Myles Standish It is an interesting coincidence that while Virginia had her Captain John Smith, Plymouth possessed a character quite similar in the person of Captain Myles Standish.  He was the military leader of the colony, with a courage that was absolutely fearless. He has been described as a very small man, with a "long, yellow beard," and a temper as inflammable as gunpowder. Nothing would rouse his anger sooner than to hear any slur upon his stature. A big, hulking Indian, belonging to a party much larger than Standish's, once looked down upon the diminutive Englishman, and, with a curl of his lip, referred to him as too small to fight. The next day, in a fight that arose with the chiefs, Standish killed the insulting Indian with his own knife.  All readers are familiar with the beautiful poem of Longfellow, which tells how Standish employed John Alden to woo Priscilla, the "loveliest maid of Plymouth," for him, and he did it with such success that Alden won her for himself. Source:  A New History of the United States, The Greater Republic by Charles Morris, LL.D., W. E. Scull, 1899.