our own safety, he advised us to kill the men of Massachuset, who were the authors of this intended mischief. And whereas we were wont to say, we would not strike a stroke till they first began, If, said he, [Massasoit to Hobomok,] upon this intelligence, they make that answer, tell them, when their countrymen at Wichaguscusset are killed, they not being able to defend themselves, that then it will be too late to recover their lives," and it would be with difficulty that they preserved their own; "and therefore he counselled, without delay, to take away the principals, and then the plot would cease."

Meanwhile Weston's men had fallen into a miserable and wretched condition; some, to procure a daily sustenance, became servants to the Indians, "fetching them wood and water, &c., and all for a meal's meat." Those who were thus degraded, were, of course, only a few who had abandoned themselves to riot and dissipation, but whose conduct had affected the well being of the whole, notwithstanding. Some of these wretches, in their extremities, had stolen corn from the Indians, on whose complaint they had been put in the stocks and whipped. This not giving the Indians satisfaction, one was hanged. This was in February, 1623.

About this capital punishment much has been written; some doubting the fact that any one was hanged, others that it was the real offender, &c. But in our opinion the facts are incontestable that one was hanged; but whether the one really guilty or not, is not quite so easily settled. The fact that one was hanged for another appears to have been of common notoriety, both in Old and New England, from shortly after the affair until the beginning of the next century.*

Mr. Hubbard has this passage upon the affair:-"Certain it is, they [the Indians] were so provoked with their filching and stealing, that they threatened them, as the Philistines did Samson's father-in-law, after the loss of their corn; insomuch that the company, as some report, pretended, in way of satisfaction, to punish him that did the theft, but, in his stead, hanged a poor, decrepit old man, that was unserviceable to the company, [an old bed-rid weaver,t] and burdensome to keep alive, which was the ground of the story with which the merry gentleman, that wrote the poem called HUDIBRAS, did, in his poetical fancy, make so much sport." And from the same author it appears that the circumstance was well known at Plimouth, but they pretended that the right person was hanged, or, in our author's own words, "as if the person hanged was really guilty of stealing, as may be were many of the rest, and if they were driven by necessity to content the Indians, at that time, to do justice, there being some of Mr. Weston's company living, it is possible it might be executed not on him that most deserved, but on him that could be best spared, or who was not like to live long if he had been let alone." It will now be expected that we produce the passage of Hudibras. Here

it is:

"Though nice and dark the point appear,
(Quoth Ralph,) it may hold up, and clear.
That Sinners may supply the place
Of suffering Saints, is a plain Case.
Justice gives Sentence, many times,
On one Man for another's crimes.
Our Brethren of New England use
Choice Malefactors to excuse.
And hang the Guiltless in their stead,
Of whom the Churches have less need:
As lately 't happened: In a town
There lived a Cobbler, and but one,
That out of Doctrine could cut Use,
And mend Men's Lives, as well as Shoes.
This precious Brother having slain,
In times of Peace, an Indian,

(Not out of Malice, but mere Zeal,
Because he was an infidel,)

The mighty Tottipottymoy,
Sent to our Elders an Envoy,
Complaining sorely of the Breach

Of League, held forth by Brother Patch,
Against the Articles in force,
Between both churches, his and ours,
For which he craved the Saints to render
Into his Hands, or hang th' Offender:
But they, maturely having weighed,
They had no more but him o' th' Trade,
(A Man that served them in a double
Capacity, to Teach and Cobble,)
Resolved to spare him; yet to do
The Indian Hoghan Moghgan, too,
Impartial Justice, in his stead, did
Hang an old Weaver that was Bed-rid.
Then wherefore may not you be skipp'd,
And in your Room another Whipp'd } "'

* See Col. N. H. Hist. Soc. iii. 143. and b. i. chap. iii. ante.

↑ Hist. N. Eng. 77.

Col. N. H. Hist. Soc. iii. 148

98

WITTUWAMET.-WESTON'S COLONY.

LBOOK II.

The following note was early printed to this passage:-"The history of the cobbler had been attested by persons of good credit, who were upon the place when it was done." Mr. Butler wrote this part of his Hudibras before 1663.

Thomas Morton, who was one of the company, though perhaps absent at the time, pretends that there was no plot of the Indians, and insinuates that the Plimoutheans caused all the trouble, and that their rashness caused the Indians to massacre some of their men, as we shall presently relate from a book which Mr. Morton published.*

"Master Weston's plantation being settled at Wessaguscus, his servants, many of them lazy persons, that would use no endeavor to take the benefit of the country, some of them fell sick and died.

