Nothing in the annals of Winslow family history suggested that Edward Winslow would emigrate and live in a Puritan religious settlement 3000 miles away from Europe. Everything in his early life was tied to the thriving market town of Droitwich in the English Midlands, where his father was a grain, pea and salt merchant. Although father and son Edward tried to make their way into the town’s elite, they were never accepted as honest and reliable men. Thanks to trade and cloth manufacture, England was a rapidly developing country in the late 16th century and Droitwich was still quite an important trading centre in a mixed Catholic-Protestant environment. Of course, the Winslows were staunch Protestants and Protestantism meant everything to Edward.
Although his father was not a man of education, he sent young Edward to the elite royal school in Worchester. Later, the young man took a job in a London printing house, but he did not last long there, and in 1617 he went to Leiden in the Netherlands to work for Thomas Brewer, the most notorious Puritan activist who smuggled Puritan literature into England. Edward’s decision to leave London for Leiden was an unusual one, for it made him an outcast from his own country, and Puritanism finally shaped his life.
The Puritans were Protestants, convinced that the English Reformation was not strong enough to sweep away the Roman Catholic clutter. Queen Elizabeth returned the Church of England from Roman Catholicism to the fold of the Anglican Church founded by Henry VIII. However, she made few concessions, fearing that the population, which had been thoroughly shaken by the Reformation movement, would become too radicalised, and did not side with hardline Protestantism. But many Protestant ministers who had been driven out of the country by the Catholic Mary Tudor and had taken refuge in Geneva now began to return to England, fertilised by the ideas of strict Calvinism.
The question of whether the state should determine the form and functioning of the Church or whether it should rule the state has become a matter of fierce controversy. The Puritans wanted to purge the Anglican Church of the other religious practices it had inherited from Catholicism. They argued that the Anglican Church was not reformed enough. But King Charles I decreed that anyone who did not accept its ritual practices would be excommunicated from the Church of England, and this applied especially to the Puritans. So if you were a conscious Puritan, you either risked imprisonment and death, or you chose to leave England, and many chose the latter.
Edward arrived in Holland in the late spring of 1617, during the Little Ice Age, when winters were very cold and full of snow. At this time, Holland was on the front line against the Catholic Spanish Empire, against which the Protestant provinces of Holland had rebelled in 1566. The Calvinist University of Leiden was known for its freedom of speech and as a centre for printing Puritan books. The city administration also financially supported all the reformist foreign churches – English, French and German – that sought refuge behind the city walls.
Edward joined a small separatist Puritan community of exiles from England, led by John Robinson and the printer William Brewster, and three years later he was ready to cross the stormy ocean to America to practise his Puritanism in peace. He married in Leiden in 1618, so he did not travel alone to the New World. His chosen wife was Elizabeth Barker, who shared his religious ideas.
The first great advocate of English colonisation of America was the Protestant clergyman Richard Hakluyt, with the idea that Protestant colonies should be established on the other side of the ocean. He persuaded the English King to allow him in 1606 to settle the east coast of America between latitudes 45 and 38, thus establishing new outposts of the Protestant faith there against the Pope’s wishes.
As early as 1607, the colony of Virginia was founded and Jamestown was the first permanently settled English settlement in America. Meanwhile, the French were already establishing settlements in Canada, and the Spanish in Florida and California, so England had to hurry if it was to secure its influence on the new continent.
Edward Winslow’s thought world was involved in the anti-Catholic interpretation of world events, and when he got married he was already making plans for a scouting party of the ablest members of the Puritan community to go across the ocean and prepare everything for the arrival of the rest of the community. This idea came at the right moment. Although they enjoyed religious freedom in Holland, life for the Puritans was very difficult. They worked the lowest paid jobs, suffered hunger and were in dire need.
In February 1620, the Puritan community in Leiden decided. They sold everything they had and waited to leave. The expedition was to sail to America from the port of Southhampton. There was not enough money to hire more ships, so the Puritan community decided that only the strongest and healthiest members should go. In the end, 50 members of the community were chosen, mainly families, to sail across the ocean. In the late July days of 1620, the 200 or so remaining members of the Puritan community who had stayed in Holland escorted the departees as they sailed from the coastal town of Delftshaven on the Speedwell to Southampton, England.
Waiting for them was the three-masted Mayflower, a 180-tonne cargo ship carrying wine between Bordeaux and England. It was certainly not suitable for ocean crossings, but for the money they had, there was no other ship to be had.
