Roger Clap was one of the Dorchester settlers who arrived on the ship Mary and John in 1630. The ship dropped anchor off Nantasket, because the captain was not familiar with Boston harbor. The settlers traveled overland from Nantasket until they found a good place to live at what is now Dorchester. In the meantime, Roger Clap and a group of men set off in a small boat to explore. They sailed north around the Shawmut peninsula and up the Charles River to Watertown.
Today’s illustration is a photograph of a bronze plaque erected by the Historical Society of Watertown in 1947. Another plaque describes the scene depicted using words from Roger Clap’s Memoirs:
Here landed Roger Clap and the Dorchester men, June, 1630.
We went up Charles River, until the river grew narrow and shallow, and there we landed our goods with much labor and toil, the bank being steep. And night coming on, we were informed that there were hard by us three hundred Indians. One Englishman that could speak the Indian language, (an old Planter), went to them and advised them not to come near us in the night, and they harkened to his counsel and came not. In the morning some of the Indians came and stood at a distance off, looking at us but came not near us. But when they had been a while in view, some of them came and held out a great bass towards us so we sent a man with a biscuit and changed the cake for the bass. We had not been there many days, though by our diligence we had got up a kind of shelter to save our goods in, but we had order to come away from that place which was about Watertown unto a place called Mattapan, now Dorchester, because there was a neck of land fit to keep our cattle on.