"One amongst the rest, an able-bodied man, that ranged the woods, to see what it would afford, lighted by accident on an Indian barn, and from thence did take a cap full of corn. The salvage owner of it, finding by the foot [track] some English had been there, came to the plantation, and made complaint after this manner. The chief commander of the company, on this occasion, called a Parliament of all his people, but those that were sick and ill at ease. And wisely now they must consult, upon this huge complaint, that a privy [paltry] knife or string of beads would well enough have qualified: And Edward Johnson was a special judge of this business. The fact was there in repetition, construction made, that it was fellony, and by the laws of England punished with death, and this in execution must be put for an example, and likewise to appease the salvage; when straightways one arose, moved as it were with some compassion, and said he could not well gainsay the former sentence; yet he had conceived, within the compass of his brain, an embrio, that was of special consequence to be delivered, and cherished, he said; that it would most aptly serve to pacify the salvage's complaint, and save the life of one that might (if need should be) stand them in some good stead; being young and strong, fit for resistance against an enemy, which might come unexpectedly, for any thing they knew.

The oration made was liked of every one, and he intreated to show the means how this may be performed. Says he, you all agree that one must die, and one shall die. This young man's clothes we will take off, and put upon one that is old and impotent, a sickly person that cannot escape death; such is the disease on him confirmed, that die he must. Put the young man's clothes on this man, and let the sick person be hanged in the other's stead. Amen, says one, and so says many more. And this had like to have proved their final sentence; and being there confirmed by act of Parliament to after ages for a precedent. But that one, with a ravenous voice, begun to croak and bellow for revenge, and put by that conclusive motion; alleging such deceits might be a means hereafter to exasperate the minds of the complaining salvages, and that, by his death, the salvages should see their zeal to justice, and, therefore, he should die. This was concluded; yet, nevertheless, a scruple was made; now to countermand this act did represent itself unto their minds, which was how they should do to get the man's good will: this was indeed a special obstacle: for without that (they all agreed) it would be dangerous, for any man to attempt the execution of it, lest mischief should befall them every man. He was a person that, in his wrath, did seem to be a second Sampson, able to beat out their brains with the jawbone of an ass: therefore they called the man, and by persuasion got him fast bound in jest, and then hanged him up hard by in good earnest, who with a weapon, and at liberty, would have put all these wise judges of this Parliament to a pittiful non plus, (as it hath been credibly reported,) and made the chief judge of them all buckle to him.”

This is an entire chapter of the NEW CANAAN, which, on account of its great rarity, we have given in full. In his next chapter Mr. Morton proceeds to narrate the circumstances of the "massacre" of Wittuwamet, Peksuot, and other Massachusetts Indians, and the consequences of it. But we shall now

* Entitled New English Canaan, 4to. Amsterdam, 1637.
Against this sentence, in the margin, is-" A poor comp'aint."

draw from the Plimouth historian, and afterwards use Morton's chapter as we find occasion.

Mr. Winslow says that Mr. Weston's men "knew not of this conspiracy of the Indians before his [John Sanders, their 'overseer '] going; neither was it known to any of us till our return from Sowaams, or Puckanokick: at which time also another sachim, called Wassapinewat, brother to Obtakiest, the sachim of the Massachusets, who had formerly smarted for partaking with Conbatant, and fearing the like again, to purge himself, revealed the same thing," [as Massasoit had done.]

It was now the 23d March, 1623, “a yearly court day" at Plimouth, en which war was proclaimed, "in public court," against the Massachusetts Indians. "We came to this conclusion, (says Winslow,) that Captain Standish should take so many men, as he thought sufficient to make his party good against all the Indians in the Massachusetts Bay; and as because, as all men know that have to do with them in that kind, it is impossible to deal with them upon open defiance, but to take them in such traps as they lay for others; therefore he should pretend trade as at other times: but first go to the English, [at Wessaguscus,] and acquaint them with the plot, and the end of their own coming, that, comparing it with their own carriages towards them, he might better judge of the certainty of it, and more titly take opportunity to revenge the same: but should forbare, if it were possible, till such time as he could make sure Wittuwamat, that bloody and bold villain before spoken of; whose head he had order to bring with him, that he might be a warning and terror to all that disposition."

