The mirror. (Stillwater, Minn.) 1894-1925, 1922-11-30

white strangers offered 10 pay TOT the corn
and actually did So with kind words and
presents in addition, it made a deep i'm
pressin on the savages. The Pilgrims had
already made friend of Squanto-one
of the very Indians whom Capt Hunt had
kidnapped; he had escaped and returned
across the sea.
In April of the first year Massasoit made
treaty with the Pilgrims that to the credit.
of both parties kept peace between them
for fifty years. AT the end of their first
year the Pilgrims were able to boast to
their friends in old England that they
walked as safely in the wilderness of New
England as on the highways of their old
homes.
1t is curious fact that even before the
Pilgrims sailed for Plymouth the first
charity" of Massachusetts, was talked of.
You can find in the records of the Virginia
Company which sent the Pilgrims to New
England, this item dated February IL,
1920: John Wolstonholme then proposed
that the $500 pounds which had been
anonymously presented by some person
signing himself Dust and Ashes for the
benefit of Indian children in America,
should be expended by one Mr.. John Pierce
and his associates" who intended to come
over with the Pilgrims.
Weary as they were, sick and worn by
hosr forr <hoxy
landed on Plymouth Rock the Pilgrims
had to begin to build dwelling. There
were now only two or three of them who
were able-bodied. They had no horses,
oxen or wagons; only their sturdy hearts,
patient bodies and faith in God and their
good cause.
In that first winter half their number
died, and four of the nineteen families
were entirely wiped out. Yet when spring
came and on April IA the MayAower sailed
back to England, not one of the gallant
band of Pilgrim men or women sailed
with her.
Their first house, built of timber and
IuuCiy tldtCuCNl, DCCdIlC dl OllCC q hospital
"full of beds as they could lie one by
another" Standsh built fort on top of
the little hill and set his four cannon there
to guard the approach by harbor and land.
His little trained band became also fire
company, for their first house promptly
burned, and they had to begin again.
IL IL. -.
7, which was too early in the year. Squanto
told them truly that they must wait "till
the young oak leaves were the size of a
nodse's ear"
By the first anniversary the little band
had put up seven dwellings besides the
four community houses and others were in
preparation. They used the fort for their
meeting house; and they went armed to
their services.
After that dreadful winter, what COM
fort it must have been to see the first May
flowers coming up through the snow Later
they found early strawberries, which are
plentiful in that region, and huckleberries,
fall came cranberries, which still grow red
in the Dogs of the Cape.
Decidedly, the Pilgrims might have
chosen a worse place for their landing
than the shore of Massachusetts, Bay. In
deed, one of them admitted at the very
beginning that this was "a place very
good for situation" with its sweet brook
of water, its woods with many kinds of
trees, its fields for planting and hill con-
venient for fortifcation.
They were not lotus-eaters, those men
and women with the pluck and the faith
to carve lives out of the wilderness. They
asked only to be let alone to work out their
own salvation. Little they guessed that
they were doing their part to help build
the foundation of a whole nation, making
an ideal for the whole world to admire.