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Wessagusset
Relations with Massasoit were repaired when Winslow helped to heal the sachem from Typhus. After he did that, Massasoit told Hobbamock that the Massachusetts were planning to wipe out both Plymouth and Wessagusset (the colony founded by Weston’s men) in the same day. Standish took the offensive, killed a number of Massachusetts, and terrified the others.
Quick note about this episode: I keep referring to “Maine and New England,” which is wrong, because Maine is in New England. I simply didn’t quite want to call the area Massachusetts (as this was before the area was called Massachusetts), and was using the term to apply to both Plymouth and Wessagusset. Oops!
Transcript
A year after the first Thanksgiving, there was another concerning development. Settlers had just started to hear reports from Maine fishermen about a massacre in Virginia the previous spring. There, the Indians had killed 347 people in one day, ¼ of Virginia’s population – but four times the population of Plymouth. There had evidently been no warning before the attack, either, and they knew they had tense relations with the local Indians, so fear began to build.
Introduction
A new settlement was also created. The people who wanted Bradford’s leadership stayed in Plymouth. The others – most of Weston’s men – went to Wessagussett. Weston’s settlers were single men with little in common. Interestingly, there’s some evidence that one of them was black. But, no one had a high opinion of them. Not Bradford. Not even Weston. And even Thomas Morton, who was deeply hostile to the Plymouth settlers and opposed them whenever possible, agreed that they were lazy. He did, however, say they were perfect for the beaver fur trade, which Weston had always intended as the economic basis of the colony, and accused the Pilgrims of pushing the Wessagussett settlers out of New Plymouth because they might topple the Separatists from their increasingly sketchy position of control. He said they didn’t like sharing supplies with the newcomers, and they didn’t want to share the rewards of the fur trade. He also accused the Pilgrims of having removed a bearskin monument erected to the mother of one of the locals’ warriors.
Now, I’m not sure if those accusations are true. It’s difficult to fully understand what happened at Plymouth Colony in some cases because the Pilgrims’ firsthand accounts dominate, and the Pilgrims ended up in conflict with lots of different people, like Billington, the Wessagusset settlers and later John Lyford. Meanwhile, Morton and Bradford are so personally hostile to each other that you can’t fully trust Morton’s claims either. And, as the story of Weston shows, Bradford and Winslow didn’t fully understand the context of other people’s behavior and actions. It’s the same difficulty you encounter studying early Jamestown history, but in many ways even more extreme, because you have one insular and not particularly experienced or educated group of people dominating the narrative, and the main contrasting account coming from someone whose hostility was personal. This puts events and conflicts into a grey area, and none moreso than the story of Wessagusset.
Wessagussett was close to three rivers, which meant more opportunities for trade. The most important feature of the Wessagusset colony, though, was that it was close to a Massachusetts settlement. In a way, that could be beneficial, because the Massachusetts had lots of corn – which the settlers had arrived too late in the year to plant. Initially, the Natives seemed friendly, and talked about how they preferred the English to the French. They were able to trade for food, but eventually ran out of things to trade. They traded everything they owned, right down to their clothes, until they had no clothes left, then bedding, and anything else they could barter. When they had nothing left, the settlers wrote to Bradford and asked if it was ok to steal a few hogsheads of corn, and then reimburse the Indians once they’d grown their own the next summer. Bradford told them not to. He was afraid that if they did, the Indians would attack everyone. The people at Wessagusset began to starve to death, and freeze in a winter cold that they weren’t used to, and as they did, some of the Massachusetts began to harass them, scoffing at their weakness and snatching from their hands the few ground nuts and clams that they’d been able to gather. The English were too weak to stop them from doing or taking anything they wanted. This soon included whatever blankets they had left. Despite Massachusetts hostility to the settlement, some settlers contracted themselves out as servants to the tribe, one fully integrating into Massachusett society.
Ultimately, the settlers abandoned their huts and began to scatter in small groups through the woods and along the shore, living on whatever they could find. They were so weak by this point that while one settler was gathering clams, he couldn’t free himself from mud on the local beach and died. In their desperation, some did turn to theft, though Bradford and Morton disagree about how much was stolen. Bradford said there were several thefts, while Morton insists there was only one, involving just a handful of corn. When the Massachusetts confronted the settlers about the thefts, they hanged a thief in the hopes of placating them, but to no avail. The Wessagusset settlers continued to live in almost impossible misery.
