Cuttyhunk is the outermost of a sixteen-mile string of islands jutting out in a straight line from the southwestern corner, or heel, of Cape Cod. They average about two miles in width, and separate the waters of Buzzards Bay on the northwest from those of Vineyard Sound on the Southeast. On the map they look as though they might have been, in some remote geological age, a long narrow peninsula, now intersected by several channels. Through these, the higher tides of Buzzards Bay flow furiously into Vineyard Sound, only to flow out again late, equally furiously. The three largest of these gaps, which make islands of the peninsula, are called by the homely, descriptive name "Hole" -- there is Woods Hole, separating the first island from the mainland, then Robinsons Hole, and Quicks Hole. The islands all still bear their Indian names.
Between Cuttyhunk and the island next to it to the east, Nashawena, there is no designated "Hole" -- obviously because until recent times the two islands were connected by a sandy beach on the Vineyard Sound side. The body of water between these tow islands has been called a horbor ever since the islands were first occupied by white settlers. Archer called it an "increek, or sandy cove", to which the Indians resorted for crab-fishing. In Gosnold's day, although not now, the beach certainly connected the two islands to make one, as Brereton reported that Elizabeth's Isle was "l6. English miles at the least in compasse" -- a reasonably accurate measure of the two islands joined, Cuttyhunk alone being somewhat less than two miles long. But whnt on to say of "Elizabeth's isle" that it contained "many pieces of necks of land, which differ nothing from severall Islands, saving that certeine banks of small bredth do, like bridges, joine them to this Island."
The difficulty of correct description presisted down to the days of Thomas Mayhew, the first English owner of the islands. In 1666, desiring to sell a tract of land on the largest of them, Mayhew referred to "the greater island of Elizabeth Island" -- a neat turn of phrase. The islands are now called the Elizabeth Islands, the name Gosnold gave to the outermost having been extended to cover the whole group.
When Gosnold late in the afternoon of May 24th sailed across the western opening of Vineyard Sound, six miles wide, he saw estending out from the seaward end of Cuttyhunk a reef of rocks running out a mile into the ocean. He wanted to get around this point into the waters on the other side of the islands, which could be seen from the masthead, but he had no way of knowing how far this rocky reef might run out under water. Earlier in the day, off Dover Cliff shore, he had gotten safely around a submerged reef, not mentioned in the narratives, known today as "the Devil's Bridge", where he must have escaped disaster only by the grace of God and good masthead lookout. He was taking no chances with hidden rocks of this sort off the point of Cuttyhunk. Bartholomew Gosnold anchored for the night in the exposed, but for the moment safe, waters on the southeast side of the island.
In the morning the ship's boat was sent out for soundings, and Gosnold found that deep water began just beyond the last of the visible rocks. He then sailed around the point, entering waters that Archer was pleased to call "one of the stateliest Sounds that ever I was in", and anchored in eight fathoms a quarter of a mile from shore. This "Sound", known as Buzzards Bay, the explorers named Gosnold's Hope, evidently because in this great "hope", or inlet of the sea, Gosnold hoped to find his dreams fulfilled.
From the Buzzards Bay side it was seen that this seagirt island had a lake only a short distance from the shore. Like the one found on Martha's Vineyard this turned out to be "a standing Lake of fresh water", but it was somewhat larger, being almost three miles in compass. In the midst of it was a small island, an acre or so in extent and well wodded. It seemed to be a good place to establish headquarters. Here a substantial building, well screened by tall trees from the rest of the island could be erected, to serve as their sbode, storage place, and "fort". The lake would form a natural moat around it.
Gosnold doubtless had in mind words almost prophetic, writtten in 1584-1585 by the elder Richard Hakluyt:
And for the more quiet exercise of our manurance [occupation, tenure] of the soiles where we shall seat, and of our manual occupations, it is to be wished that some ancient captaines of milde disposition and great judgement be sent thither with men most skilfull in the arte of fortification, and that direction be taken that the mouthes of great rivers, and the Islands in the same (as things of great moment) be taken, manned, and fortified; and that havens be cut out for the safetie of the Navie, that we may be lords of the gates and entries, to goe out and come in at pleasure, and to be in safetie ..."
Bartholomew Gosnold was able to carry out this precept. The island called Cuttyhunk today commands the entrance to both Buzzards Bay and Vineyard Sound.
