It seems that the Indian interpreter was overly ambitious to become a great sachem and seized on any opportunity to eliminate a red rival to his pretensions by provoking hostilities. Captain Standish never did like Squanto, and Bradford himself later stated that the interpreter “sought his own ends and played his own game, by putting the Indians in fear and drawing gifts from them to enrich himself, making them believe he could stir up war against whom he would, and make peace with whom he would.” Although some temporary relief in the matter of food could be obtained from trading and fishing boats off the Maine coast and by other local expedients, it was plain for all to see that the economy, indeed the very existence of Plymouth, depended on fur. Fishing had failed completely as a source of income. Only as a fur-trading post could the plantation be maintained, for only by the export of pelts could sufficient supplies and trading goods be obtained and the debt to the merchant adventurers paid off. So, in the spring of 1622, an expedition went out once more to the Massachusetts and commerce of a sort was resumed--along with hostilities. Some few pelts were thus obtained by the Pilgrims in spite of their almost total lack of trading goods. But then came a “providence of God.” A trading ship, coasting the shores from Virginia to New England, came into the harbor with a large store of English beads and knives aboard. The captain, however, drove a hard bargain with the desperate colonists. Shrewdly sensing the situation, he hiked the prices of his trading goods; in fact, he “would sell none but at dear rates and also a good quantity together.” The Pilgrims were forced to buy, paying away their store of coat-beaver at three shillings per pound which, as it happened, “in a few years after yielded twenty shillings.” Still, by this means, they were fitted again to barter for beans and corn--and more beaver. * * * * * For the next three or four years the Plymouth plantation was engaged in hand-to-mouth expedients to squeeze enough revenue from the fur trade to meet the demands of its economy. All of this was made the more trying because of the evils of the communalistic system under which the colony was operated. A first step toward the private ownership of land was taken in 1623, when each man was permitted to set a little corn “for his owne perticuler,” but it was some years before this reform was fully realized. However, of more concern to the Pilgrims was the increasing pressure from a variety of English competitors for the fur trade along the coast. Always a bit disturbing had been the freebooting interlopers who operated along the coasts, particularly in Maine. These Englishmen, bartering generously with trinkets, colored cloth and ironware, were also not averse to trading guns and powder with the Indians, a practice frowned upon by the king.