Departure across the Atlantic
On 5 August, both ships set sail for America, but Speedwell continued to leak water despite being repaired twice, and the ships returned to Plymouth. On 5 September, the Mayflower sailed alone and took some of the Speedwell’s passengers. The rest of the crew simply gave up and returned home. On board the Mayflower were 46 Puritans, 30 other Protestants, a few servants, 36 crew members, two dogs, a few domestic animals and the bare necessities for survival in an unknown land.
All these delays meant that Mayflower would not arrive in America in the autumn, but already in the winter. Nobody knew that the ground freezes here at the beginning of November and that planting is only possible in spring. In fact, they knew nothing about the country they were going to. They did not take fishing nets or fishing poles, nor did they take stilts for walking in deep snow. They did not know that there were no towns or inns in the new land where they could warm themselves, and that no one would be there to greet them when they arrived. Above all, they were unaware of the vastness of the land.
Eight years after the Mayflower set sail, the philosopher Blaise Pascal was born. One of his most famous sayings about America was: “The eternal silence of this endless landscape frightens me.” And that was what all immigrants soon felt.
The journey to America took two months. The passengers were crammed into a very narrow space and did nothing but pray, breathe in the sea air and listen to the whistling wind.
Edward Winslow and his wife Elizabeth were overjoyed. At last they will come into a new and uncorrupted world, and no one will persecute their descendants for their deep faith. Compared to the cynicism of Europe, the religious wars, the tyranny and despotism of the rulers, even the wilderness of the New World seemed attractive to them. Edward hoped that, in addition to his brother Gilbert, a carpenter who also travelled on the Mayflower, he would soon be joined by his three brothers who remained in Europe. Winslow also took with him two servants, who expected Winslow to cede them some of his land after seven years of service.
The Puritans were religious people, the Bible as they understood it was their holy book, and they followed it exactly. They gathered on deck every day at every change of watch, reading psalms and praying that the ship would bring them safely to America. They were convinced that they were making the same journey as Moses, who crossed the Red Sea and led his people to the Promised Land. If they landed safely, it would mean that God was on their side.
Although there were supposed to be no pregnant women on the ship due to the arduous journey, there were. Three pregnant women were smuggled on board and Elizabeth Hopkins soon gave birth to a baby boy, whom her parents named Oceanus. The other two pregnant women suffered. Everyone knew that seasickness would be the biggest problem during the voyage. But an even bigger problem was the humidity. All the clothes were constantly wet and not drying, so they soon started to mildew.
The Puritans did not have good relations with the crew either. Sailors were not religious, swearing was commonplace, and many sailors wondered if they would make it to their destination alive.
Halfway there, the Mayflower was caught in a terrible storm and the ship was tossed back and forth. The masts began to creak suspiciously, which was a very dangerous sign. Passengers resorted to prayer, husbands embraced their wives, children huddled close to their parents, waiting for the ship to break up. Then the main mast broke and had to be reinforced with iron bolts.
As the Mayflower began to approach America, passengers felt the atmosphere cooling down considerably. Then a young boy, just 21 years old, died. This was the only fatality of the voyage. As his body, wrapped in linen, was lowered into the sea, the sounds of birds were heard. Sailors were able to tell that this was a sign that land was no more than 200 miles away. On 9 November 1620, they saw a strip of land, forested to the very sea. They called it Cape Cod.
Although the ship’s captain, Thomas Jones, was an experienced sailor, he had never sailed outside European waters. He was afraid of the high waves crashing against the shore and the pebble dunes where the ship could run aground. The Mayflower was bound for the English colony of Virginia, founded in 1607, where they were to establish a community of life in the northern part of the colony. Although the captain originally intended to continue south, he decided to anchor off Cape Cod, where Provincetown now stands, on 11 November 1620 because of rough seas.
After two days, the women dared to go ashore, wash and clean their clothes. Discipline problems immediately arose. The Puritans were joined on the ship as they left England by 30 other Protestants, mainly craftsmen, carpenters, blacksmiths, tradesmen and others in the useful professions, who did not share the same fervent faith as the Puritans. They were convinced that by setting foot on the soil of the New World they were freed from all obligations and could do as they pleased. Some of them were already making rebellious speeches.
The problem for the Puritans was that they had no written permission from the English Crown to establish their colony. So they decided to make an agreement before disembarking that everyone would have to obey the same laws. It was clear that the people had to be disciplined and that they had to respect authority, otherwise the colony would not be able to survive.
This agreement, which came to be known as the Mayflower Compact, shows that some of the more educated Puritans – Edward Winslow among them – knew little about early 17th century social theory. This charter was signed by 41 male passengers on the ship, both Puritans and other Protestants. They were confirming that they were still loyal subjects of the King of England, that they would live according to Christian principles and work together for the good of the colony, and to this end they adopted mandatory rules of conduct and behaviour.
