“Wessagussett Colony: Ill-conceived. Ill-executed. Ill-fated.”
– Charles Francis Adams Jr., Massachusetts Historical Society
In their second spring in the New World, when most crops in Plymouth Colony had barely sprouted from in the rocky soil, a small shallop arrived carrying ten men and some letters but “no victuals nor any hope of any”. The Plymouth settlers must have groaned at the news: More hungry mouths to feed.
All in all, the settlers second winter in Plymouth passed far better than the first. They feasted with the local Wampanoag tribe in the October of 1621, what has since become known as the “First Thanksgiving”. In November they welcomed another 35 settlers arriving on the Fortune, including sons and brothers of Mayflower passengers. They then, miraculously, passed the cold snowy winter without losing a single soul.
Even though no one died, conditions remained unpleasant. The colonists huddled together for warmth in drafty thatched houses that tended to catch fire. And it would be at least another year before there was enough food to ease Governor Bradford’s strict rationing program.
Weston’s Men
The arriving shallop was a coastal cruiser from the Sparrow, a fishing vessel that landed in Maine weeks earlier, one of three ships sent from London by a a man well known to the Plymouth settlers: Thomas Weston.
Initially an agent for the Merchant Adventurers who helped organize the Plymouth settlement, Weston featured often in William Bradford’s correspondence with fellow Separatist Thomas Cushman, and not always in flattering terms. One representative comment: Weston was “quick to reap profits from the New World, and not too scrupulous about the means.”
By 1622 Weston had split from that enterprise to pursue his own fortunes. None fared well.
The Pratt Brothers
One of the shallop passengers employed by Weston was a tall and lanky “lightly colored” Londoner named Phineas Pratt. Phineas and his younger brother, Joshua, along with a company of some sixty men, were to start a new colony whose sole purpose was the profit of Weston and his partners.
To Plymouth’s relief, Pratt and the rest of Weston’s advance team soon left to scout the coast. Finding a suitable location for the new colony — the remains of the abandoned native settlement, Wessaguscus, on the Fore River thirty miles north of Plymouth — they negotiated with the natives and made an agreement to settle there.
Phineas and the others returned to Plymouth. By the end of June, Weston’s two main ships — the Swan and the Charity — arrived. Phineas and the others from the Sparrow boarded the Swan and the company moved to the new settlement.
They reached the new settlement in late July and by September the Wessagussett Clony was established. The Swan lay at anchor in the Fore. The Charity returned to London.
Trouble from the Start
Weston’s men arrived too late to grow crops and, being mostly from London, may have lacked the knowledge and means to grow much anyway. Instead they built a blockhouse and other fortifications while trading with the native Massachusett tribe for food.
Relations initially remained cordial between the two English settlements, and between the English and the Indians. Weston’s men built canoes for the Indians and helped Plymouth with their harvest. Plymouth and Wessagussett jointly traded with the natives for additional food stores.
Despite their work and bartering, Weston’s men still had insufficient food for the winter. By January 1623, they were trading with the Indians at a severe disadvantage. Some stole indiscriminately from both the nearby native village and Plymouth Plantation. Relations with their new neighbors began to deteriorate.
And the New England winter was only beginning.
Starvation Time
Hunger took an enormous toll.
As Weston’s men suffered through the winter without food, they first burned through whatever fat stores they had built up the previous summer. Their metabolisms slowed, impairing everything from kidney function to immune system. Vital organs stopped receiving nutrients. Body temperatures dropped. Hearts and lungs contracted. Muscles shrank.
The men felt chilled and weak. Most fell severely ill. They grew increasingly irritable and had difficulty concentrating, even on simple thoughts like: Get food.
Then things grew worse. Once their bodies started consuming their own muscle, including the heart muscle, they hallucinated, convulsed and spasmed.
Finally, one by one, their heart simply stopped.
Crisis
In this state of cognitive impairment, or perhaps because of it, their distrust of Massachussett tribe grew. By March, the local sachem, Pexworth, had instructed his men to move their wigwams close to the settlement. Their close presence further unsettled Weston’s men, who concluded the movements were a prelude to attack. One day a native squaw confirmed their worst fears: Pexworth would soon come with many Indians to kill all at Wessagussett, and everyone down in Plymouth, too.
