[22] _Pratt’s Narrative; IV. Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll._ (v. 4, pp. 483-7),
can be accepted as authority only with very decided limitations.
Prepared for a specific purpose, long subsequent to the occurrence
of the events to which it relates, it is neither consistent with
itself nor with the Plymouth authorities. He dwells at length on the
apprehension of an attack by the Indians felt by the Weston colony,
and the precautions they took against it (pp. 482-3). Standish, on the
contrary, reported that he found them living in reckless disregard of
every precaution. _Winslow, in Young’s C. of P._ (p. 336.) Pecksuot’s
famous speech to Standish, which Pratt must often have heard discussed
at Plymouth, finds a place in his narrative as having been made to
him long previously (p. 481). Finally, if the terror at Wessagusset
was such as he asserts it to have been, the settlers there could have
gone on board the Swan and sailed to Plymouth in search of aid, quite
as well as Standish could come to them or they go subsequently to the
eastward. Pratt himself was unquestionably both alarmed and hungry, but
he probably fled to Plymouth as a refugee. When he got there, having
doubtless encountered enough of danger and hardship on the way, he
found Standish already starting for Wessagusset. His own sense of the
dangers he had run and the heroism he had displayed, both before and
during his flight, probably grew with each succeeding year. I have
adopted only such of his statements as are corroborated by others, or
seem to wear an aspect of inherent probability.
[23] The whole number of Indians in that vicinity was not computed at
over fifty. _Young’s Chron. of Mass._ (p. 305). _Winslow; Young’s C. of
P._ (p. 310).
[24] The Courtship of Miles Standish, Part VII. See also Pratt’s
Narrative; IV. Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., v. 4, p. 481, and Young’s C. of
P., p. 338.
[25] Winslow; Young’s C. of P., p. 331. Bradford, p. 164.
[26] Bradford, p. 132.
[27] Pratt’s Narrative; IV. Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., v. 4, p. 486. New
English Canaan, p. 76; Force’s Tracts, v. 2. Young’s C. of P., p. 344.
[28] Bradford, p. 164.
[29] Winslow; Young’s C. of P., p. 344. The New English Canaan, p. 73.
[30] Young’s C. of P., p. 477, n.
[31] Bradford, p. 148.
[32] Bradford, p. 154.
[33] Ecclesiastical History of Massachusetts; I. Mass. Hist. Soc.
Coll., v. 9, p. 6.
[34] Both poem and translation are to be found in I. Mass. Hist. Soc.
Coll., v. 1, p. 125.
[35] Bradford, p. 154.
[36] The New English Canaan, p. 84.
[37] Records of Mass., v. 1, p. 366.
[38] Savage’s Winthrop, v. 1, p. 91.
[39] Wood’s New England’s Prospect; Young’s Chron. of Mass., p. 395.
[40] Records of Mass., v. 1, pp. 174-9.
[41] Hazard’s Hist. Coll., v. 1, p. 391.
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