John Carver, who helped finance the expedition and was the main authority on board the ship during the sea voyage, was chosen as the first governor of the new colony.
First winter
All the passengers on the boat were curious about the Indians, whom they knew only from some of the graphics, but otherwise knew nothing about. The women were living on the ship at the time, and a detachment of men, led by Captain Standish, who had been appointed military commander, went into the interior of the country, armed and accompanied by other men, to seek contact with the natives.
One day they saw an Indian canoe, but it quickly disappeared among the dunes. The Puritans explored the area in a small boat. Provincetown seemed too small for a permanent colony, the shore was very shallow and the Mayflower was anchored far offshore. They needed fields to plant corn and other crops, and there was no fresh water nearby. The detachment spent two days ashore in the snow and cold. They were attacked by Nausec Indians, who were afraid of Europeans because of their bad experience with slave ships. They were shot with arrows and only managed to escape when they were hit by rifle bullets.
At the beginning of December, the rivers start to freeze. It was so cold that a thin crust of ice covered wet clothes. The first child was born and they named him Peregrine, which means pilgrim. Then the situation worsened. Everyone was still living on the ship, the sick and the healthy lay together and burying the dead became an almost daily ritual. They all suffered a great deal from loneliness and were constantly thinking of their relatives who remained in Europe. They also began to run short of food.
A sailor who had been to New England before suggested that they find a more suitable anchorage for the ship. The scout boat set off and after a few days found a place which became Plymouth Harbour. Here the Mayflower was able to anchor safely, the shore was flat, there were streams of fresh water nearby and some abandoned Indian fields where the natives planted corn.
They didn’t know if there were Indians living nearby, but they could feel their presence. Those settlers who were strong enough began to cut down trees and at Christmas time erected the first wooden building, where they then held meetings and divine service, and stored what supplies they had left. Then they began to build emergency accommodation, as the sailors from the Mayflower wanted to get back to England as soon as possible.
Three months have passed and half of the immigrants have died of cold, exhaustion and disease. Three of the first four children have also died. By March, the weather had improved so much that they started to plant small gardens. The cold wind stopped blowing and the birds began to chirp. There were still no Indians in sight, but just in case, the settlers removed a small ship’s cannon and brought it ashore.
Then, on 16 March, an Indian came out of the woods. He was completely naked, with only his skin wrapped around his loins. They were even more surprised when he greeted them in English: “Hello English.” His name was Samoset and he belonged to a tribe that lived further north of Plymouth harbour and had already come into contact with English merchant ships. His arrival was a sign that fortune had not turned its back on the new colony.
Samoset was very talkative and spent a few days in Plymouth. A few days later, another Indian, Squanto, turned up and was already in London. He had been brought there by an English captain, and soon returned to America as an interpreter for one of the first London investors in New England.
But more importantly for the colonists, he knew Massasoit, the chief of the Pokanoket, who needed the colonists as much as they needed him. The Indian needed the colonists’ tools and guns to protect himself from the neighbouring Indian tribe. Massasoit was willing to make an alliance with the colonists because it would strengthen his tribe, which was decimated by infectious diseases.
Edward Winslow was the first to offer to contact the Indian chief. He took some gifts with him; two knives, a necklace and some alcohol, and assured the chief of his friendship. This was the beginning of years of observing the Indian tribe’s customs and efforts to keep the peace that the young colony so desperately needed.
Massasoit then decided to visit the settlers and meet the colonists’ governor, John Carver. The meeting was successful, although the Indians were cautious, fearing that the settlers had brought with them some unknown disease. The embrace of Massasoit and Carver secured 30 years of peace.
During the summer, the Indians set up camp across the river and near the settlement, which alarmed the colonists, who set up guards. But nothing happened. Winslow described these early days of the Plymouth colony and the contacts with the Indian tribes in a small booklet called Mourt’s Relation, which covered the period from the arrival of the colonists to November 1621.
In March, Winslow suffered a stroke of fate. His wife Elizabeth had been ill for several months and the child she was carrying was stillborn. Scurvy, including tuberculosis, post-partum haemorrhages and maladjustment to her new life ended her suffering. Of the eighteen adult wives on board the Mayflower, only five were still alive at the end of the winter.