But there were other advantages to a location on this outer island, as Gosnold saw later. It could be reached easily by Indians wishing to trade, who could come to it in safety under the shelter of the string of islands from the mainland. At the same time, and this is perhaps significantly not mentioned in the narratives, there was a single isolated hill less than a mile from the place where they proposed to erect a building, rising to an elevation of a hundred feet, and giving an unobstructed view of all approaches.
The decision to build there "abode" on the wooded islet in the middle of the lake was not made until three days later, the intervening time having been used, apparently, to explore the island and its surroundings more thoroughly. The concord had anchored off Cuttyhunk on May 25th. On the 26th, Archer reported, the company "trimmed and fitted up" their shallop. Brereton gave the details, calling their means of conveyance to "lighthorseman [light boat]", which was presumably the same "gig" as the shallop. In any case, the company voyaged along the shore of the islands to the mainland, and then turned north, examining the eastern shore of Buzzards Bay for some distance above modern Woods Hole. They stopped, however, when they first reached the mainland, to go ashore -- probably between the localities now known as Quisset and Sippowisset.
Here Brereton grew rhaposdic over the beauty of the scene. "We stood a while", he wrote, "like men ravished at the beautie and delicacie of this sweet soile; for besides divers cleere Lakes of fresh water (whereof we saw no end) Medowes very large and full of greene grasse; even the most woody places (I speake onely of such as I saw) do grow so distinct and apart, one tree from another, upon greene grassie ground, somewhat higher than Plaines, as if Nature would shew her selfe above her power, artificial." By the last word Brereton meant that Nature had here exceeded herself, creating a scene of beauty hardly natural.
Near this place the explorers espied seven Indians. On approaching them, the white-men saw that the Indians were at first inclined to hide or retreat, but were reassured by the frindely demeanor of the strangers and the offering of small gifts. These Indians in their canoes followed the explorers' swift craft up the coast to a place thought at first to be an island, a norow neck. This was probably the peninsula now known as Chappaquoit Point, four and a half miles north-northwest of Flamouth. Here the explorers entered a harbor or broad rivermouth, apparently the outlet of a stream flowing from the interior of the land.
This seems to have been the shallow harbor at West Flamouth, although the changes in the shoreline which have undoubtedly taken place since 1602 make it impossible to be certain. In any case, whatever point was reached on the shore of Buzzards Bay by the party in the "light-horseman", they did not find a location more sutiable for their purposes than the island at the outer end of the Elizabeth Islands. "The eight and twentieth", wrote Archer, "we entered counsell about our abode and plantation, which was concluded to be in the west part of Elizabeth Iland."
There is a startling contrast between the Cuttyhunk that Bartholomew Gosnold knew and named Elizabeth Isle and the island as it appears today. The whole of the western part of the island is now treeless plain, recently given over to the grazing of sheep, bred in experiments to obtain finer grades of wool. Before that this plain was under cultivation, even including the little islet in the lake, where there now stands a tall tower to mark the location of Gosnold's trading station. The stones placed by Gosnold's men for a foundation, discovered and examined by a party of historians in 1797, were scattered or removed by farmers tilling the soil, and could not be found again when the memorial tower was built in 1903. Strong, salt-laden winds swept over the place now and keep it barren except for grass. Brereton's description no longer holds:
This Island is full of high timbred Oakes, their leaves thrise so broad as ours; Ceders, straight and tall; Beech, Elme, hollie, Walnut trees in aboundance, the fruit as bigge as ours, as appeared by those we found under the trees, which had lien all the yeere ungathered; Haslenut trees, Cherry trees ...; Sassafras trees great plentie all the Island over, a tree of high price and profit; also divers other fruit trees, some of them with strange barkes, of an Orange colour, in feeling soft and smoothe like Velvet ...
Archer mentioned many of these same trees, giving more particular attention to the shrubs, among which he listed wild peas, [grape-]vines, eglantine, gooseberry bushes, hawthorne and honeysuckle. They found also many edible herbs and roots, among which were ground-nuts (a tuber with an odd taste, eaten by Indians when other foods failed). Brereton called the soil "fat and lustie, the upper crust of gray colour; but a foot or lesse in depth." He and some others cleared a few places and planted them ("for a triall") with wheat, barley, oats and peas, "which in fourteene dayes were sprung up nine inches nd more." No animals were mentioned in the descriptions of the island, but there were many small turtles in the pond, and around the outer shores edible shell-fish such as scallops, mussels, cockles, lobsters, crabs, oysters and whelks, "exceeding good and very great."