In March, Standish went to Manomet to get some of the corn that Bradford had secured during his trading voyage with Squanto. He got the corn, but the trip turned very weird, very quickly. He was a guest at the Manomet sachem, Canacum’s, house when two Massachusetts warriors arrived, immediately hostile, and bringing a message from the Massachusetts sachem, Obtakiest, who was living at Wessagusset. Standish didn’t know what the message was, because he didn’t have an interpreter, but Canacum quite obviously favored the Massachusetts over Standish. They got better entertainment, food, everything. It was a social slight that needed no interpreter, and Standish wasn’t the type of person to overlook a social slight. He took offense, objected to his treatment and chastised the Massachusetts for their refusal to pay him the proper respect. Canacum responded by inviting Standish to bring his English colleagues who were loading the corn to join them, but Standish stormed out of the wigwam and spent the night with his men on the beach. When a man from the Pamet River, who had previously been friendly to the English but participated in the snub, wanted to sleep alongside the English, Standish stayed awake all night, sailing back to Plymouth the following morning.
When he arrived, the latest news was that Massasoit was gravely ill, and that Bradford had decided to send Winslow to meet him. He would be accompanied by Hobbamock and John Hamden, a gentleman from London who was spending the winter with the Pilgrims. If Massasoit lived, this could be a good opportunity to repair relations. He was the man who had held the relationship between the Indians and English together, and wasn’t sure of English intentions since the fight over Squanto. If he died, his successor would be Corbitant, who the English had had their first major kerfuffle with the previous year. That would mean the diplomatic mission would be even more important.
When they got word that Massasoit had died, Winslow hired a runner to get the latest news, and the messenger returned just before sunset saying the sachem wasn’t dead yet, but that he might be by the time they got there. They pushed on, and arrived in Poconoquet well after dark. The wigwam was so jammed with people that Winslow and his companions had a hard time making their way to his side. He was likely sick of typhus, which among other things had rendered him blind. Many other people in the town were also suffering from it. Massasoit asked which of the English were there to see him. They said it was Winslow, and he replied “Oh Winslow, I shall never see thee again.” Winslow told Massasoit that Bradford wished he could be there, but that pressing business had required him to remain at Plymouth. In his stead, Winslow had brought medicine and food to try to help Massasoit recover. Massasoit hadn’t swallowed anything in two days, but he kept down the preserves. His mouth was coated in some fuzz, which Winslow scraped off before feeding him more preserves. Within an hour, Massasoit’s sight was returning, and Winslow sent messengers to Plymouth for some more medicine and chickens for broth. The next day, Winslow made a broth with greens and herbs, which Massasoit drank, and when he went to sleep, he asked Winslow to wash out the mouths of the other sick people, and though he didn’t want to, Winslow did as he’d been asked. Then, he shot a duck to feed Massasoit, who ate, slept, and woke up feeling so much better that he asked for the chickens to be kept as breeding stock instead of being cooked for his personal benefit.
After Bradford had so stubbornly protected Squanto, the Poconoquets justifiably believed that the English didn’t care about Massasoit’s welfare, but Winslow had gone to great lengths to help the sachem. This incident repaired relations between the two, and even seemed to impress Corbitant. Massasoit publicly declared “Now I see the English are my friends and love me, and whilst I live, I will never forget this kindness they have shown me.” Privately, he pulled Hobbamock aside and told him that the Massachusetts were preparing to wipe out Wessagusset, and Plymouth, in the same day. They had the support of multiple Cape Cod villages, as well as the Indians at Manomet and Martha’s Vineyard. They were planning an attack, and the Pilgrims needed to strike first, and soon. Winslow and his companions hurried back to Plymouth.
A couple days later, at about 3:00 pm, Phineas Pratt ran into the forests outside of Plymouth, and when he met a man named John Hamden, collapsed onto the trunk of a fallen tree, and said “Mr. Hamden. I am glad to see you alive.” Weston’s former servant, trained as a furniture maker, had become one of the leaders at Wessagusset, whose sufferings he said had now become unendurable. He had actually tried to fool one of the leading warriors, Pecksuot, into thinking the English weren’t starving, but unsuccessfully, and Pecksuot grew increasingly hostile. A number of Massachusetts began to move their houses closer to the English, which Pratt perceived as aggressive. Pecksuot, one of the two warriors Standish had met, had blatantly threatened Pratt, too, showing him a knife and telling him stories of how he’d killed both French and Englishmen.
He talked about how a few years before, a French vessel had accidentally run aground nearby, and the local warriors had forced the sailors to eat the food they’d normally give to dogs, until they died. A second French ship arrived a couple years later, hoping to trade, and the Massachusetts brought a bundle of beaver skins to the ship. Concealed in the skins, though, were knives which they used to murder the crew, and when the ship’s master hid, they burned him out, killed him and incinerated his vessel.
Pecksuot was making unmistakable hints to Pratt that a similar fate awaited the English settlers, and after a confrontation with Obtakiest over stolen corn, the English increased their guard, and saw Massachusetts creeping on the snow and hiding behind trees to see what the settlers were up to. By this point, guards were dying of starvation at their posts. Then, some English people living with the Indians warned Pratt that an attack was coming.