We will now hear a word of what Mr. Morton has to say upon this transaction. "After the end of that Parliament, [which ended in the hanging of one,*] some of the plantation there, about three persons, went to live with Checatawback and his company, and had very good quarter, for all the former quarrel with the Plimouth planters. They are not like Will Sommers, to take one for another. There they purposed to stay until Master Weston's arrival: but the Plimouth men intending no good to him, (as appeared by the consequence,) came in the mean time to Wessaguscus, and there pretended to feast the salvages of those parts, bringing with them pork, and things for the purpose, which they set before the salvages. They eat thereof without suspicion of any mischief, [and] who were taken upon a watchword given, and with their own knives (hanging about their necks) were, by the Plimouth planters, stabbed and slain. One of which was hanged up there, after the slaughter." When this came to the knowledge of Chikataubut's people, they murdered the three English who had taken up their residence with them, as they lay asleep, in revenge for the murder of their countrymen.||

After Standish was ready to proceed against Wittuwamet, but before he set out, one arrived from Wessaguscus almost famished, and gave the people of Plimouth a lamentable account of the situation of his fellows; that not the least of their calamities was their being insulted by the Indians, 'whose boldness increased abundantly; insomuch as the victuals they got,

As mentioned in our last extract from this author.
Referring, it is supposed, to the quarrel with Caunbitant.

The person who proposed hanging a sick man instead of the real offender.
New English Canaan, 111.

|| Ibid.

His name was Phinehas Prat. An Indian followed him to kill him, but, by losing the direct path, the Indian missed him. In 1662, the general court of Massachusetts, in answer to a petition of Phinehas Prat, then of Charlestown, which was accompanied "with a narrative of the straights and hardships that the first planters of this colony underwent in their endeavors to plant themselves at Plimouth, and since, whereof he was one, the court judgeth it meet to grant him 300 acres of land, where it is to be had, not hir dering a plantation." MS. among the files in our state-house.

I have not been able to discover the narrative of Prat, after long search. Mr. Hubbard probably used it in compiling his Hist. of New England.

At the court, 3 May, 1665, land was ordered to be laid out for Prat, "in the wilderness on the east of the Merrimack River, near the upper end of Nacook Brook, on the south-east of it." Conrt Files, ut supra.

Prat married, in Plimouth, a daughter of Cuthbert Cuthbertson, in 1630. See 2 Col. Hist. Sor. vii. 122.

100

MASSACRE AT WESSAGUSCUS.

[BOOK II they [the Indians] would take it out of their pots, and eat [it] before their faces," and that if they tried to prevent them, they would hold a knife at their breasts: and to satisfy them, they had banged one of their company: "That they had sold their clothes for corn, and were ready to starve both with cold and hunger also, because they could not endure to get victuals by reason of their nakedness."

This truly was a wretched picture of this second colony of Massachusetts, the knowledge of which (says Winslow) "gave us good encouragement to proceed in our intendments." Accordingly, the next day, Standish, with Hobomok and eight Englishmen, set out upon the expedition. His taking so few men shows how a few English guns were yet feared by the Indians. Nevertheless, the historians would have us understand that Standish would take no more, because he would not have the Indians mistrust that he came to fight them; and they would insinuate that it was owing to his great valor. When Standish arrived at Wessaguscus, he found the people scattered about, apprehending no danger whatever, engaged in their ordinary affairs. When he told them of the danger they were in from the Indians, they said "they feared not the Indians, but lived, and suffered them to lodge with them, not having sword or gun, or needing the same." Standish now informed them of the plot, which was the first intimation, it appears, they had of it. He ordered them to call in their men, and enjoined secrecy of his intended massacre. But it seems from Winslow's Relation, that the Indians got word of it, or mistrusted his design; probably some of the Wessaguscus men warned them of it, who did not believe there was any plot.

Meantime, an Indian came to trade, and afterwards went away in friendship. Standish, more sagacious than the rest, said he saw treachery in his eye, and suspected his end in coming there was discovered. Shortly after, Peksuot, "who was a paniese, being a man of a notable spirit," came to Hobomok, and told him, He understood the captain was come to kill him and the rest of the Indians there. "Tell him, (said Peksuot,) we know it, but fear him not, neither will we shun him; but let him begin when he dare [s], he will not take us unawares."

The Indians now, as we might expect, began to prepare to meet the danger, and the English say many of them came divers times into their presence, and "would whet and sharpen the point of their knives,” “and use many other insulting gestures and speeches. Amongst the rest, Wittuwamat bragged of the excellency of his knife. On the end of the handle there was pictured a woman's face; but, said he, I have another at home, wherewith 1 have killed both French and English, and that hath a man's face on it ; and by and by these two must marry." To this he added, HINNAIM NAMEN, HINNAIM MICHEN, MATTA CUTS: that is, By and by it should see, and by and by it should eat, but not speak. "Also Pecksuot, (continues Winslow,) being a man of greater stature than the captain, told him though he were a great captain, yet he was but a little man: and, said he, though I be no sachem, yet I am a man of great strength and courage. These things the captain observed, yet bare with patience for the present."

