THE " QUONAHASSIT" PIONEERS. 99 



It is probable therefore that the swarms of natives seen 

 by Captain Smith were more than could ever be seen 

 again upon this coast. 



When the Pilgrims were at Plymouth during the first 

 winter, 1620-21, there was no journey taken to the harbor 

 of Cohasset ; at least, none has ever been related in Pil- 

 grim narratives. When they first visited the Indians of 

 Boston Bay, they sailed past our ledges in their shallop 

 without turning in on Wednesday afternoon, September 

 18, 162 1,* returning three days later. 



In the following year, 1622, the additional and unsavory 

 men whom Thomas Weston landed upon the Pilgrims 

 cruised along our shore, looking for a place to settle. If 

 they came into our harbor at all they thought it un- 

 desirable, for they concluded to establish their colony at 

 Weymouth, which was then called by the Indians Wes- 

 sagusset. 



This abortive and miserable colony made a failure. 

 Some t of them turned into savages, and the rest were 

 saved from starvation only by the pluck of Phineas Pratt, 

 the ancestor of our Cohasset Pratts. 



Near the end of that starving winter, 1622-23, when 

 some of them had to eat roots, and one had to be hung 

 for stealing corn from the Indians, they were threatened 

 with utter destruction by the savages. Then it was that 

 Phineas Pratt made his desperate run overland by the old 

 trail to Plymouth for help. An Indian chased him, but 

 fortunately Pratt lost the trail, and while he slept over- 

 night in a deep hollow place his pursuer passed on. 

 A tradition has claimed that this Cohasset ancestor slept 

 that night in our boundaries ; but a careful reading of 

 his own account of his flight discredits it. The valiant 

 Captain Miles Standish, with some good soldiers, went 



* Mourt's Relation of Our Voyage to the Massachusetts ; and What Hap- 

 pened There. 



t Winslow says that only one became a savage; but judged by their behavior 

 several must be called savages. 