Pratt knew that for both Wessagusset and Plymouth, the only hope of survival was warning the Plymouth settlers. First, he tried to send someone else, but no one was willing to go. Pratt prepared to go himself, but a young settler trying to placate the Massachusetts told Pecksuot about Pratt’s plan, and the warrior soon approached Pratt. Pecksuot said he knew Pratt was preparing to visit Plymouth, and offered to send his son as Pratt’s guide. Pratt said he didn’t know what Pecksuot was talking about, or where he’d heard such a silly rumor, but Pecksuot kept his eye on Pratt, and it was a week before he managed to slip away. One morning, though, he picked up a small pack and a hoe, and walked out of Wessagusset as casually as he could. He began to dig at the edge of a large swamp, pretending to search for groundnuts while he actually checked his surroundings to see if any Indians were around. When the coast seemed clear, he dropped his hoe, and ran. He ran until 3:00 in the afternoon, knowing that Indians were likely following him. When clouds covered the sky, navigation became harder until sunset, which gave him the orientation he needed. Darkness fell, he heard wolves, and he accidentally ran through some water, drenching himself in the freezing night. If he lit a fire, he might give away his location, but he found a gorge into which several trees had fallen. There, he felt safe enough to light a small fire to keep himself warm. And the next morning, he started running again, finally arriving in Plymouth.
Hamden told Pratt they already knew about the plot, and that Bradford had convened a public meeting, where he, Standish and Allerton had had a long debate about what to do. Ultimately, Bradford, who usually restrained Standish, gave the captain free reign to do whatever he felt was appropriate. Standish was preparing to leave as they spoke. The Pilgrims blamed Weston’s men for their predicament, but thanks to Winslow’s actions, Massasoit was once again on their side. When Pratt arrived, they delayed the departure so that Standish could pick his brains about any new developments. Standish walked away even surer that he was doing the right thing.
Standish had put together a force including Hobbamock and seven Englishmen, keeping it small to avoid alerting the Massachusetts of their plans. They pretended they were on a trading mission, and sailed to Wessagusset the next day.
When they arrived at Wessagusset, they found the colonists completely nonchalant, gathering groundnuts and saying they had no fear of the Indians, and that many were living in their wigwams. Standish marched into the fort and demanded to speak to whoever was in charge, and explained that he was going to kill as many of the Indians as he could, and after the mission the settlers could either return with him to Plymouth or take the Swan to Maine. He had even brought corn for their voyage. Seeing the corn, they agreed to his plan.
Later that day, both of the warriors – named Pecksuot and Wituwamat – who had been in Manomet approached Standish. In hindsight, he could see that what he’d witnessed on his trading voyage was more than a social slight. Now, as he met the same warriors in Wessagusset, Pecksuot looked disdainfully down on Standish, saying “You are a great captain, yet you are but a little man. Though I be no sachem, yet I am of great strength and courage.”
The next day, precisely one year and two days after the Powhatan massacre, Standish offered Wituwamat and Pecksuot, as well as Wituwamat’s brother and a friend, and several women – a meal. In addition to corn, he brought pork, which was irresistible to the hungry warriors. The Indians sat down alongside Standish, Hobbamock and three other Pilgrims, and they began to eat. Once they were all eating, Standish signaled for the door to be shut, turned to Wituwamat and grabbed the knife from the string around his neck, and began stabbing him with it, repeatedly. The other Pilgrims attacked the other two men, and Winslow noted just how many wounds the Indians had received before they died, not crying out in fear, but struggling to the last. Soon, though, Pecksuot, Wituwamat and the other warrior were dead, and Wituwamat’s teenage brother had been taken captive. They hanged him, and Standish told his companions to kill any Indians who happened to be with them, which led to two more deaths. In the meantime, Standish and his cohorts found another Indian and killed him. Then, they stood off with the sachem, Obtakiest, himself, and Standish and Hobbamock charged them, shooting Obtakiest in the elbow, and pushing the other Indians to run for the shelter of a swamp, where they disappeared. They captured the women, but Standish decided to release them instead of trading them for those of Weston’s men who were living with the Indians, and who would now be taken captive themselves. If Standish didn’t trade for them, they would doubtlessly be tortured and killed. So, why Standish chose not to trade for them, I don’t know. But, the Pilgrims had made their point. Most of the Wessagusset survivors went to Maine, though some, including Pratt, stayed in Plymouth. The Pilgrims waited until they’d left, and then returned to Plymouth with the head of Wituwamat wrapped in a piece of white linen.