In April, those who were strong enough to work began to till the fields and sow seeds, clearing undergrowth and ploughing the soil. They used rotting mushrooms as fertiliser, as Squanto had advised them. The sailors of the Mayflower certainly did not share any of the colonists’ faith in the new life of the colony. They became rebellious and aggressive. They threw all the colonists off the ship, even if they were sick, because they feared an epidemic. But despite this, that winter half of the sailors died.
The Mayflower sailed for home on 5 April 1621. The colonists gathered on the shore and watched with mixed feelings as their last link to their former homeland drifted away. Then Governor Carver was struck by a stroke while working in the fields. He was given a respectful burial, as was his wife, who died six weeks after him, unable to bear the loss of her husband. Edward Winslow then married the widowed Susanna White in May, leaving her alone with two children after her husband’s death. Did they marry for love? Probably not, but they were good partners and life had to go on and the colony had to survive despite the painful losses.
Edward Winslow knew very little about the Indians. But before he left England for Leiden, he spent a year in London, just as the Indian Princess Pocahontas and her entourage arrived. American Indians had come to London before as freed slaves like Squanto.
Columbus’s discovery of America in 1492 led to a flood of comment and speculation, even in England. Books about voyages in the New World were very popular. The English were convinced that the Indians were of the white race. “They are brownish when they grow up, but they are white when they are born,” they were convinced.
As an Indian princess and daughter of King Powhatan, Pocahontas was received with all pomp and honour at the court of the King. At the court ball, she was seated at the King’s right hand. But despite the glamour, her story was tragic. She was captured by colonists in Virginia in 1613 and held hostage. In captivity, she converted to Christianity, married a tobacco merchant and travelled with him to London. On her return to America, she fell ill and died aged only 21.
Contacts with Indians
With such little knowledge of the Indians, Edward Winslow, as a representative of the colonists, went to visit the Indian chief Massasoit. He was accompanied by Squanto. The colonists were interested in trading with the natives, especially in furs and agricultural produce. They travelled for several days, and were received with caution but kindness by Massasoit. He accepted the gifts they brought him and was willing to trade furs with them.
But Massasoit was not the only Indian chief, and other tribes were uncomfortable with how quickly he came to terms with the colonists. The colonists were aware of this, and within a year they had visited nine other Indian tribes and at least secured their neutrality. Edward Winslow was always careful to record everything he saw in his encounters with the various Indian tribes, and his Mourt’s Relation is full of descriptions of Indian customs, habits and beliefs.
In November 1621, the Fortune anchored in Plymouth Colony. It brought 35 new colonists, one of whom, Robert Cusham, brought the colony a royal letters patent allowing them to settle permanently in the area. The new settlers did not come to the New World for religious reasons, they simply wanted to settle here because there was no land for them in Europe, religion was of secondary importance to them, and this was not to the liking of the strict Puritans.
In addition, the new settlers replenished the colony’s food supplies, which were more than meagre. New simple wooden huts and storerooms had to be built to house them. Thus, in the beginning, several families lived in one hut. The Fortune returned to England with a supply of beaver skins and reports of excellent timber from which to carve the ship’s masts. This timber was in very short supply in Europe. All this was to prove to new investors that it was worth investing in and supplying a new colony.
But Fortune accidentally sailed too close to the French coast and was seized by the French. This was a big blow for the investors, so they decided to pull out of the deal. The Plymouth colony began to run short of food. Then the colony heard the terrible news that nearly a quarter of the settlers in the colony of Virginia had been killed by Indians. Fearing for their safety, they began to build palisades around the settlement. Then Squanto, their trusted link with the Indian tribes, died.
In March 1623, the Indians informed the colonists that their chief Massasoit was coming to an end, and Edward Winslow decided to pay him a visit, as the chief had always been favourable to the colonists. The news did not prove to be entirely true, but it was true that the chief was visibly weakened by pneumonia and had not eaten anything for several days. Winslow stayed with him for a few days and cooked him a restorative soup, and Massasoit recovered.
When they were alone, he beckoned him to come to him and told him the secret. A section of the tribe disliked the colonists and the leader of the disgruntled Wituwamat decided to attack Plymouth Colony. Massasoit advised Winslow that the colonists should kill Wituwamat at the first opportunity before he attacked them, and not to wait, as if attacked the colonists were likely to succumb to the superiority of the Indians.
Winslow returned to the colony and consulted the settlers. Although this was a barbaric action, the colonists did not think so. A hundred years later, it was commonplace in Europe for traitors to be beheaded and their heads impaled on stakes on the ramparts. So it was this way too. Standish, the colonist warlord, surprised Wituwamata and his entourage with a group of armed men, killed them, and put the Indian’s head on a stake, while a white sheet was painted with his blood and hung as a flag next to his head.
