s
from the savages, whose derisive shouts from the forests mingled with
their lamentations. But this local Indian menace was comparatively
slight. All the Cape Indians, including those whom the Pilgrim explorers
had unintentionally aroused, became before long their permanent good
neighbors. This desirable outcome was facilitated by a singular
circumstance, the roaming of a boy who lost his way. John Billington,
Jr., wandered in the woods until the Cummaquid Indians found him twenty
miles down the coast. They carried him farther, to the Nausets, the very
tribe of the first encounter. Bradford sent notice of the missing lad to
Massasoit, who inquired for him among his subjects. On ascertaining his
whereabouts, ten colonists and two interpreters were dispatched in the
shallop to Nauset, who received the boy bead-laden and well, and held a
friendly parley with Chief Aspinet and his men. These natives forwarded
peace delegates to Plymouth, a course not actually required but
acceptable after their conflict of 1620.

The whole region of Plymouth was offered free and empty to the white
men, through the ravages of previous pestilence. This providential
visitation extended as far west as the confines of Narragansett Bay in
present Rhode Island, depleting the population where it did not wholly
destroy. And further, these Pokanokets, the Sunrise tribes in a
confederacy under Massasoit, were the more willing to heed their lord's
pacific injunctions concerning the English, because they themselves in
their weakened condition were threatened with invasion and conquest by
the powerful Narragansetts. Self-preservation, as well as commercial
advantage, prompted the never broken treaty made that spring. It was an
idea mutually welcome, a most happy plan for both afflicted parties.
Only one chief, Corbitant in the Taunton valley, was displeased and
jealous, and threatened trouble; but a prompt expedition to the interior
frightened him away back home. He sued for favor through Massasoit, and
affixed his mark below those of eight other chiefs, in a covenant of
loyalty to King James across "the big water."

The Rhode Island Indians were irritated by this unprecedented alliance
of natives with foreigners, and knowing the English losses they sent the
famous rattlesnake skin with its challenging arrows, to Plymouth. But
its speedy return filled with powder and balls and accompanied by a
friendly but warning message, punctured their pride and put