Getting There : Water1

Journey by Sea :
Canoes & Shallops

Canoes and Shallops
Both the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag used small craft to cross rivers and travel along the coast.

		The Wampanoag built canoes from hollowed-out logs (not from birchbark, which was used north of here). Men used fire to burn out the center of a log, and then scraped out the burnt wood with stone gouges. The heavy canoes held several people. Besides crossing rivers, people used canoes for traveling (to islands) and for fishing.
Champlain's 1605 map of Plymouth harbor

The heavy canoes held several people. Besides crossing rivers, people used canoes for traveling (to islands) and for fishing.
		Detail of Champlain map showing canoe at right

The Pilgrims used small wooden boats, called shallops, and larger pinnaces. With no bridges, it was easier to sail along the coast than to walk. After 1627 many of the original colonists moved away from Plymouth to new towns. Most built houses close to the shore for easy water access: the Howlands and Bradfords in what is now Kingston, the Standishes and Brewsters in Duxbury, and the Winslows in Marshfield. In the 1630s the colonists dug a canal at Green Harbor to ease water travel between Duxbury and Marshfield. The canal, "18 foot wide and 6 foot deep" may be America’s first canal.

The Pilgrims also used small craft to travel to trading posts. There they purchased furs from the Natives to send back to England. They also traded for European goods like shoes and clothing. In 1634 they set up a trading post at what is now Windsor on the Connecticut River. They had another trading post in Maine on the Kennebec. Trading posts on major rivers were logical places to set up trading posts.

Coastal travel was risky, as the Plymouth colonists found out in late 1622, on a trip to Nauset (near present-day Barnstable) to trade for corn :

...the wind being fair [they departed for] the bottom of the bay of Cape Cod, to a place called Nauset; where the sachim used the Governor very kindly, and where they bought eight or ten hogsheads of corn and beans... During the time of their trade in these places, there were so great and violent storms, as the ship was much endangered, and our shallop cast away, so that they had now no means to carry the corn aboard that they had bought...

The Nauset Wampanoag helped them to look for their cast away shallop, which they found buried in sand nearby. Governor Bradford asked the Nausets to look after the corn, and proceeded to return to Plymouth on foot.

And having procured a guide, it being no less than fifty miles to our Plantation... came safely home, though weary and surbated...

Edward Winslow, Good Newes from New England