The murder had a calming effect and the attackers fled. Only one of the colonists wrote worriedly: “Once the blood starts flowing, it can rarely be stopped. You say the Indian deserved it. Perhaps. But think of all the provocations the natives have already suffered at the hands of Europeans.”
Massasoit and Winslow could not have imagined at the time that one day the head of Massasoit’s son Philip would be impaled on a stake and displayed on the walls of the colony. Thanks to Massasoit’s help, Winslow then travelled along the coast of eastern Maine, looking at towns, cities and valleys suitable for settlement.
While Plymouth Colony was still peaceful, in southern Virginia, the colonists’ behaviour towards the Indians changed after the massacre of a large number of settlers. The Governor broke with the policy of peaceful cooperation and called the Indians cursed creatures. He told the settlers to “burn their settlements and places of worship to their deities, destroy their canoes, trample their fields”.
Edward Winslow made several trips to London over the next few years to reassure investors – many of them not very wealthy – that the colony was in economic difficulties, and few chose to invest in the new colony. Only the building of simple houses progressed rapidly in Plymouth Colony, with thirty-two houses now standing instead of the original seven.
But life in the colony was still very primitive. Livestock (a bull and three cows, a few horses and mares) and various seeds are said to have helped the colony’s economic growth in the beginning. In 1627, there were already 16 head of cattle, 20 goats, 50 pigs and a lot of poultry. However, no one could turn a blind eye to the fact that only some of the colonists were strict Puritans, while others were simply people looking for a quiet life and for whom religion was not a priority.
Over the next ten years, several new settlements appeared to the north of the Puritan settlement. Word spread in England that it was possible to survive in the New World, despite its wild nature, and that there was an abundance of precious things, especially beaver pelts. The Puritans also realised that furs could be sold well and set up two trading posts along the river north of the settlement to trade with the Indians.
Plymouth itself was expanding and the colonists needed more and more land. By the 1830s, some 20,000 Englishmen (many of them strict Puritans) had arrived in New England, most of them settling north of Plymouth Colony, ending the peaceful coexistence with the Indians. North of Plymouth, the Massachusetts Bay Colony was established in 1628 with the town of Boston, and Edward Winslow became a good friend of the local governor, John Winthrop. Here, too, the first few winters were the hardest to survive, death mowed down the new colonists, and by the first winter a third of them had died.
The Plymouth Colony had to say goodbye to its ideal of life; everything they produced became common and was shared among the colonists. So they began to work and trade each for themselves. However, when trading with the Indians, they had to get used to their currency, the ‘wampun’, a string of shell beads strung on a string. By the end of the 1630s, the wampum had become one of the officially recognised means of payment, alongside the silver coins they had fished from the Spaniards, and the measures of corn and cattle.
Edward Winslow has not lost his interest in the Indians and their customs over the years. “My soul’s desire is to do something good for the natives, to learn their language and print it later, and I don’t want to be disturbed by other colonists.”
He bought a piece of land from Massasoit and set off with his wife and two small children through the forest to an estate 70 kilometres away.
The Pequot breed
For years, Plymouth colonists had heard rumours of a great river to the west, known only to Indians and fur trappers. Edward Winslow was the first Englishman to make the nearly 600-kilometre journey to Quinmetucket, which the colonists called Connecticut. This was an important discovery, as their original trade routes were already crowded and overrun with unhealthy rivalry, and the French claimed the coastal territory as their own.
Plymouth Colony already had around 2,000 settlers by 1630, and the rapidly expanding Massachusetts had several thousand more. Settlers were coming there who saw many things differently and were convinced that God wanted the land to be rid of the Indians. This was also the end of a long period of friendly ties between the Plymouth colonists and the Indians, as clashes between colonists from neighbouring Massachusetts and Indians became more frequent. The Winslow family was very exposed on their remote property and decided to return to Plymouth for a while.
Then, in March 1637, Pequot Indians attacked the fledgling settlement of Wethersfield, killing several settlers and kidnapping two young girls. Massachusetts was convinced that all the New England colonies were in danger of Indian attack. They therefore decided to launch a pre-emptive attack on the main Pequot outpost, where some 700 Indians were believed to be gathered.
The route to get there was through unknown and overgrown countryside and was very arduous, but the surprise attack was successful. The settlers shot and massacred around 400 Indians, many of them civilians. Those Indians who managed to escape were pursued by the colonists and finally defeated in their last stronghold. Women and children were then sold as slaves in the Caribbean and the name of the Pequot Indians disappeared forever from history. The colonists were convinced that this was the right thing to do, as they were supposedly guided by divine providence.
