returned to Greenland in 1010.
From this time expeditions to Vinland to procure grapes and timber became frequent. Because they had lost their novelty they ceased to be chronicled. As the saga puts it, “they were esteemed both lucrative and honorable.” One noteworthy one is given in the “Antiquitates Americanae,” that of Freydis and her husband Thorvald. The tale of Freydis is a grewsome one. She seems to have been entirely lacking in human sensibilities. Her husband murdered in cold blood all the men of a party that had opposed him but he spared their five women. Freydis seized an axe and brained them all. Possibly their mangled remains may have been buried at the foot of Mount Hope.
Other mention of Vinland is found apart from the Icelandic chronicles. Adam of Bremen in his “Historia Ecclesiastica,” published in 1073, describes Iceland and Greenland and then goes on to say that there is another country far out in the ocean which has been visited by many persons, and which is called Vinland because of the grapes found there. In Vinland, he says, corn grows without cultivation, as he learns from trustworthy Norse sources. This must of course have been the Indian corn, a grain that is hardly possible of cultivation in Europe north of the Alps.
The people of Iceland were more given to the writing of chronicles than were those of the countries of Europe, but unhappily Iceland was a land of volcanoes and eruptions were not infrequent. An eruption of Mount Hecla in 1390 buried several of the neighboring estates beneath its ashes. Perhaps under those ashes may be lying other sagas that may at some time be brought again to light, as in the case of the scrolls of Pompeii. Mention of the lands that Leif discovered is found in the “Annals of Iceland” as late as 1347. The last Bishop of Greenland was appointed in the first decade of the fifteenth century and since that time the colony has never been heard of. Ruins of its houses may still be seen, but of the fate of those who dwelt in them we know nothing.
One witness there still may be to testify to the Norse visits. About thirty-five years ago a rock known by tradition but lost sight of for half a century was rediscovered on the shores of Mount Hope Bay. Upon it is rudely carved the figure of a boat with what may have been a Runic inscription beneath it. The writing was surely not graven by English hands and the Indians had no written language. May not the strange carving have been made by the axe of a Norseman? It is not remarkable that the rock was lost sight of for so many years. The inscription is inconspicuous and the rock is like hundreds of others along the shore. Moreover it was sometimes covered by the high tides of spring and fall. It has recently been removed to a more conspicuous position and may ere long be protected by a fence from the vandalism of the occasional tourist.
Fact and not fancy characterizes the Indian history of the Mount Hope Lands. First upon the scene steps Massasoit, “Friend of the White Man,” ruler of all the region when the Pilgrims of the Mayflower landed upon the shores of Plymouth. Like all the Indian sachems, Massasoit had many places of residence. He moved from one to another as the great barons of the Middle Ages moved from one castle to another, and for the same reason. When provisions became scarce in one place a region where they were more plentiful was sought. One of his villages was unquestionably upon the slope of Mount Hope. Not many weeks after the landing of the Pilgrims Massasoit had paid them a visit in their new settlement. In July, 1621, Edward Winslow and Stephen Hopkins were sent by Governor Bradford to return the visit. Of what happened to this “embassy” and to a second sent some two years later, Winslow presented a very full account, which may be read in very nearly all of the histories of the period. It is one of the most trustworthy and valuable pictures of Indian royal state that have come down to us from colonial days. Winslow found Massasoit occupying a wigwam only a little larger than those of his subjects. The sleeping place was a low platform of boards covered with a thin mat. On this bed, says Winslow, Massasoit placed his visitors, with himself and his wife at one end and the Englishmen at the other, and two more of Massasoit’s men passed by and upon them, so that they were worse weary of the lodging than of the journey. As the sachem had not been apprised of Winslow’s projected visit, he had made no provisions for his entertainment. No supper whatsoever was secured that night, and not until one o’clock of the next afternoon was food to be had. Then two large fish, which had just been shot (with arrows, of course), were boiled and placed before the sachem’s guests, now numbering forty or more besides the two Englishmen.
In 1623 tidings reached Plymouth that Massasoit was sick and likely to die. Edward Winslow was therefore sent to visit him a second time. With him went a young English gentleman who was wintering at Plymouth and who desired much to see the country. His name was John Hampden, a name destined to become famous wherever the English language was spoken. The great John Hampden was born in 1594. He would have been twenty-nine years old at this time. He had as yet done nothing whatever to make himself famous and was a comparatively inconspicuous man, notwithstanding the prominent position his family had held for centuries in England. There is no record of his presence in England at this time. Like Oliver Cromwell he may have been considering a residence in America among men of his own religious faith, and for this reason may have made a preliminary visit to this country. Green, discussing in his “History of the English People” Cromwell’s scheme for emigrating to America, says: “It is more certain that John Hampden purchased a tract of land on the Narragansett.” Most important of all, the name of John Hampden appears in the list of the Charter Members of the Colony of Connecticut.
As long as he lived Massasoit remained the firm friend of the colonists. Upon his death, in 1662, his son Wamsutta (or Alexander) headed the Wampanoag tribe for a year, and then came Philip, Massasoit’s second son. Philip was a foe to the white men, made such by English treatment of his tribe. He was one of the ablest Indian leaders this country has produced, a wonderful organizer, a skillful diplomatist. From tribe to tribe he journeyed, inducing them to rest from their interminable wars and to turn their weapons against the common enemy of all. But for an accident which caused hostilities to begin a little while before the year (1676) Philip had fixed upon, the colonists would have been swept from the land. The war began in 1675, and Capt. Benjamin Church, the conqueror of Philip, wrote an account of it. Benjamin Church was one of our greatest “Indian fighters.” He had lain in their wigwams, he had studied their character. Naturally and inevitably he came at last to the leadership of the colonial forces. When Philip’s plans had all come to naught, the Wampanoag sachem came back to Mt. Hope, to make his last stand and to die. Death came to him from a bullet fired by one of his own men who had taken service in Capt. Church’s company. In 1876, on the two hundredth anniversary of his death, the Rhode Island Historical Society, with appropriate ceremonies, placed a boulder monument on the top of Mt. Hope, with this inscription:
KING PHILIP, AUGUST 12, 1676. O. S.