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The popular image of the Captain comes from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's The Courtship of Miles Standish. In
this 19th Century illustration of the narrative poem the disappointed
suitor/soldier escorts the wedding procession of John Alden and
Pricilla Mullins.
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Thanks to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow he is one of the few original settlers
of Plymouth Plantation who most people know by name. The Courtship of Miles Standish, Longfellow’s
long poem, was among the most
beloved verse of the 19th Century and snatches of it were recited by school children who learned it by rote. While seldom read
these days many still know the central
story of how a shy, tongue-tied soldier asked his best friend John Alden to speak to the object
of his affection, Pricilla Mullins, and
how she told John to “Speak for yourself” if only because the story was lampooned in Loony-Tune cartoons and on the Rocky and Bullwinkle Show. Of course the poem and story were largely romantic nonsense, but as P.T. Barnum allegedly once
observed, “There is no such thing as bad publicity.”
The real Captain Myles Standish died peacefully in his bed on his farm on
October 3, 1656 in Duxbury, age
about 72. His story is much more
interesting that Longfellow’s romance.
Maddeningly little is known for sure
about Standish’s early life. No official records or mention of his name can be found before 1620 in Leiden, Holland shortly before he hired himself out to a sect of English Separatists for their New
World colonizing project. By then he
was about 36 years old.
Evidence—Standish’s will
and later testimony of at least one
of those who knew him in the Plymouth colony as well as what is inferred by the
name Duxbury for the village he founded—strongly suggests that he was probably
born in Lancaster where a wealthy Standish family had several estates including Duxbury Manor, which some conjecture might have been his childhood
home. In his will Standish referred to
estates in “Ormskirke (Ormskirk) Borscouge (Burscough) Wrightington Maudsley Newburrow (Newburgh) Crowston (Croston) and
in the Isle of Man which allegedly
were his rightful inheritance. He said these were “Surruptuously
detained from mee My great Grandfather being a 2cond or younger brother from
the house of Standish of Standish.”
But no parish records, which may have been destroyed during the English Civil War, can confirm his birth and lineage and no court records
document disputes over these properties.
Some historians have postulated that he actually came from a
branch of the family on the Isle of Man, but not documents support that,
either.
His friend Nathaniel Morton, Secretary
of Plymouth Colony, who wrote in his New England’s Memorial, published in
1669, that Standish was:
...was a gentleman, born in Lancashire, and was heir
apparent unto a great estate of lands and livings, surreptitiously detained
from him; his great grandfather being a second or younger brother from the
house of Standish. In his younger time he went over into the low countries, and
was a soldier there, and came acquainted with the church at Leyden, and came
over into New England, with such of them as at the first set out for the
planting of the plantation of New Plymouth, and bare a deep share of their
first difficulties, and was always very faithful to their interest.
This is pretty strong evidence, but
does not meet the standards of rigorous documentary evidence that those sticklers, genealogists demand as proof.
Whatever the case the young man
found himself cast upon the world to shift for himself. He chose the gentleman’s profession of arms
but his family seems to have been too
poor to afford to purchase a
commission in the Army.
Standish apparently found himself in
Holland where the Dutch Republic was
embroiled in the Eighty Years War (1568–1648)
against Spain. He likely, at least initially, sold his
services to the Republic as a soldier of
fortune. When English Queen Elizabeth authorized a force
under Sir Horatio Vere to aid the
Dutch and serve under the authority of the Estates
General. Standish was almost surely
in that force and engaged at least for the Siege
of Sluis in 1604. Indirect evidence
is that he may have be a Lieutenant under
Vere.
The war was interrupted by the Twelve Years Truce from 1609 and 1621,
which may have rendered Standish unemployed. Or he may have been retained in service to
the Republic, probably at half pay
in case of the resumption of hostilities. At any rate, he chose to remain in Holland
and eventually settled in Leiden where he married an English woman, Rose Handley about
1618.
It is there when we first find
reference to Standish. He is identified
as Captain, but how or why he came
by the rank is unknown. He was, however, locally well-known and respected as a soldier. He was acquainted with the English
Separatists who settled there from about 1608.
He may have found his wife, Rose, among them.
