Medford Historical Society Papers, Volume 24.

Responding to your question as to what I know or think about the visit of Miles Standish to these parts in September, 1621—well, I didn't know much, but your request set me to reading, as I suppose you expected it to do. And I began to appreciate something of the amount of special skill and patch-work labor necessary to enable you even to ask the question. But our interest in Medford makes it quite worth while to follow out your leads as to the first white men on the site of our city, and how they came to be there.

In the first place, none of the chroniclers of the day says directly that Standish was on the expedition anyway. Governor Bradford says they dispatched on September 18, ten men with Squanto for their guide. He names no one else. The author of ‘Mourt's Relation’ gives no other names. But the latter does speak of the ‘Captaine,’ and we are well persuaded that no such expedition would have sallied forth during his lifetime without the leadership of that doughty little pepperpot. Furthermore, as the writer of the ‘Relation’ speaks always of ‘our’ doings in the expedition, I suppose that we may conclude that Winslow was of the party—of course, assuming that the future governor wrote this portion of the history.

Apparently it is from the ‘Relation,’ mainly, that we must get particulars of the journey: how that, setting forth in the shallop on the eighteenth, they found the way longer than they expected (being as they estimated it close to twenty leagues), so that they did not arrive within the bay until late on the nineteenth; how they landed on the twentieth on one side of the bay, where they made a treaty with Obbatinewat, after which they sailed across the bay, and there anchoring, slept once more aboard ship; then on the twenty-first, how they made afoot their memorable journey which particularly interests us, to the hill where Nanepashemit had lived, thence to the fort in the bottom lands, and a mile further on to fort on the hill where Nanepashemit was killed. [p. 63]

As to my own reflections thereon, two or three items stand prominently forth. How came the Pilgrims to be here at this time? Bradford says the party was sent to spy out and report upon the country of the Massachusetts, and to make a peace treaty with that tribe, by whom they had been more or less disturbed, and to whom Squanto gave a bad name. Incidentally, never forgetting the main chance, they were to do such trading as they found practicable with the natives.

Our Pilgrim forbears seem to have displayed towards their Indian neighbors no thought of conquest or of hostility of any kind, seeking, as it appears, rather a peaceful co-operation and friendliness, wherein they certainly showed as much wisdom as philanthropy.

And if they lost no opportunity for a bargain, nevertheless their commercial operations seem to have been conducted with the most scrupulous conscientiousness. My own feeling is that this quality had as great a military as moral value.

Secondly, it appears their Indian neighbors were possessed of a wholesome respect, at least, for the visitors, which we are told arose partly from their terrors of the white man's gunpowder, and partly from a suspicion that he was able to let loose upon them anew the plague from which they had aforetime suffered so severely.

As to the report made by the expedition on the territory they visited we shall heartily agree with their conclusions. In this connection their is plenty of room for sober reflection. Beyond all doubt the place for a great settlement is Boston and not Plymouth, and the adventurers were shrewd enough to recognize that fact immediately. For in spite of their prime object of isolation from foreign entanglements, they never had any idea of giving up communication with the home country. That they desired to make as easy as possible, and that meant, of course, a harbor.

They missed Boston harbor for various reasons, perhaps chiefly because they had never heard of it; and [p. 64] you will remember Professor Brigham's hint that only a blinding snowstorm hid Barnstable harbor from the adventurers on that memorable expedition from Provincetown which finally found and selected Plymouth. Barnstable as a harbor would appear far more attractive than Plymouth. What if it had not snowed on that boisterous December day?

But here again, those of us who stand by providential dispensation will find a text. Plymouth was practically a deserted village site cleared for settlement and in some part made ready for their habitation. Could they have survived anywhere else on this coast that first terrible winter? The later colonists who had had a chance to hear of it, and better opportunities to settle about it, were quick enough to find the bay with its ‘hundred islands,’ and its two navigable inlets which the ‘Relation’ says ‘we’ heard of from the Indians but did not enter.

If I have not properly answered your question let me know unless, indeed, you prefer the ills you know to the possibilities you can only guess at.

Very truly yours,