Cape Cod

Begin Reading

Table of Contents

Copyright Page

In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

For all the family and all the friends, across all the years, who have enjoyed Cape Cod with me.

Acknowledgments

My family for many years kept a summer home on the bluffs of Manomet—just south of Plymouth, where the historical Cape begins, and just north of the canal, where the geographical Cape flexes eastward. I could sit on the lawn and, in one sweep of the eye, take in all of Cape Cod Bay, from the beach that protects the Great Salt Marsh to the place where the summer fog hangs above Chatham to the dunes of Provincetown, some twenty-two miles to the east yet near enough to touch.

It was a good place for daydreaming. I loved to study the sailboats skimming along in the summer breezes, the lobster-men tending their pots, the freighters steaming toward Boston, and if I closed my eyes, I could even imagine the Mayflower crossing the bay.

Our ancestry was Irish and Lithuanian, but like many generations of Americans before us, we had embraced the story of the First Comers as our own, perhaps because all of us, in one way or another, come from Pilgrims. In fact, an uncle of mine, who was something of an artist, once painted the First Thanksgiving as a family portrait. It did not matter that he was a Catholic priest and so would have been, at the very least, distrusted by the strict Separatists who settled Plymouth and Cape Cod. The truth of what they did was more powerful to him than the details of what they believed.

In 1957, the year that the Mayflower II reached Plymouth, he made us all Pilgrims in oil and canvas. To my Black Irish father he gave armor, helmet, and blunderbuss. To my mother he gave the apron and bowl of the Pilgrim goodwife. To me he gave a hatchet and painted me cutting up the squash for the most famous meal ever eaten in America. I appreciated that. I still do. And though he has passed on, he deserves my thanks.

Of course, many others have helped more concretely with my tale of the First Comers and their descendants. They have helped me in the details and the broad contours and I thank them all, from the shoulder to the hand of Cape Cod.

At Plimoth Plantation: James Baker, Theodore Curtin, who so vividly portrays Master Christopher Jones on the Mayflower II; Nanepashemet; Richard Pickering; and all of the interpreters and guides in the village, at the Indian settlement, and aboard the Mayflower II, who bring history to life with accuracy, imagination, and passion.

In Plymouth: the staff of the Pilgrim Hall Museum.

In Sandwich: Brian Cullity of the Heritage Plantation.

In Woods Hole: William Sargent.

In Mashpee: Joan Tavares and Richard Scoville, of the Mashpee Indian Education Program; Rosemary Burns and Ann Tanneyhill of the Mashpee Archives.

In Hyannis: Marion Vuilleumier.

In Barnstable: Susan Klein and the staff of the Sturgis Library; the staff of the Nickerson Library.

In Dennis: Richard Zisson; Captain George Mabee.

In Brewster: Frederick Dunford, staff archaeologist of the Cape Cod Museum of Natural History, and the rest of the museum staff; Robert Finch; Marion Hobbs; Doris Mullen; David Palmer; Janine and Richard Perry; Robert Wilkinson; and the members of the Brewster Historical Society, who maintain museum and mills.

In Harwich: Joshua Atkins Nickerson II; the staff of the Brooks Free Library.

In Chatham: Tom Marshall.

In Orleans: Susan Nickerson of the Association for the Preservation of Cape Cod; Eldredge Sparrow.

In Eastham: Nathan Nickerson.

In Wellfleet: Helen Olsen of the Wellfleet Historical Society; Stephen Kakes; Franny Choate, who can read the water on Billingsgate Shoals the way most people read their mail.

In Truro: Rosemary Broton Boyle.

In Provincetown: Napi Van Dereck; Patti and Ciro Cozzi.

Also, thanks to the rangers and staff of the Cape Cod National Seashore; and to all of the volunteers at all of the Cape’s historical societies and in all of the Cape’s historical sites, from Aptucxet to Wood End, whose enthusiasm helps to keep the past alive.

And to a few off-Capers: George F. Amadon; the Reverend Mr. Peter Gomes; Gary Goshgarian; Robert Gould; Stephen Martell; the Reverend Mr. George Werner; Conrad Wright and the staff of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

And to my editor, Jamie Raab; my agent, Robert Gottlieb; and, of course, to my wife and children, who never complain.

William Martin

November 1990

Introduction

The novel you are about to read begins, it is safe to say, where no novel has begun before or since: in the mind of a pilot whale, in Cape Cod Bay, on an autumn afternoon about a thousand years ago.

But we don’t stay there long.

Soon we’re aboard the Mayflower on a bleak November morning in 1620. The little ship has been pounding the Atlantic swell for six weeks. The passengers and crew are exhausted. And before them rises a great bluff, the sandy brow of the immense American wilderness.

And soon after that, we’re stuck in traffic in a minivan on the July Fourth weekend. The Sagamore Bridge glimmers in the heat haze ahead. The kids are bickering in the back seat. Mom and Dad are losing patience.

This book covers a long span of time. But so does the history of the Cape.

When I finished it back in 1990, I suggested to my editor that a good oneline description might be: The story of Cape Cod is the story of America. It was true then, and it’s true today.

That fragile spit of sand, dumped by the glaciers ten thousand years ago and sculpted by the sea every day since, has seen every movement of American history from the Pilgrim settlement to the real estate booms and busts of the last thirty years. But what makes the Cape unique is that nature has not simply affected human lives there. It has defined them.

In winter, the wind scours the sand and drives even the heartiest locals indoors. In summer, the sun brings joy to vacationers, while the rain clears the beaches and fills the shops and brings money for the merchants.