Ten men were put to work building the house that was to serve as a fort, and completed it in nineteen working days. This was the first structure put up by Englishmen in the region that became known as New England. Nothing is told about the manner of construction except that it was thatched with sedge, which grew plentifully around the lake. The building was made large enough to house twenty men and their stores.
After Gosnold had decided upon this island as the place of his first abode in America, he named it Elizabeth's Isle. The Elizabeth thus honored was presumably his sister, named in the records as the oldest of the daughters of Anthony Gosnold. There is nothing in either of the Relations to support the common modern assumption that Queen Elizabeth was meant. Brereton merely placed the name "Elizabeth Island" in the margin toward the bottom of page 6, and later, toward the top of page 12, mentioned in an off-hand way in a parenthesis that Gosnold called the island Elizabeths Island. This, coupled with naming of Martha's Vineyard for Gosnold's daughter, seems to point to Elizabeth Gosnold (by then married to Thomas Tilney) rather than Elizabeth Tudor, Queenn of England, France, and Ireland, as the lady honored by an island in New England.
In residence, as it were, at Cuttyhunk, with the Concord anchored close by and most of the ship's company busied on the island, Gosnold and his gentlemen companions became hosts to a number of visiting Indians. The first of these appeared on May 27th, while the group in the "light-horseman" were exploring the coast of the mainland. The visitors were a single Indian brave accompanied by two squaws, whom the Englishmen took to be his wife and daughter -- they might well have been his first and second wives. This was a bit unusual, to say the least, judging by the accounts of the earliest contacts between white-men and Indians. Ordinarily the braves of a tribe travelled in a group and left the squaws at home. Possibly this Indian was a local inhabitant, living in a wigwam concealed in the woods at the eastern end of Cuttyhunk, that is, the part that is known today as the island Nashawena, or perhaps on the next island. Indians of "noble" rank frequently had a single-family domain, such as a neck of land or a small island. This one may have been the resident owner of all of Cuttyhunk, who came driven by native curiosity to find out what was going on in his front yard, so to speak. The squaws, as Archer told the story, were both "cleane and straite bodied, with countenance sweet and pleasant." The Indian with them "gave heedfull attendance" to them, because of their "much familiaritie" with Gosnold's men; but these dusky ladies were circumspect in that they would not admit of any immodest touch."
The Indians of the islands, as well as those of Cape Cod, were under the dominion of the Great Chief of Pokonocket, the grand-sachemdom which extended from the eastern shores of Narragansett Bay to the Atlantic, where the Pilgrims later established themselves a Plymouth. The small sacheddoms beyond this area on the cape and on the islands, were ruled by petty chiefs or, as Matthew Mayhew called them, "princes." In the Pilgrims' treaty with the Great Chief, Massasoit, these "princes" were designated as his "neighbors confederate." They paid nominal tribute to their Great Chief, and were leagued with him in a mutual defense pact, bound to render assistance to him if he needed warriors in his never-ending warfare with the Narragansetts to the west. These Indians of southern New England had no tribal names other than those, like Pokonocket, derived from the place of residence of their chief.
It is to be remembered that the Indians with whom Bartholomew Gosnold came into contact were still living in what may be called a "golden age". They were a forest-people, well provided with the necessities of life, and in good health. But about ten years after Gosnold's visit the picture began to change.
First, there were devastating tribal wars, beginning about 1612. Then came the Europeans, some of whom were guilty of ruthless atrocities, such as that which (according to Thomas Dermer, who could not discover whether men were English, Dutch or French) cleared the ship's decks of Indians with "murderer", a small cannon which fired brass and iron pieces anticipating by tow centuries the invention of shrapnel. Then there was Captain John Smith's disloyal man Hunt, who descended upon the Indian villages at the site of Plymouth and on Cape Cod, taking by foul treachery captives whom he sold as slaves in Spain.
