Mayflower

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    Bradford and Winslow recorded the agreement with the Pokanoket sachem as follows:
That neither he nor any of his should injure or do hurt to any of our people.
And if any of his did hurt to any of ours, he should send the offender, that we might punish him.
That if any of our tools were taken away when our people were at work, he should cause them to be restored, and if ours did any harm to any of his, we would do the like to him.
If any did unjustly war against him, we would aid him; if any did war against us, he should aid us.
He should send to his neighbor confederates, to certify them of this, that they might not wrong us, but might be likewise comprised in the conditions of peace.
That when their men came to us, they should leave their bows and arrows behind them, as we should do our pieces when we came to them.
    Once the agreement had been completed, Massasoit was escorted from the settlement, and his brother was given a similar reception. Quadequina quickly noticed a disparity that his higher-ranking brother had not chosen to comment on. Even though the Indians had been required to lay down their bows, the Pilgrims continued to carry their muskets—a clear violation of the treaty they had just signed with Massasoit. Quadequina “made signs of dislike, that [the guns] should be carried away.” The English could not help but admit that the young Indian had a point, and the muskets were put aside.
    Squanto and Samoset spent the night with the Pilgrims while Massasoit and his men, who had brought along their wives and children, slept in the woods, just a half mile away. Massasoit promised to return in a little more than a week to plant corn on the southern side of Town Brook. Squanto, it was agreed, would remain with the English. As a final gesture of friendship, the Pilgrims sent the sachem and his people a large kettle of English peas, “which pleased them well, and so they went their way.”
    After almost five months of uncertainty and fear, the Pilgrims had finally established diplomatic relations with the Native leader who, as far as they could tell, ruled this portion of New England. But as they were soon to find out, Massasoit’s power was not as pervasive as they would have liked. The Pokanokets had decided to align themselves with the English, but many of Massasoit’s allies had yet to be convinced that the Pilgrims were good for New England.
    The next day, Squanto, who after a six-year hiatus was back to living on his native shore, left to fish for eels. At that time of year, the eels lay dormant in the mud, and after wading out into the cold water of a nearby tidal creek, he used his feet to “trod them out.” That evening he returned with so many eels that he could barely lift them all with one hand.
    Squanto had named himself for the Indian spirit of darkness, who often assumed the form of snakes and eels. It was no accident that he used eels to cement his bond with the Pilgrims. That night they ate them with relish, praising the eels as “fat and sweet,” and Squanto was on his way to becoming the one person in New England they could not do without.
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    Two weeks later, on April 5, the Mayflower, her empty hold ballasted with stones from the Plymouth Harbor shore, set sail for England. Like the Pilgrims, the sailors had been decimated by disease. Jones had lost his boatswain, his gunner, three quartermasters, the cook, and more than a dozen sailors. He had also lost a cooper, but not to illness. John Alden had decided to stay in Plymouth.
    The Mayflower made excellent time on her voyage back across the Atlantic. The same westerlies that had battered her the previous fall now pushed her along, and she arrived at her home port of Rotherhithe, just down the Thames from London, on May 6, 1621—less than half the time it had taken her to sail to America. Jones learned that his wife, Josian, had given birth to a son named John. Soon Jones and the Mayflower were on their way to France for a cargo of salt.
    The voyage to America was to claim yet another life. Perhaps still suffering the effects of that desperate winter in Plymouth, Jones died after his return from France on March 5, 1622. For the next two years the Mayflower lay idle, not far from her captain’s grave on the banks of the Thames. By 1624, just four years after her historic voyage to America, the ship had become a rotting hulk. Her owners, including Jones’s widow