While the number of Indians has been decreasing, the number of English immigrants has been increasing. Their herds of pigs roamed the once peaceful land, the woods echoed with the sound of axes, and houses grew on the lawns. In April 1640, rumours spread among the settlers that the Mohawk and Narangaseto tribes were preparing an uprising against the white invaders.
The settlers were particularly afraid of the Mohawks, who were part of a confederacy of five Iroquois tribes, to which the Oneida, Onindaga, Cayug and Seneca tribes also belonged. The colonists’ settlements in Connecticut were vulnerable and isolated. The winter months of 1642/43 brought abundant snow, making communication between settlements even more difficult. As a result, they were supplied with extra rifles and gunpowder, and settlers moved around the landscape only in armed groups.
Settler colonies in Plymouth, Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Haven banded together in a defensive alliance in the face of overwhelming danger. It was Edward Winslow who represented Plymouth in it.
Meanwhile, new immigrants continued to arrive from England, unaware of the dangers that awaited them. Their main aim was to leave England and avoid religious strife. In August 1638, as many as 20 ships carrying 3 000 immigrants landed in Boston harbour. Many of them were Puritans.
Most of the new immigrants were not used to living in the wilderness and dealing with Indians. Once they settled in the wilderness, they had to start trading with them, because the cattle they brought from England died within a year or two, wolves slaughtered their pigs, and horses got sick. During this period Edward Winslow was almost constantly in the saddle, travelling from settlement to settlement and strengthening his defensive preparations.
Indians could not be trusted. You never knew whether they were friends or enemies of the settlers, and a wrong decision could often mean death. Indian attacks on settlers’ isolated farms became more and more frequent. The situation only calmed down when the Indians started fighting among themselves.
But this has created problems of political authority between the settlements. Although the towns had their own town councils, their representatives demanded greater powers for themselves from the town authorities. Many were not happy with the power of the Puritan church, which excluded all non-Puritans from political and economic life. Non-Puritans were even refused baptism for their children.
Edward Winslow was a strict Puritan and looked with contempt on those who chose a more liberal way of Christian belief. He refused to understand that settlers were now emigrating from England to the New World to choose their own way of believing. If the English Crown guaranteed freedom of religion in Bermuda, why not in Massachusetts and the other colonies? Edward Winslow did not like it, and he was horrified to see that some in his family were also advocating a more liberal way of believing.
He himself has changed a lot in recent years. He has become harsher in his judgements, just like the Puritan community. He now owned 1000 acres of land and had become very thin. As one of the representatives of the Association of the Northern Colonies, he spent more and more time in Massachusetts, especially in Boston, handling the common affairs of the colonies as well as his own business affairs. Plymouth had no deep-water harbour where larger ships could dock, no international merchants and their capital, and hardly any contacts with English business circles. Boston, further north, did, and the ambitious Winslow was not about to let this opportunity slip through his fingers.
News from London was rare, as was news that King Charles I had invaded Scotland and wanted to impose an English prayer book on the population. But many other things compelled Edward Winslow to set sail for England in December 1646. The desire of all the English colonists in New England was to elect their own representatives without London’s involvement, or rather, they wanted to govern themselves.
And it was Winslow’s job to convince his former homeland that this was the right thing to do. Besides, how can the English Parliament rule over the American colonies if they do not even have a representative in the London Parliament? In New England, Winslow, as a representative of the Association of the Colonies, former Governor of Plymouth and founder of a number of settlements, was a respected figure. In London, however, he had yet to win that position.
But the old England he came to was almost unrecognisable to him after years of civil war, infighting, the execution of King Charles I, the proclamation of a republic and the appointment of Oliver Cromwell as Lord Protector. Brother fought against brother, and Parliament took over the role played by King Charles I. The bloody fratricidal tax claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. The countryside was devastated and people starved. Most of the king’s land was confiscated and many once powerful families were left without a means of subsistence.
Edward Winslow received verbal assurances from the Plantation Commission in London that the English government would not interfere in the local affairs of the colonies, nor would it send any more governors to them from London. He was not reassured by these assurances, for he saw that in the chaotic situation in the old homeland many people were prepared to promise a great deal. In fact, he soon completed his task, but he wanted more. He became a member of the Corporation for New England, whose purpose was to raise money for missionaries and teachers to convert the Indians to the Christian faith.