Semi-starvation as always followed the internecine warfare, but this was nothing compared with what came next. Some European ship, quite likely a French vessel, was wrecked on Cape Cod in 1616. In its swquence followed a pestilential disease, not small-pox but possibly syphilis, which raged for several years, reducing the Pokonocket and Massachusetts Indians quite literally to one-tenth of their former strength. The entire Indian settlement at the site where the Pilgrims landed was wiped out, and the Pilgrims who travelled inland during their first year in New England found unburied corpses everywhere. Proud, happy Indians had become a weakened, dispirited remnant.
It was far different in Gosnold's day. He was welcomed by savages who were friendly, inquisitive, annoyingly thievish in a childish way, and delighted with the Englishmen's gifts of trinkets and small steel cutting implements, the like of which they had never seen. One of the first names used by these Indians for white-men "the Knife-Men" -- Chauquaquock.
Saturday, May 29th, found Gosnold's company busied about the little islet in the pond, or working elsewhere. Some were clearing away the undergrowth in preparation for building. Some were making "a Punt or Flat bottome Boate to passe to and fro our Fort over the fresh water." Others were in the woods gathering sassafras roots. Still another group was engaged in putting a new keel on the shallop, presumably working on the shore of the small horbor. While they were scattered about engaged in these pursuits, most of them well hidden in the woods, an alarm was sounded.
Indians in eleven canoes had been seen approaching the island -- a party reckoned to be fifty in number, coming from the mainland where Brereton and the others in the "light-horseman" had landed two days before. Gosnold, Brereton, and presumably a few others, unwilling that the Indians should see what they were doing in the matter of fortifications, rushed out to the seward or southeastern side of the island, where the Indians came into the little harbor and disembarked. The two parties approached each other. Then the Indians seated themselves on stones, calling and motioning to the whit-men to do likewise at a little distance from them. And there they sat, gazing at one another.
The situation puzzled Gosnold, for he did not understand, of course, the etiquette of the occasion. Matthew Mayhew, the historian, explains this in an amusing story of the visit to his grandfather on the Vineyard by the Great Chief of the Pokonockets (probably King Philip) in a much later period. The two in Mayhew's house, the Great Chief and the Governor of the white settlers, sat staring at each other for a long period, because Indian custom required that the one of lesser rank speak first; and neither was willing to assume that role. Gosnold, not knowing what was expected of him, broke the ice by sending Brereton over to greet the party.
On approaching them, Brereton recognized an Indian to whom he had given a knife two days before on the mainland. This Indian smiled and said something to his Chief. The latter "presently [immediately] rose up and tooke a large Beaver skin from one that stood about him", and gave it to Brereton, a gift which Brereton acknowledged as best he could by giving a few trifles in return. Then, pointing toward Captain Gosnold, he made signs to the Chief that Gosnold was the Captain, who desired to be a friend of the Indians and in league with this Chief. This sign-language seems to have been understood, because Brereton reports that the Great Chief made signs of joy. In the meantime the rest of the English company, being twenty in all, came up to them, and there was pleasant intercourse by signs. Gosnold himself made further gifts to the Indians and sent to the shallop for food, giving them such dishes as were ready.
The casual reader of the two narratives at this point may find himself confused, as each narrator has a different story to tell of a visit by fifty Indians. Brereton, contrary to his usual custom, dated his account, placing the visit which he describes two days after the exploration of the nearby mainland, that is, on May 29th. This party of Indians promised to return -- "pointing five or six times to the Sun, and once to the maine, which we understood, that within five or six days they would come from the maine to us againe." It is not suprising, therefore, that Archer's narrative, but not Brereton's told of a party of fifty which arrived on June 5th. Brereton evidently combined into one continous account, with some loss of clarity in chronological sequence, the incidents of two separate visits by a large party of Indians. He implied that the visitors of May 29th stayed around for three days, departing on the fourth day; but a comparison with Archer's calendar of events indicates that the extended visit was the second one, not that of May 29th. Brereton probably had in mind the second visit also, when he remarked that six or seven of the Indians remained at Elizabeth's Isle, bearing the Englismen company every day into the woods, where they helped cut and carry sassafras. Some of them slept aboard the ship.
It is somewhat suprising not to find in Archer's dated day-by-day narrative any mention of the first visit, placed by Brereton on the second day after his visit to the mainland. One inference is that Archer was taken violently ill, and lost all interest in the happenings that day, beyond those indicated. He broke off his account of activities on May 29th to write: "the powder of Sassafrage [sassafras] in twelve houres cured one of our Company that had taken a great Surfet by [gotten very sick from] eating the bellies of Dog-fish, a very delicious meate." He might well have been reluctant to admit that it was he himslef who committed this gastronomic indiscretion, and even more reluctant to confess that he was too sick on that day to bother about Indian visitors.
