Dear America A Journey to the New World Diary of Remember Patience Whipple

October, 1621

October 5, 1621

Plimoth Settlement

Dear Imp,

Father and Hannah Potts were married yesterday.  Governor Bradford read the service in the large room of the fort.  That is where we now have all of our meetings whether they be for making peace treaties with the Indians or worshipping our Lord.  It was a very simple wedding.  No high merriment or garlands of flowers.  Love Brewster helped me braid some wheat sheaves into which we wove some lavender.  Wheat is for good luck and fertility.  I wouldn't mind another baby about.  And it would cheer Mistress Potts something considerable after having lost hers.  And we did make a circle of birch leaves and rosemary for the bride's head.  Love had brought some tansy for it but I could not bring myself to weave yellow into this wreath.  It reminded me too much of Mam and how she did love yellow.

I have no idea what I am to call Hannah Potts.  Do I call her Mistress Potts?  Stepmother Potts?  I cannot call her Mam.  If putting tansy in a wreath for her head was too difficult you can imagine, Imp, what calling her Mam would do to me.  I'll think on this one a while.  I don't think Mistress Potts will be much help.  She is still as quiet as a stone and it was all she could do to answer Governor Bradford with "I will" during the ceremony.

Love,
Mem

October 10, 1621

Plimoth Settlement

Dear Imp,

We have worked so hard during this harvest season, but praise be to the Lord for indeed with God's blessing we now shall have for each family a peck of meal a week as well as the same in corn for each family.  My hands and fingers are sheathed in calluses from shucking all the corn.  We had sown some twenty acres with Indian corn and all of it did excellently.  We sowed six acres with peas and barley.  The peas were a miserable failure.  Peas should be sown earlier here, for the summers are much hotter here.  These came up and blossomed but then were terribly parched by the sun.

Tomorrow be the first morning, except of course for Sabbaths, in over three months when I do not have to rise before the moon is down and the stars swallowed to go work in the fields.  What will my fingers do with no corn to shuck?  But the harvest is in.

Love,
Mem

October 11, 1621

Plimoth Settlement

Dear Imp,

I do indeed think that Governor William Bradford is one of the cleverest men ever.  He has declared that we shall have a special time of rejoicing for the gathering of the fruits of our labors!  And it is not to last simply one day, or two, but three whole days.  Squanto is sent to invite Massasoit and his people.  We shall have feasting and entertainments!  Four men have already been sent out to get fowl; others to hunt deer; and my father, with John Alden and Masters Winslow and Billington, are sent to the shallop to catch bass and cod and perhaps some eels.  Governor Bradford dispatches men with all the skill of Myles Standish drilling and ordering his militia about.  I think in truth this is the genius of William Bradford:  He can plan celebrations with as much cunning as he can make laws or treeties or compacts.  This takes a special kind of mind, I do believe.

Love,
Mem

October 13, 1621

Plimoth Settlement

Dear Imp, 

Mistress Potts (I still don't know what to call her) and I have, I believe, worked as hard for this feast as we did in the fields.  All the women have been cooking from dawn to dusk.  Meat stews, fish soups.  Squanto has shown me a new dish to make called succotash with a mixture of beans and corn.  I promise to make pudding.  Father and the men in the shallop did well.  They brought in baskets brimming with fish.  But Father said Master Billington did little to help.  He complained of a sore shoulder and could not haul the nets.  So he spent most of his time drinking beer and basking in this October sunshine.

Mistress Billington did not shirk, however, and she was quite helpful to me with the succotash.  She apparently has either forgotten or forgiven how sharply I spoke to her.  I think it is probably forgotten, not that she is incapable of forgiving.  It is just that I don't think anything lasts that long in her mind.

Love,
Mem

October 14, 1621

Plimoth Settlement

Dear Imp,

'Tis the first day of the festivities.  Massasoit has brought with him ninety Indians.  We are busily cooking more.  It is so exciting.  The whole village bustles and everywhere Indians!  The men have their faces painted deep red and they smoke their long pipes - and sometimes the women smoke the pipes, too!  The air is laced with the scents of roasting meats and herbs.  There are to be games and someone, I think it be Stephen Hopkins, has unearthed a pipe and drum and we ladies get to have a jigging match!  I might not be writing much as there is so much to do and so much fun to be had.  I'll try to write for a minute or two, Imp.  Fear not I shall never forget you.

Love,
Mem

October 15, 1621

Plimoth Settlement

Dear Imp,

I thought I had eaten to the top yesterday, but here I be back for more at the table today.  It has been a marvelous time.  Mistress Billington jigged until she nearly swooned, but she never let up until finally, in fact, she did collapse.  Her cheeks as red as the lobsters the Indians cooked in the kettle.  I had never tasted lobster.  It is my favorite.  But you must wrestle with it to get the meat out of the claws.  Johnny and Francis Billington made themselves lobster mustaches from the threadlike orange tentacles.  'Twas very funny.

Love,
Mem

October 17, 1621

Plimoth Settlement

Dear Imp,

The Indians did a most lovely and haunting dance at our festivities.  It was full of quietness and we could only hear their soft humming and the click of their beads and their clamshell necklaces.  It is called the deer dance and they do it this time of year, for soon they shall hunt in earnest for the deer.  I am not feeling so well tonight.  I am not sure I shall join the jigging match.

Love,
Mem