Good stories for great birthdays: arranged for story-telling and reading aloud and for the children's own readingOlcott, Frances Jenkins
History
Good stories for great birthdays: arranged for story-telling and reading aloud and for the children's own reading
Olcott, Frances Jenkins
Birthdays; Children's literature; South America -- History -- Anecdotes; United States -- History -- Anecdotes
Five days went by,--five anxious days for the Plymouth folk. And John
had not returned when a message came from the friendly Indian, King
Massasoit, saying that the Nausets had the lad. The Nauset Indians were
the same fierce savages who had attacked the Pilgrims at The Place of
the First Encounter.
A shallop was launched and victualed; and the next morning ten of the
Pilgrims, with Tisquantum, their Indian interpreter, set sail for
Nauset.
It was a dangerous trip. At first the day was calm and bright, then came
on a storm of wind with thunder and lightning, that lashed the little
ship; while a waterspout almost broke over her. “But GOD be praised!”
says the _Pilgrim Chronicle_, which tells about _the lost boy_, “GOD be
praised! it dured not long, and we put in that night for harbour at a
place called Cummaquid, where we had some hope to find the boy.”
But they didn’t find him there. “The Nausets have got him,” said the
friendly Cummaquid Indians, when they came down the next morning to
catch lobsters. And they invited the Pilgrims to come ashore and eat
with them. So six of them landed, hoping to learn something more about
John.
Iyanough, the handsome young Cummaquid Chief, welcomed them heartily. He
made a feast of venison and maize cakes. And after they had eaten, he
offered to go with them to help rescue John. So the Pilgrims put out to
sea again, taking Iyanough and two of his braves. They made the best
speed possible, for they were anxious to find what had happened to the
boy.
The tide was out when they reached Nauset, and the water was so shallow
that they had to anchor at a distance from land. Iyanough, his braves,
and Tisquantum, went ashore to find Aspinet the Nauset Chief. They hoped
to persuade him to give up John, if he was still alive.
Meanwhile, crowds of Nauset Indians came running down to the beach. They
waded out from shore; and soon they were swarming around the shallop.
The Pilgrims stood guard to keep them from boarding her, for they
remembered all too well, how these same savages had attacked them with
showers of brass-headed arrows.
Finally, they allowed two of the Indians to climb into the shallop. And
what was the Pilgrims’ delight when they found that one of the two was
part owner of the corn dug up at Cornhill. They welcomed him gladly.
They told him that they wished to pay for the corn. They asked him to
come to Plymouth for the payment. He promised that he would.
By this time the sun was setting, but Iyanough had not returned with
news of John. This made the Pilgrims all the more anxious.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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