|
Trail leading to some of the freshwater springs |
Myles Standish, William Bradford,
Stephen Hopkins and Edward Tilley, along with twelve others, set out on
the first significant exploration on November 15. They had only
been walking a mile, when they saw ahead of them about six men and a dog
coming their way. At first they thought it was some of the
Mayflower's crew, but soon realized it was Indians. The Indians
ran into the forest, and the Pilgrims followed after, hoping to chase
them down and perhaps make contact. They followed the footprints
and trail through the forest, until night fell and they stopped to make
camp for the night.
The next day they continued on,
trying to follow the Indians' trails, but ended up just wandering
through hills and valleys full of thick underbrush. They could not
locate any Indians, or even their houses or fields. As mid-day
came, they became very tired, hungry and thirsty. They hadn't
thought of bringing any significant supply of food or water: in fact all
the sixteen men had were a few swigs of aqua-vitae and some biscuit and
Holland cheese. They searched for a long time for some fresh
water. When they finally found a freshwater spring, they sat down
and "drunk our first New England water with as much delight as ever we
drunk drink in all our lives." Walking on, they found another
pond, and then some abandoned corn fields that had been worked by the
Indians.
|
The Pamet River in the foreground, and Corn Hill
in the background. |
On the side of a hill, the
Pilgrim explorers found an old kettle from a European ship, some old
planks, and a mound of sand where something had been recently buried.
They dug it up, and found it
to be a basket with 36 ears of Indian corn,
"some yellow, and some red, and others mixed with blue." The
Indians stored their corn seed in large baskets buried in the ground, to
be used for the next season's planting. The Pilgrims realized they
had no way of getting any native seed for the next year, so they took
what they found, justifying the theft by saying they were just
borrowing: they would pay back the owner of the corn as soon as they
could determine who the owner was. They called the place "Corn
Hill." They continued on just a little further and quickly looked
over the Pamet River, before returning to the freshwater pond for the
night. It rained heavily that nightThe next morning,
they planned to return to the Mayflower, but got lost for a time
on the hike out of the woods. While they were wandering around
trying to find the path, they came across an Indian snare with acorns
spread around the ground, meant to catch deer. Unaware of what
everyone was looking at, William Bradford came up and stepped right on
the trap, snaring his leg and causing a good laugh for everyone.
The Pilgrims themselves managed to kill a few partridges for food, but
weren't able to kill any of the deer that they saw. Finally they
returned to within view of the Mayflower, shot off their guns, and
the longboat came to bring them back onboard to the other passengers
eager to hear about their adventures ashore.
|
A typical pond in the area of Cape Cod that the
Pilgrims were exploring |
The view from the top of Corn Hill, looking east. |
|
