“To the end that we might know his messengers from others,” writes Winslow, “we desired Massasoit, if any one should come from him to us, to send the copper chain, that we might know the savage, and hearken and give credit to his message accordingly.”[217] The sagamore seemed well content to renew the alliance with the English. He promised to promote the traffic in skins, to furnish a supply of corn for seed, and to ascertain the owners of the underground granaries which the conscientious Pilgrims had rifled in the preceding winter, and for which they were anxious to make restitution.[218] He also warned his allies to beware of the Narragansetts, a powerful and warlike tribe, inimical to him, seated on the borders and in the vicinity of Narragansett Bay.[219] Massasoit said that the Narragansett warriors had not been thinned by the pestilence, and that they carried on an extensive trade with the Dutchmen in the west.[220] Having thus by skilful diplomacy reduced the future political intercourse between the nascent New England republic and the Indian sachem to some degree of certainty and mutual confidence, the ambassadors remained to partake of the hospitality of the forest lords. They did not think very highly of Massasoit’s housekeeping. The brave sagamore chanced to be out of provisions, so his guests were obliged to go supperless. When they expressed a wish to sleep, they were conducted into a wigwam, and, as a mark of special honor, allowed to sleep in the same bed with the sachem and his squaw—one end of a hard, rude-looking bed, covered with a coarse, thin mat, and raised three or four inches above the earthen floor, being assigned to them, while their Indian majesties reposed at the other extremity.[221] Like other royal favors, this proved somewhat irksome to the recipients, who had to complain of very straitened accommodation, and record that they “were worse weary of their lodgings than of their journey.”[222] The next day the colonial ambassadors had no breakfast, but the morning was taken up in receiving visitors—rumors of their presence having collected several subordinate sachems to do them honor and cement a friendship—and in witnessing the Indian games, which had been gotten up for their entertainment.[223] About noon, Massasoit, who had gone hunting at dawn, returned, bringing with him two fishes; these were soon boiled and divided among forty persons;[224] this was the first meal taken by the envoys for a day and two nights.[225]