When the Separatists determined to
leave Holland for the New World,
Standish was a natural candidate for
the important post as military advisor to
the expedition. But he was not the only one. The Separatists’ financial backers favored the swashbuckling
Captain John Smith, then in England, who was familiar with the New World
and whose writings about the Colony of Jamestown and of Virginia in general had made him
famous. Smith was interested in the job
but his price was too high and Separatist leaders
John Robertson and William Brewster were concerned that
the domineering Smith might try to
establish a dictatorship over their
people in their new home. Standish got
the job.
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A Dutch etching of Myles Standish said to be taken from a lost life painting.
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On September 6, 1820 Myles and Rose
Standish were among the 102 passengers and
30 crew who set sail from the port of
Plymouth. Standish and a handful of
other passengers were not Separatists, but hired
help. The men of the religious
community were largely gentlemen,
heavy on ministers, deacons, lawyers, and merchants.
They needed a few skilled
tradesmen, and at least one soldier, to survive in the howling wilderness.
Standish was a short, but powerfully built
man, standing probably about 5 foot 3 with the
bushy beard favored by soldiers of the day to make them seem fiercer.
His stature made him the subject of jests by others on board and latter his Native enemies mocked him for it.
Despite his size, by the time the Mayflower completed it hazardous voyage Standish was
recognized as one of the key leaders of the company.
The Mayflower was stalled not far from England by contrary winds
delaying the crossing and driving it far north of the intended landfall in
Virginia. Land was sited—Cape Cod—on November 9. Attempts to sail
south were thwarted by seasonal winds,
already in winter mode. With shipboard supplies nearly exhausted
company leaders reluctantly decided that they would have to make landfall and establish a community
before the full force of winter. But
this would leave them beyond the
authority of their charter.
On November 11 the company gathered
on board to draft and sign what has become known as the Mayflower Compact, the first written charter for self-government in the world. Standish’s place among the leadership was
demonstrated when he became the fourth person to sign the document, by far the highest standing of a Stranger among the Saints.
Standish took a leading role in trying
to find a suitable place to establish themselves. On November 15 he led a party of 16 men from
the ship exploring the northern hook
of Cape Cod on foot and on December
11 he was with or leading another party that explored the shoreline by
boat. During this investigation, the
party would spend nights ashore behind makeshift
barricades of driftwood and tree branches erected at Standish’s
insistence.
One night near present day Eastham, the party was surprised and attacked by as many as 30 natives. Standish reportedly calmed a near panic and
kept the men from wildly firing their arquebus
matchlocks. With disciplined fire,
the attackers were driven off. This
incident became known as the First
Contact and shaped the thinking of both Standish and the other settlers
about their prospective neighbors.
In late December the final location
on Plymouth Bay on the mainland was agreed upon. Standish laid out the small fort to be equipped with the ship’s cannon and the positioning of a cluster of houses
for maximum defensibility against
expected native attacks. Unfortunately
only one house was completed by the time devastating
illness struck the community—likely a combination of dysentery from drinking brackish
water and pneumonia attacking
those who were already weakened.
Many were forced to winter in crude huts. Loss of life from disease and exposure was devastating. The colony lost half of its members that
winter, including Rose Standish who died in January. The sturdy Standish was one of the few who did
not fall ill and spent much of the winter nursing
the sick and trying to get the few semi-able-bodied
men to continue what work on the settlement could be done during the harsh
weather and stand watch against possible native attacks.
By late February the colonists began
to note movements of natives in the woods
around them—the tribes had mostly stayed in their villages over the winter
subsisting on stored grain and jerked meat. Alarmed, the surviving colonists met formally
to elect Standish Captain of the Militia
and giving him full authority to raise and train a company. Standish put all able bodied men under arms
and regularly drilled them with their arquebus muskets and halberd pikes,
a weapon totally unsuited for wilderness combat. But the natives undoubtedly observed the
preparations and may have been impressed.
In March Samoset, a Sagamore, an Eastern Abenaki tribe who was on an
extended visit to the local Wampanoag,
casually walked into the settlement, greeted the white men in English, and
asked for beer. Samoset had learned English from fishermen along the shores of present
day Maine where his tribe
lived. A few days later he returned with
Tisquantum—Squanto—a Patuxet who
had been kidnapped and taken as a slave to England, only to find his way
home years later and discover his people wiped out by an epidemic.