On May 30th, probably in the afternoon after the first visiting delegation of Indians had departed, Captain Gosnold with a few of his company sailed over in the shallop to the little speck of an island which Archer Named Hills Hap, obviously that known today by its Indian name, Penikese. It lies about a mile and half north of the harbor of Elizabeth's Isle, with an area of about 40 acres. Archer called it half a mile in compass -- somewhat less than it measures today -- and reported that it had a stand of cedar trees.
An Indian canoe was found hidden in the brush on this islet, "that foure Indians had there left, being fled away for feare of our English." The Canoe was taken aboard ship nd later transported to England. Connected with this incident is anothere story, told by Archer among the events of June 11th, twelve days later. Archer had been left at the fort on Elizabeth's Isle with nine men, while Gosnold went off to explore Buzzards Bay, remaining away much longer than he had anticipated. The party left behind began to run out of food and Archer sent out four men to get what they could in the way of shellfish, warning them to stay together. They separated, however, tow by two, and one of the couples was assulted by four Indians, "who with Arrowes did shoot and hurt one of the two in his side." The wounded man's companion, "a lusty and nimble fellow", jumped in and cut their bowstrings, whereupon the Indians fled. Their suprise at this totally unexpected form of attack is readily imaginable, as they were not accustomed to sharp knives that could slice through raw-hide in a trice. These four Indians were undoubtedly the same four who had abandoned the canoe, bent on reprisal. As for the white-men, they had to spend the night in the woods, since darkness came upon them and they were unable to find their way back to the fort through the underbrush.
On May 31st, Captain Gosnold, wanting to see the mainland, sailed for the head of Buzzards Bay. He visited two inlets at the head of the Bay, one at its northwestern corner where the city of New Bedford now stands, and the other at the northeastern corner, where the town of Wareham is now located. The latter location bore the Indian name of Agawam, and is probably the place where Captain Harlow, in 1612, met with a friendly reception by the Indians. It is impossible to make out from Archers narrative which of these places Gosnold visited first. Whichever it was, he anchored and went ashore with certain members of his company. Immediately "there presented [themselves] unto him men women and children, who with all curteous kindness entertayned him, giving him certaine skinnes of wilde beasts, which may be rich Furres, Tobacco, Turtles, Hempe, artificial [skilfully made] Strings coloured, Chaines, asnd such like things as at the instant they had about them."
Gosnold was much impressed with the mainland in his vicinity. "This Maine[-land]", Archer wrote, "is the goddliest Continent that ever we saw, promising more by farre than we any wady did expect: for it is replenished with faire fields, and in them fragrant Flowers, also Medowes, and hedged in with stately Groves, being furnished also with pleasant Brookes, and beautified with tow maine Rivers...."
The distance between these two rivers, Archer reckoned to be about five leagues, fifteen modern "statute" miles, adding "and the Coast betweene bendeth like a Bow, and lyeth East and by North." By this he meant that the Concord, to get from one of these rivers to the other, had to sail an arc-like course, from the shore between the two rivers. It may be remarked here parenthetically that if Captain John Smith, in the brief months of his friendliness with Archer at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607 was privileged to read this journal, the conclusion is justified that it was this particular region that Smith in 1619 recommended to the Pilgrims, when he applied for the job of leading them to the New World.
The most remarkable thing about Archer's report is that after mentioning the two main rivers he added this clause: "that (as wee judge) may haply become good Harbors, and conduct us to the hopes men so greedily doe thirst after." This seems to be rather exaggerated language to use of two little streams, which are comparatively short and too shallow for navigation. Evidently Gosnold did not have opportunity to investigate them.
So the great hope remained, awaiting further exploration, that one or the other of these rivers might be the great water-way which the adventurers of that day hoped to find, leading into the interior of the continent and perhaps through it to the "South Sea", the Pacific Ocean. "With this taste of Discovery", Archer concluded his remarks about the excursion, "we now contented our selves, and the same day made returne unto our Fort, time not permitting more sparing delay."