And so he stayed in London. In fact, being so many years removed from events in England, he didn’t care whether England was ruled by a king or whether the country was a republic under Cromwell, and so he accepted a well-paid job in the new regime. Since he no longer had money problems, he invited his daughter Elizabeth to stay with him from Plymouth, and she immediately liked the luxurious life in England. Later, his wife Susanna came to London.
News from New England was rare. In 1651, Edward’s son Joshua married Penelope Pelham, and thereafter news became scarcer and scarcer. Aware of the importance of his official position in London, Edward Winslow had himself portrayed, and his portrait is the only one of any of the passengers who had sailed on the Mayflower to the New World many years earlier.
Although he lived in London, he still felt connected to New England and was always careful to support the colonists’ demands to the government to improve life in New England. In 1652 Cromwell dissolved Parliament and the Royalists began to raise their heads, but many Englishmen had had enough of constant revolutionary change. Edward Winslow was still firmly in the civil service and steadily progressing. In 1654 he became a member of the High Court that tried the royalist conspirators who wanted to kill Cromwell and enthrone the new King, Charles II. He also did not mind when Christmas and Easter were banned, as these celebrations never took place in Plymouth.
But his ambitions went beyond administrative work. He was appointed to lead an expedition to the Caribbean to stop Spanish colonisation of the area. A fleet of British ships reached Barbados in five weeks. But the hastily prepared expedition was a disaster that could have been predicted in advance. Most of the troops had never been to sea, never been in combat, and there was virtually no training. Drinking water was scarce and around 200 soldiers simply died of thirst.
The expedition set sail from Barbados for the island of Hispaniola. But nothing went according to plan, the command was chaotic, the soldiers were insubordinate and the supply ships that were supposed to follow them were nowhere to be found. Then came the monsoon rains, the mud and rain completely demoralising the troops, followed by diarrhoea and fever, killing a third of the men.
Edward Winslow spent a voyage on the Mayflower, but he was young then. Now he was 60 years old. He fell ill and developed a high fever. The expedition he had expected so much from had failed and he was convinced that God was no longer on his side. He died in May 1657 and was buried at sea. The remains of the expedition were then returned to London. The news of his death shocked his friends.
Philip’s War
Soon, in London, Edward’s daughter Elizabeth and wife Susannah discovered that living on a large leg had left Edward with debts of only £500, which was a lot of money at the time. In the last ten years, Edward Winslow’s absence in the New World had meant that much of the responsibility had been passed on to his son Joshua, now in his thirties, who quickly hurried to London to ensure that the trading business would continue uninterrupted despite his father’s death.
Although he was traditionally a farmer, some documents show that he also traded in sugar from the Antilles and exported iron and linen. His marriage to the Governor’s niece, Penelope Pelham, further tied him to Boston’s mercantile elite.
After paying off her husband’s debts, the widow Suzana decided to return to America. She spent the happiest years of her life there, and her three sons lived there. She was aware that the old generation of colonists who had come to America on the Mayflower was leaving. Almost all of them had died and only a few were left alive.
In 1660, Chief Massasoit died and there was a great void in the attitude towards the colonists. His two sons, Wamsutta and Metacom, were not too happy about the sale of land to the new colonists. Before his death, Massasoit asked the Plymouth court to give his two sons Christian names. The first was called Alexander, the second Philip. But neither of the sons wanted to sell any more Indian land to the settlers in Plymouth, as the settlers now demanded that the sale be made through the courts.
Alexander and Philip refused to appear in court and the court asked for them to be brought before it. It was Joshua who, accompanied by guards, came for Alexander, grabbed him by the hair and threatened him with a gun. But on the way to the court, Alexander suddenly became very ill and was sent home, where he died surrounded by his men. The funeral ceremonies were led by his brother Philip and ended with a wild dance, a sign of the hostilities that were to come.
Rumours spread among the Indians that Joshua Winslow had poisoned Alexander. Philip was now convinced that the only way to avenge his brother’s death was to wage a large-scale war against the whites. He was supported in this by other Indian tribes. Outwardly, the Indians continued to be friendly to the whites, but they were plotting war among themselves.
Unlike his father, Joshua Winslow was more tolerant in religious matters, but always took a hard, even harsh, line towards the Indians. This was a big difference in thinking and behaviour from the first colonists, who were friendly towards the natives. The new generation of settlers saw them as servants, even slaves, with few rights.
Chief Philip, however, was not prepared to compromise. He was disappointed by Joshua’s attitude towards the Indians, who had forgotten the bonds of friendship between the two families. At the same time, Philip also felt powerless. By about 1670, one-fifth of the Indians in Massachusetts and Connecticut were already living in towns. They had English houses, they dressed in English, their children went to English schools and read the Bible. The Christian religion diminished the power of the Indian gods.