Samoset
and Tisquantum arranged a meeting with Massasoit,
the sachem of Pokanoket tribe of the Wampanoag Confederacy. The Pokanoket were constantly under threat by
more powerful tribes including the Massachusett
and the Narragansett. They were happy to conclude a treaty of friendship and mutual defense with Plymouth under the leadership of its first Governor John Carver. Standish concurred, in the belief that
having native allies would be essential in defending his weakened colony.
He
quickly became close to Tisquantum, the homeless native who spent more and more
time in the settlement and famously introduced the colonist to native agricultural practices for the raising
of corn and squash. The resulting harvest that fall, along with hunting saved the colony from a second
winter of starvation.
Later
in the summer of 1621 Governor Carver died and his deputy William Bradshaw succeeded him.
Standish was even closer to Bradshaw, who he had known since Leiden and
nursed through the illness, than he had been to Carver. They two men, vastly different in
temperament, would become an unshakable
team.
The
first test of the Bradshaw-Standish partnership and of the alliance with the
Pokanoket came in August. Settlers at
Plymouth got rumors that a minor chief named Corbitant was plotting against Massasoit to turn the tribe against
the town and perhaps join a new confederation led by the Massachusett to
drive them out. That rumor probably came
from Tisquantum. Standish and Brewster dispatched
Tiquantum and Hobbamock, a high
ranking warrior and advisor to Massosolt, to investigate with a visit to
Corbitant’s village of Nemasket 14
miles west of Plymouth. Corbitant’s
scouts probably were aware of their departure from Plymouth almost from the
beginning.
Upon
arriving at the town, Corbitant attacked two men and detained Tiquantum. Hobbamock escaped and ran to Plymouth to share
the news. Bradford was inclined to
negotiate for their ally’s release. Standish
believed it would be a sign of weakness that would cause theme Pokanoket to
abandon the alliance. He advocated a
swift raid to release the prisoner.
Standish won out and on August 14 he led ten men with Hobbamock as their
guide determined to free the hostage and kill Corbitant.
Standish
planned a night attack on the wigwam where Corbitant was believed to
be sleeping. Standish and Hobbamock
burst into the wigwam shouting for Corbitant, the frightened inhabitants tried to flee. A man and a woman were
shot and wounded. It was quickly
determined that Corbitant had been warned and fled the village and that
Tiquantum was unharmed. He joined the
party on the return to Plymouth along with the two wounded who were treated and
nursed back to health.
In
many ways the raid on Nemasket was a botched
operation. But it had the desired
results. Within a few days Corbitant
came in, re-pledged his loyalty to
Massosolt, and approved a treaty for his band with Plymouth.
This
was the first English offensive operation
against native people in New England and set a pattern of aggressiveness for future
confrontations. Many modern historians
have cast Standish as the prototype for
the reckless, headstrong, and violent settler
military leader, a type that would be seen over and over for almost the next
400 years. And there is a good deal of
truth in that.
Another
view is that at this time the Plymouth colonists were too weak to do anything
but fit into to an already existing
cultural pattern of alliances and
confederations engaged in warfare over
hunting grounds, fishing waters, and good land for their gardens. Plymouth was just another tribe, and a minor
one at that, fitting into such and alliance and participating in the give-and-take raiding that
characterized relatively chronic low
grade warfare. This may have been
the case until enough new settlers arrived from England to provoke an existential threat to the tribes.
Of
course the alliance with the Pokanoket was strengthened. But their rivals were alarmed with the
addition of new enemies. On November a Narragansett messenger
arrived in Plymouth with a bundle of
arrows wrapped in a snakeskin.
Standish recognized it as a threat and replied with a snakeskin bundle
of his own wrapping gunpowder. War with the powerful tribe to the South
seemed inevitable.
By
the way that harvest feast to which
the Pokanoket invited themselves and which Bradford mentioned in passing in his journal
of the early years, Of Plymouth Plantation, was held in
the light of the evolving crisis. This
was the dinner which became mythologized
as the First Thanksgiving.
