Mayflower

having difficulties of his own. Soon after his meeting with Awashonks, he wrote an account of the negotiations and gave it to the sachem’s son Peter, who left for Plymouth to speak with the authorities. But on June 27, when Bradford’s army arrived at Pocasset, just across the bay from Aquidneck Island, Church had not yet received any word from Peter. Church informed Bradford of the Sakonnets’ willingness to serve under him in the fight against Philip, but Bradford would have none of it. He needed to have the official sanction of Governor Winslow before he allowed Church to command a company of Sakonnets. Until he had that, Awashonks and her people must get themselves to Sandwich at the base of Cape Cod, where they would be beyond Philip’s influence and reach, and await the governor’s decision.
    Even though he was not happy with the major’s orders, Church urged the Sakonnets to comply. He would go to Plymouth and find out what had happened to Peter. In a week, he promised, he would meet them in Sandwich with a commission from Governor Winslow. And so, with a Cape Indian provided by Bradford leading them with a white flag of truce, the Sakonnets set out for Sandwich.
    But Church was fated to suffer a host of additional delays. Given the dangers of traveling overland, he could not simply ride to Plymouth, and he was forced to accompany Bradford’s army on an unsuccessful hunt for Philip on Mount Hope. Not until Friday, July 7—several days past the deadline he had promised the Sakonnets—did Church finally reach Plymouth.
    To his immense relief, he learned that after a thorough interrogation of Awashonks’s son Peter, Governor Winslow had accepted the provisional agreement Church had reached with the Sakonnets. “His honor smilingly told him,” Church later remembered, “‘that he should not want commission if he would accept it, nor yet good Englishmen enough to make up a good army.’” It had taken a month to arrange, but it looked as if Church would at last have his own company of Indians.
    He decided he needed only half a dozen or so Englishmen, and in just a few hours he had rounded up a group that included thirty-two-year-old Jabez Howland, son of Mayflower passenger John Howland, and Church’s brother-in-law twenty-eight-year-old Nathaniel South-worth. They mounted their horses and, after riding all that night, arrived in Sandwich just a few hours before daylight. The Sakonnets, they learned, had departed several days before for parts unknown. Church feared that Awashonks had taken offense at yet another broken English promise; adding to his worries was the presence of a considerable number of hostile Indians in the region under the leadership of Totoson, the destroyer of Dartmouth and Clark’s garrison in Plymouth. After a few hours’ sleep, Church and his men set out to catch up with Awashonks and her people.
    He thought it likely that they had headed back for home and were following the western shore of Buzzards Bay toward Sakonnet. After riding more than twenty-six miles, Church and his men came upon a bluff with a panoramic view of a bay that is presently the outer portion of New Bedford Harbor. Ahead, they heard “a great noise” ; quickly dismounting from their horses, they began to creep through the underbrush until they had come to the bluff’s edge. Below them was modern Pope Beach and a sight that Church never forgot: “[They] saw a vast company of Indians, of all ages and sexes, some on horseback running races, some at football, some catching eels and flatfish in the water, some clamming, etc.” Church soon learned that these were indeed the Sakonnets and that Awashonks and her warriors were exceedingly pleased to see him once again.
    They found the Sakonnet sachem at an open-sided shelter facing the bay. As Church and his men watched the red sun sink over the hills upon which the city of New Bedford would one day be built, the Sakonnets served them a supper that included “a curious young bass in one dish, eels and flatfish in a second, and shellfish in a third.” By the time they’d finished eating, a large pile of firewood had been assembled in front of Awashonks’s lean-to, and soon the bonfire was lit, “all the Indians, great and small, gather[ing] in a ring round it.”
    Many of the Sakonnets had participated in the war dance witnessed by Mary Rowlandson prior to the