In 1670, Philip decided. He gathered an army of several Indian tribes at his main base, Mount Hope. There they danced, sharpened tomahawks and cleaned guns. Settlers from the colony of Rhode Island were the first to flee, taking refuge in safer areas. But by 1675, almost nothing had happened. The Indians and colonists met several times to try to reach an agreement, but the Indians always refused the colonists’ demand that they acknowledge that they were subjects of the English Crown and that they had to obey English laws.
In June 1675, Indians painted their faces, wiped their heads and attacked the village of Swansea, near Mount Hope. The war that had been simmering for years was on. The war coincided with the settlers’ widespread belief that God had abandoned them and they must now pay the price for breaking their promise and living too cosmopolitan a life. Only prayer and repentance can save them.
The Indian attack was so dramatic that the colonists were pushed to the seashore. More than half the towns in New England were attacked. Seventeen were completely flattened and 25 were badly damaged.
Ten months after the attacks began, no colonist dared to set foot in the interior of the continent. A third of the frontier towns in Massachusetts were abandoned. Hopes that hostilities would be confined to Plymouth and Rhode Island proved futile as other southern tribes joined the Indian march.
But not all Indians joined Philip. In some places they surrendered, especially women with children whose husbands had been killed in the fighting. The first response to the outbreak of hostilities came from the colonists of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, who sent a strong force of soldiers against the Indian encampment at Mount Hope. But the camp was already deserted, with only the scalps and heads of the slain settlers piled on stakes at its edge.
The pursuit of the Indians was unsuccessful, the soldiers were not professional soldiers but a defensive militia of settlers totally unprepared for war. They also lacked food and gunpowder. Two weeks after the war began, Joshua Winslow, who had by then become Governor of Plymouth, made his will and sent his wife Penelope and their two children to the safer Salem. He did not have to worry about his mother, Susanna, because she had died two years before. The horrors of war further strengthened Joshua’s position on the Indians. He knew no mercy for them, it was total war on both sides.
Finally, in mid-December, New England assembled an army of 1,000 armed men to attack a single Indian tribe, the Narrangasetts. Joshua Winslow was chosen as the most experienced leader of the expedition. The army marched out of Boston in a blizzard and headed for the Indian encampment 50 kilometres away, surprising the Indians, killing many of them and burning the women and children alive in their tents.
But the Indian attacks on individual settlements have not stopped there. The war effort only exhausted both sides. The Indians were starving, but so were the settlers, who could not harvest in the autumn or plant new seeds in the spring.
In the end, Chief Philip was betrayed by luck, or rather by an Indian. Philip saw his enemies approaching and threw away all his gear to make himself lighter as he ran, keeping only his rifle. Like an arrow, he ran swiftly through the forest, trying to reach a swamp where he could hide. But the soldiers knew what he was up to because an Indian scout had warned them. They surrounded him in a swampy area and, as he tried to escape, he was hit by a bullet. He fell face down in the water and an Indian scout came up to him and cut his head off.
With Philip’s death, the resistance of the Indians slowly subsided, with only some outposts resisting for a few more months. Despite an amnesty, around 1 000 male Indians over the age of 14 were sold into slavery on the plantations of the Antilles, a fate that also befell Philip’s son.
Joshua Winslow was hailed as a hero, despite some opinions that devastation could have been avoided by more reasonable talks with the Indians. The war was particularly devastating for Plymouth, with as many as 1200 houses burnt down. Most of the colonists returned to their burnt homes and searched through the ashes for the objects that had once been so precious to them.
Joshua Winslow was convinced that Plymouth could only survive if it took possession of all the fertile Indian land in the Mount Hope area, and this was finally granted by King Charles II of England in 1680. But Joshua was slowly saying goodbye to life. He had been ill for a long time, but no one knew what was wrong with him. On 18 December 1680, he died.
After the death of her husband, Penelope experienced a kind of spiritual crisis, or nervous breakdown, as we would call it today. She was convinced that she was a great sinner who was being attacked by Satan and that she would never see Joshua again in eternity because of this. She shut herself in and lived a distant life. She never married again, which was very unusual for New England. The high mortality rate demanded that a man and a woman live together, she to take care of the household and he to work in the fields or trade. Otherwise, survival in the colonies was impossible.
Today, the days when the Winslows and the other passengers on the Mayflower landed on the shores of wild America are so far gone that their stories are almost forgotten. What they thought and did often has to be invented, or pieced together from the tiniest evidence of their existence.
