ontained, he was afraid to touch
it or have it about, and medicine-men, handling it no doubt gingerly
enough, carried it out of his territory. [Sidenote: Why the colony was
not attacked by the Indians]

It was a fortunate miscalculation that brought the Pilgrims to New
England. Had they ventured upon the lands between the Hudson and the
Delaware, they would probably have fared worse. They would soon have
come into collision with the Dutch, and not far from that neighbourhood
dwelt the Susquehannocks, at that time one of the most powerful and
ferocious tribes on the continent. For the present the new-comers were
less likely to be molested in the Wampanoag country than anywhere else.
In the course of the year 1621 they obtained their grant from the
Plymouth Company. This grant was not made to them directly but to
the joint-stock company of merchant adventurers with whom they were
associated. But the alliance between the Pilgrims and these London
merchants was not altogether comfortable; there was too much divergence
between their aims. In 1627 the settlers, wishing to be entirely
independent, bought up all the stock and paid for it by instalments
from the fruits of their labour. By 1633 they had paid every penny, and
become the undisputed owners of the country they had occupied.

Such was the humble beginning of that great Puritan exodus from England
to America which had so much to do with founding and peopling the United
States. These Pilgrims of the Mayflower were but the pioneers of a
mighty host. Historically their enterprise is interesting not so much
for what it achieved as for what it suggested. Of itself the Plymouth
colony could hardly have become a wealthy and powerful state. Its growth
was extremely slow. After ten years its numbers were but three hundred.
In 1643, when the exodus had come to an end, and the New England
Confederacy was formed, the population of Plymouth was but three
thousand. In an established community, indeed, such a rate of increase
would be rapid, but it was not sufficient to raise in New England a
power which could overcome Indians and Dutchmen and Frenchmen, and
assert its will in opposition to the crown. It is when we view the
founding of Plymouth in relation to what came afterward, that it assumes
the importance which belongs to the beginning of a new era.

We have thus seen how it was that the political aspirations of James I.
toward absolute sovereignty resulted in the beginnings o