friend, teaching them
how to cultivate Indian corn, and how to take the various kinds of
fish.

In June Governor Carver died, greatly beloved and revered by the
colony. Mr. William Bradford was chosen as his successor, and by
annual election was continued governor for many years. Early in July
Governor Bradford sent a deputation from Plymouth, with Squantum as
their interpreter, to return the visit of Massasoit. There were
several quite important objects to be obtained by this mission. It was
a matter of moment to ascertain the strength of Massasoit, the number
of his warriors, and the state in which he lived. They wished also, by
a formal visit, to pay him marked attention, and to renew their
friendly correspondence. There was another subject of delicacy and of
difficulty which it had become absolutely necessary to bring forward.
Lazy, vagabond Indians had for some time been increasingly in the
habit of crowding the little village of the colonists and eating out
their substance. They would come with their wives and their children,
and loiter around day after day, without any delicacy whatever,
clamoring for food, and devouring every thing which was set before
them like famished wolves. The Pilgrims, anxious to maintain friendly
relations with Massasoit, were reluctant to drive away his subjects by
violence, but the longer continuance of such hospitality could not be
endured.

The governor sent to the Indian king, as a present, a gaudy horseman's
coat. It was made of red cotton trimmed with showy lace. At 10
o'clock in the morning of the second of July, the two ambassadors, Mr.
Winslow and Mr. Hopkins, with Squantum as guide and interpreter, set
forward on their journey. It was a warm and sunny day, and with
cheerful spirits the party threaded the picturesque trails of the
Indians through the forest. These trails were paths through the
wilderness through which the Indians had passed for uncounted
centuries. They were distinctly marked, and almost as renowned as the
paved roads of the Old World, which once reverberated beneath the
tramp of the legions of the Caesars. Here generation after generation
of the moccasined savage, with silent tread, threaded his way,
delighting in the gloom which no ray of the sun could penetrate, in
the silence interrupted only by the cry of the wild beast in his lair,
and awed by the marvelous beauty of lakes and streams, framed in
mountains and fringed with forests, where water-fowl of e