Nooks and Corners of the New England CoastDrake, Samuel Adams
History
Nooks and Corners of the New England Coast
Drake, Samuel Adams
New England -- Description and travel
The Pilgrims stood on their dignity, and waited. At the king's request,
Edward Winslow went out to hold parley with him. His shining armor
delighted the Indian sachem, who would have bought it, together with his
sword, on the spot, but Winslow was unwilling to part with either. After
mutual salutations and some talk of King James, Massasoit, accompanied
by twenty, proceeds to the town, leaving Winslow a hostage in the hands
of Quadequina, his brother. At the town brook Massasoit is met by
Standish with half a dozen musketeers. Here are more grave salutations,
and then the king is conducted to an unfinished house, where the utmost
state the Pilgrims could contrive was a green rug and three or four
cushions placed on the floor. There is a roll of drum and blast of
trumpet in the street, and Bradford, attended by musketeers, enters. He
kisses the hand of the New England prince--"tho'," says Mourt, "the king
looked greasily"--and the savage kisses Bradford. Then they sit. The
governor calls for a stoup of strong waters, which he quaffs to the
king, after the manner of chivalry; the royal savage drinks, in return,
a great draught, that makes him "sweate all the time after."
"Give me the cups,
And let the kettle to the trumpet speak,
The trumpet to the cannoneer without,
The cannons to the heavens, the heaven to earth.
'Now the king drinks to Hamlet.' Come, begin."
It may interest some readers to know what a real Indian king was like.
"He was," says an eye-witness, "a very lustie man, in his best yeares,
an able body, grave of countenance, and spare of speech; in his Attyre
little or nothing differing from the rest of his followers, only in a
great Chaine of white bone Beades about his necke; and at it behinde his
necke hangs a little bagg of Tobacco, which he dranke and gave us to
drinke; his face was painted with a sad red like murry, and oyled both
head and face, that hee looked greasily. All his followers, likewise,
were in their faces in whole or in part painted, some blacke, some red,
some yellow, and some white, some with crosses, and other Antick workes,
some had skins on them, and some naked, all strong, tall, all men in
appearance.
"One thing I forgot; the king had in his bosome, hanging to a string, a
great long knife. He marvelled much at our trumpet, and some of his men
would sound it as well as they could." Mourt also states that the king
trembled with fear while he sat by the governor, and that the savages
showed such apprehension of the fire-arms that the governor caused them
to be removed during the conference.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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