It will be seen, in what we have related, as well as what we are about to add, that Thomas Morton's account, in some of the main facts, agrees with that of Winslow. From the latter it appears that Standish, after considerable maneuvering, could get advantage over but few of the Indians. At length having got Peksuot and Wittuwamat "both together, with another man, and a youth of some eighteen years of age, which was brother to Wittuwamat, and, villain like, trod in his steps, daily putting many tricks upon the weaker sort of men, and having about as many of his own company in a room with them, gave the word to his men, and, the door being fast shut, began himself with Pecksuot, and, snatching his own knife from his neck, though with much

"The Panieses are men of great courage and wisedome, and to these also the Deuill appeareth more familiarly than to others, and as wee conceiue, maketh couenant with them to preserue them from death by wounds with arrows, knives, hatchets, &c." Winslow's Rela

tion. In speaking of the origin of columet, Charlevoix says, some Indians told him that i was given by the sun to Panis, a nation upon the Missouri. Voyage dans l'Amerique.

struggling, and killed him therewith-the point whereof he had made as sharp as a needle, and ground the back also to an edge. Wittuwamet and the other man the rest killed, and took the youth, whom the captain caused to be hanged.” We could now wish this bloody tale were finished, but we have promised to keep close to the record. Mr. Winslow continues, "But it is incredible how many wounds these two panieses received before they died, not making any fearful noise, but catching at their weapons, and striving to the last.

"Hobbamock stood by all this time, and meddled not, observing how our men demeaned themselves in this action." After the affray was ended, he said to Standish, "Yesterday Pecksuot bragged of his own strength and stature, said, though you were a great captain, yet you were but a little man but to-day I see you are big enough to lay him on the ground."

Standish was now sent to a company of Weston's men, who ordered them to kill the Indians that were among them. They killed two. Himself with some of his men killed another, at another place. As they were pursuing this business, intending to kill all they could lay hands upon, "through the negligence of one man, an Indian escaped, who discovered [disclosed] and crossed their proceedings."

Joined by some of Mr. Weston's men, Standish discovered a few Indians, and pursued them. Standish gained a hill which the Indians also strove to occupy, and who, after shooting a few arrows, fled. "Whereupon Hobbamock cast off his coat, and being a known paniese, theirs being now killed, chased them so fast, as our people were not able to hold way with him." One who made a stand to shoot Standish had his arm broken by a shot, which is all the advantage claimed by the English. The Indians got into a swamp, and after some bravadoing on both sides, the parties separated. After assisting the settlers of Wessaguscus to leave the place, the English returned to Plimouth, taking along the head of Wittuwamet, which they set up in their fort.

Meanwhile the Indian that followed Prat from Wessaguscus, as he returned from Manomet, called at Plimouth in a friendly manner, and was there seized and put in irons. Being asked if he knew the head of Wittuwamet, said he did, and "looked piteously" upon it. "Then he confessed the plot," and said his sachem, Obtakiest, had been drawn into it by the importunity of all the people. He denied any hand in it himself, and begged his life might be spared. Said he was not a Massachuset, but only resided as a stranger among them. Hobomok "also gave a good report of him, and besought for him; but was bribed so to do it." They finally concluded to spare him, "the rather, because we desired he might carry a message to Obtakiest." The message they charged him with was this, that they had never intended to deal so with him, until they were forced to it by their treachery, and, therefore, they might thank themselves for their own overthrow; and as he had now began, if he persisted in his course, “his country should not hold him:" that he should forthwith send to Plimouth "the three Englishmen he had, and not kill them."†

The English heard nothing from Obtakiest for a long time; at length he sent a woman to them, (probably no man would venture,) to tell them he was sorry that the English were killed, before he heard from them, also that he wished for peace, but none of his men durst come to treat about it. The English learned from this woman, that he was in great consternation, "having forsaken his dwelling, and daily removed from place to place, expecting when we would take further vengeance on him." The terror was now general among them, and many, as we have elsewhere said, died through fear and want. To this dismal narrative Mr. Winslow adds, "And certainly

* This, we suppose, is the affair to which President Allen alludes, in his American Biog raphy, (2d ed.) when he says, "he [Hobomok] fought bravely by his [Standish's] side, in 1623." If standing and looking on be fighting, then did Hobomok fight bravely on this

occasion.

Morton, in his New Canaan, 111, says, these three men went to reside with Chikataubut; hence Morton very reasonably suggests, that if the Plimouth people intended the men of Wessaguscus any good, why did they not first see that all of them were out of danger, before beginning war?