In their weakened condition, with many already dead from starvation, Weston’s men feared their chances of defending themselves were slim. Someone needed to reach Plymouth with the news, and return with help.
Phineas Pratt said he would go.
Pratt Runs To Plymouth
Before Phineas could leave, Pexworth paid him a visit. “Me hear you go to Patuxet [Plymouth],” he told Phineas. “You will lose yourself. The bears and wolves will eat you. But, because I love you, I will give you my boy Nahamit, and also victuals to eat and to be merry with your friends when you arrive there.”
Phineas was suspicious. Thinking Pexworth was playing nice to cover sinister intentions, he insisted he had no plans to leave Wessagussett. Pexworth went home, but soon after came five other Indians, all carrying bows and arrows. These insisted on their friendship, they only carried weapons the way the English always carried guns, but Phineas was convinced they would kill him if he tried to leave.
The Indians kept Phineas in sight for a week. When they finally went home, Phineas told Weston’s other surviving men: “Now is the time to run to Plymouth.” There was no compass in the camp, and he was afraid to take a gun since any Indians seeing him suddenly armed would mistrust him. Some of the other settlers told him not to go at all, that the Indians would pursue and kill him.
Phineas went to the edge of the swamp and pretended to dig for nuts.
Seeing no one, he bolted.
March in New England is deep winter. Temperatures might climb into the forties during the day, but almost always drop below freezing at night. Snow and ice still covers the ground, lakes and ponds. Between Wessagussett and Plymouth were numerous rivers — none with bridges — that might be frozen, filled with ice floes, or simply freezing.
A tough trek without food, especially with someone chasing you.
Phineas ran south, alone, worried the whole time about the footprints he was leaving in the snow. It was cloudy, no sun to provide a sense of direction. He became lost.
Darkness fell.
Wolves howled.
Phineas came to a river. Shoulder deep, and cold. He crossed, emerged freezing but afraid to make a fire in the dark. He came upon a hole in the ground filled with dead wood. Desperate, he set the wood afire and warmed himself.
The night sky cleared, and he found Ursa Major to orient himself, but the next morning he found travel impossible. He stayed by his fire.
On the third day the sun shone. He set out again and by the afternoon found Plymouth Bay. Crossing a brook, he found a path. He didn’t know where the path led, perhaps to Plymouth, perhaps another way, but time was short and, without food, he ran along hoping to reach the plantation.
He came to another river (then called the James). By the time he crossed he was convinced the Indians pursued him “as a deer is pursued by wolves”. He ran down another hill and at last encountered another Englishman.
The Standish Expedition
A man named Hamdin gave Phineas some dried corn to eat and accompanied him the rest of the way to Plymouth. The settlers there had already been warned of Pexworth’s plan by Massasoit, the great sachem of the far friendlier Wampanoags.
Massasoit’s counsel to the Plymouth governor was simple: strike Pexworth first. Remove the leaders and their plot would fail.
Bradford sent Captain Myles Standish and ten other Plymouth men to Wessagussett by boat. Phineas Pratt was too weak to accompany them.
Discovering the English colony still intact, but with the Indians sharpening their weapons openly and otherwise demonstrating their willingness to fight the armed Plymouth men, Standish invited Pexworth and his lieutenants to an impromptu peace negotiation in the blockhouse. The Massachusetts leaders agreed to sit down for a meal with the Pilgrim commander.
Historian Nathaniel Philbrick describes what happened next:
“Once they had all sat down and begun to eat, the captain signaled for the door to be shut. He turned to Pecksuot [Pexworth] and grabbed the knife from the string around his neck. Before the Indian had a chance to respond, Standish had begun stabbing him with his own weapon. The point was needle sharp, and Pecksuot’s chest was soon riddled with blood-spurting wounds.”
As Standish and Pexworth struggled, the other Indians fell at the hands of the Englishmen. It was a bloody, brawling, gruesome massacre.
Aftermath
The natives were devastated. Edward Winslow reported that, throughout the region, they “forsook their houses, running to and fro like men distracted, living in swamps and other desert places, and so brought manifold diseases amongst themselves, whereof very many are dead.” The only benefit appears to have been increased security and prominence for Massasoit’s Wampanoag tribe, Plymouth’s closest ally.
