Mayflower

Massasoit, who admitted that the Narragansetts were correct but “that he was not subdued by war, which himself and his father had maintained against the Narragansetts, but God, he said, subdued me by a plague, which swept away my people, and forced me to yield.” The Narragansetts complained that Massasoit now “seemed to revolt from his loyalties under the shelter of the English at Plymouth,” The Complete Writings of Roger Williams, vol. 6, pp. 316, 317. Eric Johnson cites Roger Williams’s statement that “[a] small bird is called Sachem” in his Ph.D. dissertation, “‘Some by Flatteries and Others by Threatenings’: Political Strategies among Native Americans of Seventeenth-Century Southern New England, ” p. 69.
    William Wood’s account of the Indians’ first sighting of a European ship is included with several other first-contact accounts in William Simmons’s Spirit of the New England Tribes, p. 66. I have written about the voyages of Verrazano, Gosnold, Champlain, and Harlow to New England in Abram’s Eyes, pp. 35–51. For an account of Martin Pring’s visit to the Cape in 1603 and a convincing argument that he built his fort in Truro rather than, as is often claimed, Plymouth, see David Beers Quinn’s England and the Discovery of America, 1481–1620. pp. 425–27. On Epenow’s experiences in England and his return to Martha’s Vineyard, see John Smith’s The General History in The Complete Works, vol. 3, in which Smith states: “[B]eing a man of so great a stature, he was showed up and down London for money as a wonder,” p. 403. Also see Carolyn Foreman’s Indians Abroad, 1493–1938 for a more general discussion of Indian abductions. Phineas Pratt provides an account of the survivors of the 1615 French shipwreck in “A Declaration of the Affairs of the English People That First Inhabited New England” in MHS Collections, vol. 4, 4th ser., pp. 479–80. Thomas Dermer tells of rescuing the French sailors from captivity in a December 27, 1619, letter in Sir Ferdinando Gorges of Maine, edited by James Phinney Baxter, pp. 219–22, n. 276. Bradford also speaks of the French shipwreck and the Indians’ belief that the Mayflower had been sent to revenge the abduction and killing of the sailors in OPP, pp. 83–84.
    For an account of Squanto’s life prior to his meeting the Pilgrims, see Jerome Dunn’s “Squanto before He Met the Pilgrims” in Bulletin of the Massachusetts Archaeological Society, Spring 1993, pp. 38–42. Thomas Dermer speaks of the Pokanokets’ “inveterate malice to the English” in a December 27, 1619, letter in Sir Ferdinando Gorges of Maine, edited by James Phinney Baxter, pp. 219–22, n. 276; this letter describes the explorer’s visit, with Squanto as his guide, to Pokanoket. On Squanto, I am indebted to Neal Salisbury’s “Squanto: Last of the Patuxets” in Struggle and Survival in Colonial America, edited by David Sweet and Gary Nash, pp. 228–46. In his December 27, 1619, letter, Thomas Dermer states that he left Squanto with friends in Sawahquatooke, just to the north of Nemasket on the Titicut, now Taunton, River; see the map in OPP, p. 306. Concerning Squanto’s motivations, Salisbury writes, “[H]e sought…a reconstituted Patuxet band under his own leadership, located near its traditional home,” p. 243. On Hobbamock/Cheepi/Squanto, I have relied on Kathleen Bragdon’s chapter “Cosmology,” pp. 184–99, in Native People of Southern New England, especially pp. 189–90.
    CHAPTER FOUR- Beaten with Their Own Rod
    It has generally been assumed that the authorship of MR was divided between Bradford and Edward Winslow, who clearly wrote some of the later chapters—for example, the description of his journey, along with Stephen Hopkins, to Pokanoket—and whose initials are on the final letter describing the First Thanksgiving. However, the point of view and phrasing of the earlier portions of MR seem to point to Bradford being the author. The descriptions of Bradford getting his foot caught in a deer trap, of the First Encounter, and of their desperate boat journey into Plymouth Harbor exemplify the self-deprecating and yet always lively voice of the author of OPP. As a result, I have taken the liberty of attributing several of the passages of MR to Bradford.
    For an