- ton was visited, and the close of the first summer found the affairs of
Plymouth in a very flourishing condition.
In November, 1621, a reinforcement of thirty-five emigrants arrived from England in the ship Fortune, and the first fruits of the labors of the early colonists, consisting of timber and furs, were sent home in her. The second winter passed over successfully, but the spring of 1622 opened gloomily. A terrible massacre of the whites had taken place in Virginia, and, encouraged by the success of their brethren in the south, the Narragansetts of Massachusetts sent a message of defiance to the colonists of Plymouth, thinking that the time had come to possess themselves of the goods of the intruders in their land. The war-challenge of the red men consisted in the sending to the camp of the enemy of a bundle of arrows bound together with a rattlesnake's skin; the reply of the English was the return of the same skin full of powder and ball—a silent indication that they were ready for the arrows, which the Indians did not fail rightly to interpret.
A lull ensued, and the English were beginning to hope that the real exchange of arrows and shot would not come off, when there arrived from England a little party of emigrants who were not Puritans, and who, while they consumed the stores of their fellow-countrymen, did nothing to help to replace them, and, moreover, imbittered their relations with the Indians by stealing their corn and carrying off their women. After much mischief had been done, the governor, Bradford, who had taken the place of Carver on his death in the previous spring, succeeded in weeding out the evil-doers from among his flock, but not, unfortunately, in warding off the results of their misconduct. At their young settlement of Weymouth, on the northern shores of the Bay of Plymouth, the new colonists behaved in a manner which excited alike the anger and contempt of the natives. It was decided that they should be exterminated, and as their white comrades at Plymouth would doubtless try to avenge them, these must be slain at the same time.
All was ready for the massacre of both parties, when Massasoit, who had made the first treaty with Carver, was taken dangerously ill. Knowing nothing of the plot laid by him against them, the English of Plymouth sent two of their members, Edward Winslow and John Hamden, to express their sympathy with him, and, if possible, relieve his sufferings. Arrived, all unsuspicious of the danger they were running, at the village of Pokanoket, on Rhode Island, the two Christian emissaries found Massasoit in what seemed a dying condition, but Winslow suggested several remedies, which
