Mayflower

ground.”
    But the killing had just begun. Wituwamat’s brother was quickly hanged. There was another company of Pilgrims elsewhere in the settlement, and Standish sent word to them to kill any Indians who happened to be with them. As a result, two more were put to death. In the meantime, Standish and his cohorts found another Indian and killed him.
    With Hobbamock and some of Weston’s men in tow, Standish headed out in search of more Indians. They soon came across sachem Obtakiest and a group of Massachusett warriors. Situated between the English and the Indians was a rise of land that would afford a strategic advantage, and both groups began to run for it. Standish reached it first, and the Indians quickly scattered along the edge of the nearby forest, each man hiding behind a tree. Arrows were soon whizzing through the brisk afternoon air, most of them aimed at Standish and Hobbamock. Being a pniese, and therefore supposedly invulnerable, Hobbamock looked scornfully at the Indians behind the trees. Throwing off his coat, he began to chase after them, and most of them fled so quickly that none of the English could keep up with them.
    There was a powwow who stood his ground and aimed an arrow at Standish. They later learned that he had been one of the original instigators of the plot against them. The captain and another Englishman fired simultaneously at the powwow, and the bullets broke his arm. With that, the remaining Indians, which included sachem Obtakiest, ran for the shelter of a nearby swamp, where they paused to hurl taunts and expletives at the Plymouth captain. Standish challenged the sachem to fight him man-to-man, but after a final exchange of insults, Obtakiest and the others disappeared into the swamp.
    Several women had been captured during the scuffle with Pecksuot and Wituwamat. Now that the killing spree had finally come to an end, Standish decided to release the women, even though he knew there were at least three of Weston’s men still living with the Indians. If he had kept these women as hostages, Standish could easily have bargained for the Englishmen’s lives. But killing Indians, not saving lives, appears to have been the captain’s chief priority at Wessagussett, and all three Englishmen were later executed.
    Now that Standish’s terrifying whirlwind of violence had come to an apparent end, the vast majority of the Wessagussett survivors decided to sail for Monhegan. The Pilgrims waited until the Swan had cleared Massachusetts-Bay, then turned their shallop south for Plymouth, with the head of Wituwamat wrapped in a piece of white linen.
    Â 
    Standish arrived at Plymouth to a hero’s welcome. After being “received with joy,” the captain and his men marched up to the newly completed fort, where Wituwamat’s head was planted on a pole on the fort’s roof. As it turned out, the fort contained its first prisoner: an Indian who had been sent in pursuit of Phineas Pratt. Unable to find Pratt, who had saved his own life by becoming so hopelessly lost, the Indian had continued past Plymouth to Manomet, then backtracked to the English settlement in hopes of obtaining some information about the Pilgrims. By this time, Standish had already departed for Wessagussett, and suspicious of the Indian’s motives, Bradford had thrown him in irons until the captain’s return.
    The Indian was released from his shackles and brought out for examination. After looking “piteously on the head” of Wituwamat, the captive confessed everything. The plot had not originally been sachem Obtakiest’s idea. There were five—Wituwamat, Peksuot, and three powwows, including the one Standish had injured at Wessagussett—who had convinced their sachem to launch an attack against the Pilgrims. Bradford released the prisoner on the condition that he carry a message to Obtakiest: If the sachem dared to continue in “the like courses,” Bradford vowed, “he would never suffer him or his to rest in peace, till he had utterly consumed them.”
    It took many days for the Pilgrims to receive an answer. Finally a Massachusett woman appeared at Plymouth with Obtakiest’s response. She explained that her sachem was eager to make peace with the Pilgrims, but none of his men were willing to approach the settlement. Ever since the massacre at Wessagussett, Obtakiest had kept on the move, fearful that Standish might return and “take