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A sketch of the probable appearance of the Plymouth settlement circa
1627 based on archaeological evidence. Standish laid out the house lots
for maximum defensibility and designed oversaw the construction on the Palisade.
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Standish
now knew that local tribes were unlikely to attack during the winter. This gave the colony time to prepare. The Captain recommended the construction of a
palisade completely surrounding the settlement and taking
in a good source of fresh water and including some pasturage for
the small herd of goats and even
some garden plots. The palisade would have walls totaling
more than half a mile long and include a reinforced
gate and elevated gun platforms.
With
the arrival of more settlers on board the ship Fortune Standish had
about 50 able bodied men to work on the project over the winter. Snow
cover actually helped drag logs
cut in the surrounding forest. Work was
completed in just three months and the palisade was completed in March
1622.
Then
Standish re-organized his militia into four companies—one assigned to each of
the four walls. Narragansett scouts
undoubtedly saw the preparations and were evidently impressed and intimidated. It they had ever actually planned spring
raids, they called them off.
The
next threat came from the Massachusett to the north and was triggered by the
establishment of another colony, Wessagusset
near the site of modern Weymouth
on the Fore River. This group, organized and sponsored by
merchant Thomas Weston was a
strictly commercial venture and the
settlers adventurers like those who
had settled Jamestown and other
places in Virginia. When they stopped at
Plymouth, Bradford found them coarse
and undisciplined. Certainly the new group, which hoped to
thrive on a fur trade with the
tribes, lacked the cohesion, sense
of community, and purpose Plymouth.
The
settlers at Wessagusset soon alienated the Massachusett by cheating them in trade with
shoddy goods and stealing whatever they could lay their
hands on. By March 1623 some
Massachusetts sachems were planning to raid and wipe out Wessagusset and then attack Plymouth itself. At least that is what Massasoit reported to
Bradshaw and Standish. He also urged
them to strike first against the plotters.
Shortly
after Phineas Pratt arrived in
Wessagusset and confirmed that the town was being harassed and settlers were
afraid to leave for hunting. They were
threatened with starvation. After Bradford called a town meeting to
discuss the crisis, Standish organized a small party including his friend
Hobbamock and seven others to assassinate
the Masssachusett war leaders including Wituwamat
and Pecksuot.
When
he arrived at Wessagusset some settlers had abandoned the settlement and were living among the
Massachusett. Standish sent runners to
nearby villages calling the deserters to
return. Pecksuot and other leaders of
the war party came to the
village. Standish claimed his party was
merely there for the fur trade. Pecksuot
did not believe it for a moment. He told
Hobbamock, “Let him begin when he dare...he shall not take us unawares.” Later he mocked Standish’s diminutives height
to his face.
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Standish stabs Wituwamatt and his companions are killed after being invited to meet and dine with the Captain.
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Standish
invited Pecksuot to eat with him the next day.
He arrived with Wituwamat, a
teen age warrior, and, several women.
When all were inside the one room house where a the meal was supposed to
be shared, Standish’s men slammed and barred the door from the outside while
the captain leaped at Pecksuot, taking his knife away from him and stabbing him multiple times. Others killed Wituwamat and the young
warrior. Emerging from the scene of the
carnage, Standish ordered to others seized and killed. He then led his men out of the settlement in
pursuit of another sachem, Obtakiest. He soon found him and a group of warriors and
there was another skirmish in which Obtakiest managed to escape.
Standish returned in triumph to Plymouth bringing with him
Wituwamat’s head. The raid indeed
intimidated the Massachusett and other tribes, but it also infuriated them by
violating customs of hospitality and curtesy to guests. The Massachusett and other tribes boycotted trade with Plymouth,
depriving the colony of its chief source of income from furs. It took years to recover.
Wessagusset was soon abandoned by its settlers. A handful joined Plymouth, but most opt to
beat a retreat to the English fishing
outpost on Mohegan Island.
When the Separatist spiritual leader Pastor John Robinson back in Leiden heard what had happened he was
troubled by the treachery and brutality.
Bradford may have shared some of the qualms, but he stoutly defended his captain.
