Stepping Stones

Aboard the Mayflower, anchored in a cold harbor at the tip of Cape Cod in November of 1620, the Puritan settlers face a hard truth: winter has arrived, and they still have no home. Their story unfolds as Whit tells it to Ryan, who can hardly believe that after everything the travelers have already endured, the hardest part still awaits them. When Master Jones reports that the shallop, the small boat meant for exploring the coast, will take weeks to repair, Governor John Carver sends an overland expedition instead. Captain Miles Standish, the soldier hired to lead the militia, takes sixteen armed men, with strict orders not to provoke the natives. William Bradford volunteers to go, gently reassuring his worried wife Dorothy that God has carried them through every unknown danger so far, and asking her to be at peace and pray.

Almost at once the explorers spot a group of Indians with a dog, who flee down the beach. The men follow their tracks for miles through freezing weather, finding an abandoned cornfield, a burial ground, and a patch of strangely smoothed sand. Digging there, they uncover baskets of dried corn in colors they have never seen, red, blue, and yellow. Standish wants to take it all, declaring, "I'd rather be a live thief than a dead pilgrim," but Bradford insists they are not thieves and promises they will one day repay the owners for what they carry away. Back on the ship, Elder Brewster comforts the anxious Dorothy until a signal fire on the horizon announces that the men are safe, and the expedition returns to a joyful welcome.

Later voyages in the repaired shallop bring harder trials. Men wade through freezing surf until their clothes and shoes ice over, snow falls, and sickness spreads. There is joy when a son is born to William and Susanna White, the first child of the new world, but a settler named Edward Thompson dies, the first of many. In early December a smaller party sets out again, and this time Dorothy begs William not to go. He explains that the others now look to him as a leader, and leaves her with the words, "Watch and pray, my dearest." Camped behind a barricade one night, the men are startled by strange howls in the dark. At dawn, arrows suddenly rain down on their camp. The settlers answer with musket fire until the boldest warrior, dodging shots from behind a tree, screams and vanishes into the woods with the others. Amazingly, no one is hurt, though the clothes they had hung to dry are pierced through with arrows.

A violent storm then snaps the shallop's mast, and the men row for their lives into a sheltered cove. When daylight comes, they find everything they have been searching for: a harbor deep enough for the Mayflower, sandy shores, running brooks, fields ready for planting, and a high hill perfect for a fort. Carver declares that this must be their home. But when the shallop returns to the Mayflower with the good news, heartbreaking news is waiting. The day before, Dorothy Bradford fell from the icy deck into the sea and drowned, with no one near to hear her cry. William weeps over the wife he later calls his dearest consort, while his friends urge him to trust God even in suffering. Bradford does not quit; he believes that whatever happens, good or bad, God is at the center of it, working out His purpose.

The settlers name their new home New Plymouth and begin felling trees and building houses through storms and bitter cold. Sickness sweeps the colony: colds, fevers, and the dreaded scurvy. The Mayflower becomes a floating hospital, people die every day, and the nineteen houses they planned shrink to seven. By winter's end, only fifty of the original one hundred two passengers are left alive, and eerie cries from the forest keep the survivors dreading an attack. Some despair completely, but Bradford holds firm: "I do not believe that God has brought us here to die."

Then, on the sixteenth of March, a single Indian walks boldly into the settlement, past the raised muskets, smiles, salutes, and says, "Welcome, Englishmen." His name is Samoset, and he learned English from fishermen in the north. He explains that the great Sachem Massasoit, leader of the Poconocket people, does not hate the settlers and wishes to meet them. Days later Samoset returns with Squanto, who speaks English even better after years spent in England and Spain, and soon Massasoit himself arrives with his painted warriors. Instead of war, the two peoples exchange gifts and agree on a treaty of peace. Squanto stays behind to teach the pilgrims to fish and plant, becoming, without knowing it, an answered prayer. Bradford marvels that God has sent the very people they feared as enemies to save their lives.

Squanto's help brings a rich harvest, which the pilgrims share with their Indian allies in a great feast of thanksgiving, rejoicing that they can finally live and worship in true freedom. Whit closes the story with Bradford's own written words, explaining that the pilgrims saw themselves as stepping stones for those who would come after them, and that out of small beginnings, as one candle may light a thousand, God produced greater things. Ryan is left wondering whether he could ever trust God the way the pilgrims did, and Whit reminds him that everyone has a part to play in the bigger story God is telling.