Wessagussett itself was abandoned. Some survivors moved to Plymouth, while others dispersed to fishing camps along the coast. Many caught the first boat back to England.
And where, in all of this, was Joshua Pratt, younger brother to Phineas? There is no mention of his time in Wessagussett, though it seems reasonable to assume one of the motivations for Phineas’ daring run through the woods was the safety of his younger brother.
What is known: both Joshua and Phineas stayed in Plymouth. They are listed with those receiving a one-acre land allocation later in the spring of 1623. Since most colonists granted land at that time were new arrivals from the ship Anne, some claim Joshua also came on that ship and was never at Wessagussett.
Seems unlikely, but its impossible to say for certain.
The Pratt Brothers’ Later Years
In 1630 Phineas married Mary Priest, daughter of Mayflower passenger Degory Priest, who died the first winter. Mary was born in the Netherlands around 1611 and made the Atlantic crossing aboard the Anne with her siblings, her mother, and her mother’s new husband, Godbert Godbertson.
Phineas and Mary had eight children who lived to adulthood. Phineas was a joiner by trade, a skilled woodworker who made much of the colony’s early furniture. He became a freeman in 1633, received numerous land grants, and grew hay on a plot next to Francis Billington’s.
Phineas and Mary later relocated to Charlestown, where Phineas was buried in the Olde Burying Ground. His tombstone says he lived close to ninety years.
Joshua Pratt married a woman named Bathsheba sometime before 1630. Her origins are unknown. They raised five children together. Joshua served on juries and court errands and in various public offices: constable, sealer of weights & measures, messenger, etc. He died in Plymouth in 1656.
Phineas Pratt’s Declaration
Much of what is known about the conditions at Wessagussett Colony and Phineas Pratt’s run for help come from a declaration made by Phineas himself in 1662 (reprinted in 1858) for the Massachussetts General Court.
How accurate could such a statement be, forty years later? Not very, possibly. By then William Bradford and Myles Standish were dead. So was Phineas’ brother Joshua. There were few men at all still living who could confirm or contradict his assertions.
And, since his goal for the declaration was financial, its reasonable to assume Phineas would portray himself in the best possible light, a hero facing the Big Bad natives.
How much of it is true? From the accounts of others at Plymouth, we know someone arrived from Wessagussett. We also know they confirmed his story with Massasoit, who had been approached by the Massachussett tribe to conspire against the English.
Its possible, however, that man was not Phineas. Perhaps Phineas took credit for the actions of his brother, or someone else since deceased. Perhaps he misremembered the actions of the natives, who were more worried about aggression from the English than bent on sinister acts themselves.
Phineas was, after all, likely starving to the point of hallucinations at the time.
However much his declaration is riddled with fiction, it proved to be valuable. The Mass General Court rewarded him with three hundred acres for his efforts.
The Forlorn Hope of Sixty Men
Despite his joinery skills and all the land he received, Phineas died a pauper. In 1668, when he was close to eighty, he again petitioned the Massachusetts court, saying he was the sole remainder of the forlorn hope of sixty men and, forty-five years later, in need of charity.
The colony refused to grant any a second time, but the town of Charlestown provided a “poor man’s sustenance” for the remainder of his days.
We descend from Joshua Pratt’s daughter Hannah Pratt Spooner through Mabel Prescott’s maternal grandfather, George Grinnell; and also from Joshua’s son Jonathan through Herbert Kimball’s maternal grandfather George Peabody.
Sources:
Pratt, Phineas. A Declaration of the Affairs of the English People that First Inhabited New England 1662 (reprinted 1858 in Boston by T. R. Marvin & Son)
Silverman, David J. This Land Is Their Land: The Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving
https://www.geni.com/projects/Great-Migration-Passengers-of-the-Sparrow-1622/10994
https://www.geni.com/people/Joshua-Pratt/6000000003490621211
https://www.geni.com/people/Phineas-Pratt/6000000001325688511
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wessagusset_Colony
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Weston_(merchant_adventurer)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phineas_Pratt
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massasoit
Wicked Moxie 