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 verses 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 been 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.
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 the 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. One 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.
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 to drag logs
cut in the surrounding forest. Work was
completed in just three months by 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, the sense of community and purpose of
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.
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 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 the 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 opted 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 allot 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.
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 which
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 occasional 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.
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 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.
| Myles Standish's grave site in the oldest still maintained cemetery of the English Colonists. |
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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