The Plymouth settlers seem to have encountered no great opposition from the natives who, although shy and suspicious as might be any creatures of the forest, were responsive to the just dealing that was the considered policy of the Pilgrims; and on both sides there was an impulse to friendliness tempered, however, by the ineradicable racial instinct to be wary of whatever is strange. Within a few months the settlers had concluded a treaty with Massasoit, the great overlord of the region. And Samoset, who had learned a little English from traders, soon presented himself with his friendly greeting: “Welcome, Englishmen, welcome.” And Squanto, from the first, was their faithful interpreter. The remnants of the Cape tribes, the Cummaquids, the Nausets, and Pamets, scattered among their little settlements from Sandwich to Truro—Mashpee, Sacuton, Cummaquid, Mattacheesett, Nobscusset, Monomoyick, Sequautucket, Nauset, and Pamet—were, save the Nausets possibly, a singularly gentle race. Nor were the Nausets, when it was well within their power once, disposed to take vengeance upon a boy. In July, 1621, young John Billington set out from Plymouth to do some independent exploring; nor was this the first escapade of the Billington family. Back there at Provincetown, one morning, John’s brother Francis was like to have blown up the Mayflower by firing off a fowling-piece in the cabin where there was an open keg of powder. “By God’s mercy, no harm was done.” The Billingtons seem to have been among the undesirables of the Mayflower: the father “I know not by what friends shuffled into our company,” Bradford writes of him. And later, in 1630, the man was hanged for murder. But the settlers were not men to leave young John to his fate; yet search as they would, they could find no trace of him until Indians brought in rumors of a white lad roaming about the Cape. Ten men, with two Indians as interpreters, set sail for Barnstable Bay, and asked news of the boy from some natives catching lobsters there. Yes, such a boy was known to be with the Nausets, and the company was invited to land. They were welcomed by Iyanough, sachem of the Cummaquids, “a man,” wrote Edward Winslow of him, “not exceeding twenty-six years of age, but very personable, gentle, courteous and fair-conditioned; indeed, not like a savage except in his attire. His entertainment was answerable to his parts, and his cheer plentiful and various.” And here at Cummaquid they saw a woman, upwards of a hundred years old, who was mother of three of Hunt’s victims and bewailed the loss of her sons so piteously that the visitors sought to comfort her not only with futile words, but with a gift of “some small trifles which somewhat appeased her.” And after partaking of the “plentiful and various cheer,” they set out again, with Iyanough himself and two of his men as a guard of honor, and grounded their boat near the Nauset shore. But they did not land, and after some cautious interchange