The discovery of the Great River of Norumbega was Gosnold's hope. If instead of entering Buzzards Bay, he had sailed on westward around the next point of the coast, less than twenty miles beyond Elizabeth's Isle he would have found the great bay which Verrazzano entered, with a river flowing into its northeastern corner, navigable for his ship over thiry miles into the interior. But Elizabeth's Isle was well suited to his immediate purpose, and he saw no reason for exploring further.
On June 4th, after several hard days had been put in gathering sassafras and working on the Fort, there came to the ship's side in a canoe the Chief of the Indians who had visited them on May 29th. This Chief did not stay long, but pointed to the sun, holding up one finger, as a sign that he would come again on the next day. He came on June 5th with hus full retinue, as he had signified, but this time "amongst them there seemed to be one of authoritie, because the rest made an inclining respect unto him."
The prior arrival of a herald reminds one of the way in which Massasoit, the Great Chief of the Pokonockets, announced his first visit to the Pilgrims, years later, by sending ahead the English-speaking Indians Samoset and Squanto, together with several others. Judging by this, it seems likely that the first visit to Gosnold and his company on Elizabeth's Isle was made by a local Chief, probably seated at Succonesset (at the site of the present town of Flamouth), four miles east of Woods Hole, and that "high dignitary" who accompanied the group on the second visit was none other than the Great Chief of the Pokonockets himself, Massasoit's father. The time interval of five or six days indicated by the Indians on their first visit as the date of their return is just about what would be required to summon the Great Chief from his home on the shore of Narragansett Bay. So extraordinary an event as the coming of the white-men on a "great ship" sailing up from over the seas made imperative the personal attention of the Chief of the Chiefs of the Pokonocket confederacy.
Gabriel Archer was the master of ceremonies, as it were, on the occasion of this second visit, Gosnold and Gilbert both being on shipboard a league offshore, leaving only eight men with Archer. The arrival of the fifty Savages at that moment produced a tense situation. In Archer's words, "These Indians in hastie manner came towards us, so as we thought fit to make a stand at an angle between the Sea and a fresh water [lake or pond'", that is, in a corner where the Englismen could not be easily surrounded. AQrcher then stepped out in front of his companions and went through an elaborate pantomime designed to find out whether they wanted peace or war -- a rather needless question, as the Indians were obviously on pleasure bent. The Chief was probably amused at these antics, but he returned the compliment with Archer's owne signes of Peace", whereupon the latter "sept forth and imbraced him", as was proper on the battlefields of Europe when an honorable peace had been achieved. The Indians hunkered down "like Grey-hounds upon their heeles", there evidently being no stones to sit on as at the previous visit.
The eight men with Archer began to barter. If the bartering was for furs, as seems likely, these could have been the furs listed by Brereton: "Beavers, Luzernes [lynx], Martens, Otters, Wild-cat skins, very large and deepe Furre, blacke Foxes, Conie Skinnes, of the colour of our Hares, but somewhat lesse [smaller], Deere skinnes, very large, Seale skinnes, and other beasts skinnes, to us unknowen." In that case, since it was well past the hunting season for fur-bearing animals, it would seem that the Indians had had previous experience in trading for furs, either directly (with the French?) farther north, or through the Maine Indians with Europeans still more distant from Narragansett. In any case, furs were then the Indian commodity most prozed by the white traders.
Presently Gosnold arrived from the ship with twelve men who had been aboard the Concord with him, bringing the English company on the shore up to its full strength of twenty men. (Gilbert, Archer comments, "almost never went ashoare.") Archer then staged a bit of military ceremony, to impress upon the visiting Chief that Gosnold was the captain of the white-men. A guard of honor was formed, and Gosnold passed between the rows, thus advancing with dignity into the presence of the Chief, whom he greeted "with ceremonies of our salutations." The Chief evidently did not know what to make of all this, as Archer remarked that "he nothing mooved or altered himselfe." Gosnold then presented the Chief with a straw hat and a pair of knives. The Chief wore the hat for while, but "the Knives he beheld with great marvelling, being very bright and sharpe, this our courtesie made them all in love with us."
That night the Indians retired to the furthermost part of the island, two or three miles from the fort, according to Brereton. This means that they passed over the connecting sandbar to the island known as Nashawena, Cuttyhunk itself being tow small to permit a withdrawl of that distance. The next day it rained and the Englishmen spent the day "idley aboard." The Indians likewise seem to have remained under cover, wherever exactly they were.
