The Mayflower and the Pilgrims' New World* by Nathaniel Philbrick

be counted. The Pilgrims also tried to conceal the fact that so many of them had died by secretly burying the dead at night. They did such a good job of hiding their loved ones’ remains that it was not until more than a hundred years later, when a violent rainstorm washed away the topsoil and revealed some human bones, that the location of these hastily dug graves was finally identified.
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    â—†â—†â—† On Friday, February 16, one of the Pilgrims was hidden in the reeds of a salt creek about a mile and a half from the plantation, hunting ducks. That afternoon, the duck hunter found himself closer to an Indian than any of them had so far come.
    He was lying amid the cattails when a group of twelve Indians marched past him on the way to the settlement. In the woods behind him, he heard “the noise of many more.” Once the Indians had safely passed, he sprang to his feet and ran for the plantation to sound the alarm. Miles standish and Francis Cook were working in the woods when they heard the signal. They dropped their tools, ran down the hill, and armed themselves, but once again, the Indians never came. Later that day, when standish and Cook returned to get their tools, they discovered that they’d disappeared. That night, they saw “a great fire” near where the duck hunter had first spotted the Indians.
    The next day, a meeting was called “for the establishing of military orders amongst ourselves.” Not surprisingly, Miles standish was officially named their captain. In the midst of the meeting, someone realized that two Indians were standing on the top of what became known as Watson’s Hill on the other side of Town Brook, about a quarter mile to the south. The meeting immediately ended, and the men hurried to get their muskets. When the Pilgrims reassembled under the direction of their newly designated captain, the Indians were still standing on the hill.
    The two groups stared at each other across the valley of Town Brook. The Indians gestured for them to approach. The Pilgrims, however, made it clear that they wanted the Indians to come to them. Finally, standish and stephen Hopkins, with only one musket between them, began to make their way across the brook. Before they started up the hill, they laid the musket down on the ground “in sign of peace.” But “the savages,” Bradford wrote, “would not tarry their coming.” They ran off to the shouts of “a great many more” hidden on the other side of the hill. The Pilgrims feared an assault might be imminent, “but no more came in fight.”
    Once standish and Hopkins returned home, they decided it was time to mount “our great ordnances” on the hill. On Wednesday of the following week, Christopher Jones supervised the transportation of the “great guns” from the Mayflower —close to half a dozen iron cannons that ranged between four and eight feet in length and weighed as much as half a ton. With the cannons in place, each capable of hurling iron balls as big as three and a half inches in diameter as far as 1,700 yards, what was once a ramshackle collection of houses was on its way to becoming a well-defended fortress.

    â—† Although the architectural details in this drawing are inaccurate (for example, the first houses had no chimneys), this nineteenth-century depiction of the Pilgrim settlement gives a good impression of Plymouth’s topography and landscape.
    Jones and the sailors had brought along a freshly killed goose, crane, and mallard, and once the day’s work was completed, they all sat down to a feast and were, in Bradford’s words, “kindly and friendly together.” Jones had originally intended to return to England as soon as the Pilgrims found a settlement site. But once disease began to ravage his crew, he realized that he must remain in Plymouth Harbor “till he saw his men begin to recover.”
    In early March, there