Welcome, Englishmen!
“Welcome!”
That cry—just one English word—sounded through the street of Plymouth, and startled the Pilgrims. They caught up their muskets and ran from the houses.
A tall naked savage, his lank hair clinging to his shoulders, was stalking along the street, holding a bow and arrows.
“Welcome!” he shouted.
The Pilgrims returned his greeting.
He was Samoset, Chief of Pemaquid, he told them. He had journeyed from very far off. He had learned English among the Englishmen who sometimes came to fish off the coast of his country.
The Pilgrims, glad to talk with a friendly Indian, invited him to eat with them. Then, as the wind was rising, they wrapped a warm coat around his naked body. They gave him biscuit with butter, and cheese, and a piece of cooked duck; all of which he seemed to relish hugely.
And in answer to their questions Samoset told them many things about that country. As for the Nauset Indians, who had attacked them so fiercely at The Place of the First Encounter, he said that these Nausets hated all white men because a certain Englishman, one Captain Hunt, a short time before the Pilgrims landed, had cruelly deceived the Nauset Indians, kidnapping twenty of them, and selling them to other white men.
All this and much more, Samoset told the Pilgrims. He stayed with them that night. The next day they sent him away with a gift of a knife, a ring, and a bracelet. He went off promising that he would come soon again and bring other Indians to trade with them.
But the Pilgrims were troubled, for they had not found the owners of the buried corn.