On the third day of their visit, June 7th, the Great Chief and his fifty retainers again appeared. As they were hanging around at noon, the voyagers invited them to dinner. They ate codfish, English style, with mustard, Archer says, and drank some beer, "but the Mustard nipping them in their noses they could not indure: it was a sport to behold their faces made being bitten therewith."
While the meal was in progress, in the midst of the great merriment over their efforts to understand one another, some of the "lesser" Indians sneaked down to their canoe, carrying off a "target", or round arm shield, part of the martial equipment of one of the gentlemen. No notice was taken of this at first, but finally by pantomine Gosnold made known to the Chief what had happened, to test the Chief's authority over his men (and presumably, to get the target back). The Chief ordered it restored, which the Indians did "with feare and great trembling, thinking perhaps we would have beene revenged for it." But pleasant relations continued, and the Indians prolonged the feast by roasting crabs, red herring, ground-nuts and so on, as befoe. After the meal, the Great Chief took his leave and departed.
Somewhat later (or, as Brereton reported it, early on the morning of the fourth day) the rest of the delegates returned to the mainland. A day or so after this, another Indian turned up, who stayed all night on board the ship. He seemed to be more "sober" -- quiet, sedate -- than the rest, and the voyagers thought that he had probably been sent as a spy. Nevertheless, they treated him kindly. The next forenoon he "filched away" their pot-hooks, "thinking he had not done any ill therein." They caught him, but instead of punishing him they asked him to show them how he made fire. This he did, taking from a little pouch a flat emery stone ("such as the Glasiers use, to cut Glasse"), a "mynerall stone" ("presemably containing iron) and a piece of touchwood, or tinder. Striking the mineral stone with the emery (or flint), he produced sparks which fell on the touchwood which "forth with kindled with makeing a flame." Brereton added the detail that the Indian tied the emry stone to the end of a little stick, before digressing into the subject of flax which the Indians had given them, "wherewith they make many strings and cords."
Another interesting and intstructive incident had taken place on one of these visits by the fifty mainland Indians, Brereton, sitting alongside of an Indian, was prompted by the Indian's actions to say to him, smiling. "How now (sirrah) are you so saucie with my Tobacco?" To Brereton's amazement without any further repetition, the Indian suddenly spoke the same words as plainly and distinctly as if he knew the language, which of course he did not. The point is that the Indian was well practiced in what students of linguistics call "echolalia", the repetition of words or phrases without understanding their meaning, which characterizes a child's first attempts to speak.
The Indian languages in fact require an unusual development of this "skill" because of their structure. Imagine, for instance, an Indian infant learning that the old gentleman in the wigwam is wuttootchikkineasin, "grandfather", or learning to ask his mother whether he may go out and pick some wuttohkohkoominneonash, "blackberries." The child either learned to echo back these syllables, or else he remained inarticulate. The odd movements of several years dedicated by the author to an attempt to gain an insight into this language has produced in him a profound respect for the intelligence of these natives of America. Only a highly intelligent race could have made long, grammatically correct speeches in a language more complicated than classical Latin or Greek. John Eliot of Roxbury, John Cotton, Jr., of Plymouth, and Experience Mayhew of the Vineyard became masters of Indian rhetoric, using it in translations of the Bible and in other works.
Brereton concluded his account of Gosnold's guests by writing: "These people, as they are exceeding courteous, gently of disposition, and well conditioned, excelling all others that we have seene; so for shape of bodie and lovely favour, I thinke they excell all the people of America." They were taller than the Englishmen, dark olive in complexion, and their hair black, tied up in a know behind, into which feathers were stuck. Some had thin black beards, others wore artificial beards of the hair of animals. One of the Indians offered a black beard to a sailor whose beard was red, because he thought it was artificial and could be changed. And, to conclude the description of their appearance, Brereton added, "They are quicke eyed, and stedfast in their liiks, fearelesse of others harmes, as intending none themselves...."
The second and last withdrawl of the nine canoes with their fifty Indians brought forth mutual saluations. The departing guests "made huge cries & shouts of joy unto us", said Brereton, "and we with our trumpet and cornet, and casting up our cappes into the aire, made them the best farewell we could."
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