Greeted with a hero’s welcome, Standish marched to the fort, and planted Wituwamat’s head on a pole on the fort’s roof. It was soon joined by the cloth the head was wrapped in, flying as the settlement’s flag. When he returned, Standish also learned that Plymouth had taken prisoner an Indian who had been pursuing Phineas Pratt, who entered the settlement the next day, saying he was a friend of Pratt and was wondering if he’d arrived from Wessagusset. Bradford had taken him prisoner until Standish’s return, and under interrogation he confessed everything, as well as naming the five people who had convinced Obtakiest to attack the Pilgrims – a list which included Wituwamat and Pecksuot. It seems like Pratt had only survived his journey by getting lost. Bradford sent the prisoner to Obtakiest with a message, saying that if hostilities were continued, he’d destroy the whole tribe.
Obtakiest sent a woman to respond, because no one else was willing to approach Plymouth. He was eager to make peace, and the event had caused a panic throughout the region. They were afraid that Standish would come back to finish the job, and they still feared the power Squanto had told them about, and which the settlers had at times encouraged and reminded people of. Huge numbers of Indians, Obtakiest included, had stayed on the move since the massacre. They had fled to swamps and other infertile places, and many were falling ill and dying. Their crops were going unplanted, but they were afraid that return to their homes would mean certain death. By summer, they were dying en masse, and pretty much every sachem who had ever rivaled Massasoit died – Canacum, Aspinet, Nauset, and Cummaquid. One village decided to send some gifts to the Pilgrims, but their canoe had sunk en route and they’d drowned. Since that incident, no Indians from Cape Cod had dared to approach the settlement.
The aftermath of the event devastated local tribes, and cemented the English presence in the region. It rid the Pilgrims of disliked English rivals, and solidified Massasoit’s power. Ironically, this was exactly the same scenario Squanto had wanted for himself the year before. With the power vacuum, he was able to establish the Wampanoag Nation. It had, however, also destroyed the settlers’ ability to trade for furs.
In Maine, most of the Wessagusset settlers died of starvation the following winter. Four survived and relocated to the plantation of a man named Christopher Levett. They ultimately became fishermen. They also acted as guides for a man named John Winter, who came to explore Maine in the 1630s. Pratt, himself, settled in Plymouth until the 1640s, when he settled in Charleston, Massachusetts. His account became the only surviving first-hand account of Wessagusset’s winter.
It’s not clear exactly when, but at some point in 1623, after the dismantling of the settlement, Thomas Weston, himself appeared, having finally been pushed off the brink of ruin. He’d managed to save Powell from prison, and then with a little bit of help from Beauchamp, had sent the two ships which formed the Wessagusset settlement across the Atlantic, still loaded with their guns and cannons, ostensibly meant to help fortify New England. By the time the two ships reached New England, the guns were missing. Sherley accused Weston of having sold them to Turkish corsairs or other English enemies, and while that is most likely what happened, there was no evidence, and King James had bigger problems to deal with. Weston left his wife to be cared for by her father, disguised himself as a blacksmith and hitched rides to Devon, and from there to Maine, and then from Maine to New England. He’d been robbed of his supplies by Indians somewhere in that area, and came to find the settlement he’d organized gone. With his settlement gone, Weston stayed in the area just long enough to get a few beaver skins and supplies, and then set sail for Virginia. He seems to have broken some law in Virginia, then gotten some land in Maryland, and spent the rest of his life in England, Maryland, and Ireland, dodging the authorities, finally dying of the Plague in Bristol.
That summer, a ship arrived, bringing a woman named Ann who Bradford would soon marry at a huge celebration that included Massasoit and 120 of his warriors. The Pilgrims sent back a letter and pamphlet explaining the attack, the reasons for it, and the impact it had had on the beaver trade, and most of the settlers’ London contacts felt the attack had been justified. John Robinson, however, emerged as the man most strongly opposed to their actions.
He sent Bradford a letter, saying, “Oh how happy a thing had it been, if you had converted some before you killed any! Besides, where blood is once begun to be shed, it is seldom staunched of a long time after. You say they deserved it. I grant it; but upon what provocations and invetements by those heathenish Christians at Wessagusset? Besides, you being no magistrates over them, were to consider not what they deserved, but what you were by necessity constrained to inflict. Necessity of this, especially of killing so many (and many more it seems they would, if they could), I see not.” Then he criticized Standish, and the violence of the assault, saying Standish lacked the tenderness of the life of man which is important. He concluded by saying “It is a thing more glorious in men’s eyes than pleasing God’s or convenient to Christians, to be a terror to a poor barbarous people. And indeed I am afraid, lest, by these occasions, others should be drawn to affect a kind of ruffling course in the world.”
In some ways, I have thought of ending the story of Plymouth here, recalling the first thing I said, about how the Plymouth story was one which stood in such direct contrast to that of Virginia. How, even at the end, it’s finished with an attack thwarted, or a massacre by the English, depending on how harshly you want to interpret it. There’s one more event I’d like to cover, though, one more episode on the story of Plymouth which will take us chronologically to the end of James’ rule, and the accession of his son, Charles, to the throne. And it’s a story that gets directly to the heart of Plymouth’s religious identity.