In 1624 Standish took a second wife, Barbara, whose last name has been lost in the mists of time. She
arrived in Plymouth with a wave of new
settlers the year before. Some believe
she may have been a sister of Rose who he sent for. At any rate, the couple enjoyed a long
relationship and had seven children, five of whom lived to adulthood and two of
whom gave him 12 grandchildren. One of
them, Alexander, married the
daughter of John and Pricilla Alden.
Thousands of Americans alive today can trace their ancestry to Myles Standish.
Standish’s next military adventure had him leading troops
not against any of the tribes, but against other English colonists. In 1625 another group of adventurers established and outpost they called Mount Wollaston 27 miles north of
Plymouth at what is now Quincy. If Bradford and the elders of the Saints
had found the settlers at Wessagusset rambunctious
and wanton, they were positively
scandalized by the men under the
leadership of Thomas Morton.
In England Morton had been a political radical,
rather than a religious zealot. He
also was something of a freethinker before
that term had been invented and an unrepentant libertine. He was frequently in hot water at home
for advocating for dispossessed
countrymen. He had already been to
Plymouth and disapproved of the Saints as much as thy disapproved of him. He had returned with a Captain Wollaston and 30 indentured
servants to set up a fur trading post for the interests of a Crown-sponsored trading venture. He caught Wollaston selling some of the
indentures into slavery in Virginia
and expelled him.
Instead he and the remaining indentures set up something of
a utopian community which they
renamed Mount Ma-re or Merriemount. He declared the former indentures free men or consociates, and encouraged them to integrate into the Algonquian culture of the nearby
tribes, including taking native wives or
concubines. Morton also freely traded muskets,
powder, and liquor to the tribes,
many of which were still shunning trade with Plymouth. Indeed by 1628 Merriemount was the fastest
growing and most economically successful
colonial settlement in New England exporting not only furs but surplus agricultural production and timber. That was a powerful economic
reason to hate the interlopers. But by adopting and celebrating the pagan ways natives, and casual sexual immorality Bradford had a religious excuse to attack.
The establishment of both Wessagusset and Merriemount was
possible because Plymouth was bound by its private charter to the Company of Merchant Adventurers and
limited to the original settlement and near environs. Its population had been swelling with the
regular arrival of more colonists from both Holland and England. Bradford wanted to be free of the obligations
to the Merchant Adventures and get a charter amended to include a wider area so
as to be able to establish new communities and control unwanted interlopers.
In 1625 he sent Standish back to England to try and
negotiate a termination or modification of the relationship with the investors. The Captain turned out to be a better soldier
than diplomat and returned to
Plymouth empty handed. The next year,
however, another agent, Isaac Allerton
secured an agreement to sever the relationship if the colony’s debt to the
Adventurers were paid off. Standish was
among the leaders who used their own private
purses to pay the debt allowing Plymouth Colony to alot land and establish
new communities in an area east of Narraganset Bay and south of Massachusetts
Bay including Cape Cod.
Armed with this new authority, Bradford turned his eyes on
Merriemount in1628, although Morton still had legal authority there and
powerful backers in England. The final
excuse for action was a report that in the spring of that year the inhabitants
there had erected a May Pole and had
engaged in lewd, immoral, and Pagan celebrations. The May Pole was a common country custom in
England even in that day. But it had
obvious pre-Christian origins as
part of a spring fertility festival which
the Catholic Church and the Anglicans had tried to adopt by making
it part of celebrations of the Month of
Mary. Both the Pagan and Catholic
connections made the May Pole and similar customs an anathema to the Separatists. Bradford had no trouble convincing the
town to raise a force to arrest Morton and disburse the community. Standish still had not joined the Saints, and
never would. Yet despite the aspect of a
religious crusade he felt honor
bound by his duty as Captain of the Militia and deep loyalty to the Colony to
accept command.
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Standish and his men prepare to attack May Pole revelers at Merriemount based on Bradford's account.
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Standish led a party on a raid. By their account upon arrival the settlers
retreated to a fortified house and prepared to defend themselves with arms but
were “too drunk to handle their weapons.”
Standish personally confronted Morton who leveled a musket at him with
the Captain tore from his hands before he could shoot. The raiders righteously chopped down the Maypole and brought Morton back to
Plymouth under arrest.
