Cross Barriers

Gentleness is showing goodwill by meeting the needs of others. It is the character quality that reaches out to individual is need, even strangers – or enemies.

No one knows just why Massasoit chief of the Wampanoag, showed such gentleness to the Pilgrims who landed near Cape Cod in 1620. Massasoit might have assumed that they were enemies rather than friends.

In previous years, a number of European adventurers had frequented the same shores in search of profit, with few scruples about how that profit would be obtained. The Pokanoket tribe, in particular, located just west of the Wampanoags, found reason to hate these newcomers. Once, an English captain had invited a host of Pokanoket braves to board his ship. What happened once on board, no one knows for certain, but it ended in a bloodbath. The natives were cut down with musket shot. For this and similar experiences, the local natives looked with spite and distrust upon the incoming Europeans. And subsequent adventurers felt the natives’ rage.

Around 1627, a French vessel was wrecked in the same area. Most of the crew survived the wreck, but they did not survive the guerrilla Indian attacks. The shipwrecked survivors were slaughtered, with the exception of three who were kept as slaves and tortured.

When the Mayflower appeared in 1620, rumor spread among the natives that this ship had come to avenge what happened just three years earlier. Powwows were held and evil was plotted against the newcomers.

But curiously, Massasoit, sachem of the Wampanoags, never raised a hand against the Pilgrims. As the Pilgrim families struggled to erect a shelter in the biting winter winds, Massasoit’s braves watched from a distance. Even when a party of Pilgrim foragers came upon an Indian corn stash and took food from it, no revenge was taken. Perhaps Massasoit was quick to distinguish that these new arrivals were not warriors wanting revenge, but rather families – men, women, children – struggling to survive.

On a March afternoon in 1621, Chief Massasoit, with painted face and accompanied by 60 painted braves, appeared on the hill overlooking the new Pilgrim colony. At first, the Pilgrim sentries on watch ran for their musket; however, Massasoit had come in peace. He and the emissaries that preceded him came in friendship.

The leaders of the two bodies met, exchanged gifts, and settled a treaty of mutual support – support that included vital help for the Pilgrims in learning how to survive in this strange, new land.

Gentleness is a hand that is extended with an arm both long and strong: long enough to reach across barriers of race, religion, and suspicion; and strong enough to carry generous provisions to help those in need.

Article courtesy of Character First.

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