Morton, too influential in England to hang for blasphemy, was marooned on an uninhabited island until some English ship should find him and take
him back. He nearly starved to death,
which was the plan, but friends from the native tribes brought him vocational
supplies until he found passage home.
Morton returned once more to try and salvage Merriemount, but was
re-arrested, the settlement burned, and its few remaining inhabitants
scattered. Back in England once more he
would file a long fought court case
for damages in the affair and win considerable public sympathy.
Morton’s account in his book New English Canaan would
paint a vastly different picture than the account Bradford made in his journal,
which has been the accepted version
in this country. In it he called
Standish Captain Shrimp and wrote,
“I have found the Massachusetts Indians more full of humanity than the
Christians.”
Shortly after the Merriemount raid, Standish received his
land allotment from the entitlement of each head of household—male, of course—under the new arrangement. As a high ranking civil official, he
presumably had an early option on site selection. His pick was prime land on the shore north of
Plymouth where he was allotted 120 acres.
Other senior officials and influential men including Bradshaw, John
Alden, and Minister John Brewster
also settled there. Standish is often
given credit as founder of the town on the strength of the name, which was a
Standish clan estate in Lancaster. Yet
no documentary evidence proves either assumption.
He built his house in 1628 and was living there in the
summers and wintering in Plymouth for the first years. He began to spend more time on the farm,
improving it and adding acreage and was spending most of his time there year
round by 1630.
Also in the eventful year of 1628 Plymouth seized possession
of the French fort and trading post
of Fort Pentagouet at the mouth of the Penobscot River estuary in what is now Maine. This quickly became
an important revenue source for Plymouth Colony, rich in both fur and in the
increasingly important trade for timber, including all-important long, straight
logs for ship’s masts. In 1635,
however the French re-took the fort. Plymouth
was determined to regain the plum and
Standish was ordered to mount an expedition.
This was a vastly larger enterprise than the local raiding
that he had led in the colony’s early years.
It required a larger force—at least 30 militia men—and the chartering of
an armed merchantman whose crew
could also supplement the attacking force.
The plan was straight forward.
The ship would sail into the bay and reduce the palisade and earthwork fort by cannon fire, then land troops and take the small garrison.
There was no reason to doubt that this would work.
Standish engaged the Good Hope, under Captain Girling. But when they arrived Girling, fearing the
Fort’s own guns, opened fire too far away to be effective and, ignoring
Standish’s pleas, continued to stand off
firing uselessly until all of his shot
and powder were expended. Standish had no choice but to abort the mission and return to
Plymouth. The failure of the Penobscot expedition was the biggest
disappointment of the Captain’s military career. It also marked his last active combat campaign.
The English finally regained the
post and the the lucrative Penobscot trade 16 years later. It would change
hands several times more between the French, English, and Dutch before settling
in English hands along with French
Canada after the Seven Years War
(French and Indian War in North
America). During the American Revolution Commodore Dudley
Saltonstall and Colonel Paul Revere would
be disgraced after another, much larger Penobscot expedition ended in disaster.
The training at the next Militia
muster was conducted by Standish’s second in command, Lieutenant William Holmes. Two
years later, in 1637 as the largest military action the colony had yet mounted,
the Pequot War against the Pequot,
Narragansett, and Mohegans, and in an uneasy alliance with the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Standish was
ordered to raise and arm a company, which he dutifully did. But Lt. Holmes commanded the men in the
field. At least in this way Standish avoided association of his name with
some of the atrocities against the natives.
Although he continued to be annually
elected Captain of Militia until the end of his life, he was now an administrative and supervising officer rather than an active one.
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Standish, 51 years old at the time of
his last campaign, turned his attention to his farm and large family. His oldest friend Hobbamock lived on the farm
with him until he died and was buried in the family plot. Standish lived
on, apparently a respected and happy man until he died of strangulation—probably kidney
disease—on October 3, 1656. He was
buried in a family plot in what is now known as the Myles Standish Burial Ground.
Despite his long association with
them, he never joined a Saints—we call them the Pilgrims—congregation for
reasons not very clear to historians.
His wife and children dutifully enrolled at First Parish Duxbury.
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