Introduction
What’s in it for me? Discover an era shrouded in myth and misunderstanding.
For many, the voyage of the Mayflower and the Pilgrims who founded Plymouth Colony is the stuff of legend. For others, it marks the beginning of centuries of devastation and displacement.
But the story of the Mayflower begins decades before and continues long past the two troubled months of ocean passage. While it’s a tale of religious separatists who migrated twice in order to establish a community of like-minded souls, it’s also one of their determination, adaptation, and integration in a new world.
For a look at the events and personalities that went on to shape a nation, read on.
Key idea 1
Troubled Waters
When the 104 passengers of the Mayflower set sail for North America in the Autumn of 1620, it was their second time voyaging to foreign shores in pursuit of religious freedom. Far from typical colonists, they were families joined together in a shared faith. Offended by what they perceived as the excesses of Christianity since the early church, they were strict interpreters of the Bible. They eschewed church hierarchy and pomp in their religious practice, and rejected all traces of pagan influence, like celebrating Christmas. True separatists, they made a dramatic choice: to leave rather than work for change within the Church of England.
Their desire to practice this radical form of religious conservatism initially drove them from the rolling farmlands of England to the university town of Leiden, the Netherlands. Leiden was an open and tolerant community that welcomed these pilgrim families to establish a close-knit settlement. But even as their transplanted community thrived, the unexpected happened – their children slowly became Dutch.
Faced with an identity crisis, they decided on a bold new course of action. If they were to establish a colony in North America, they could preserve their children’s English culture while building a godly community.
This choice presented many new obstacles. Securing a ship, provisions, and financing for such a voyage was a monumental endeavor. Eventually, they made a deal with a London merchant by the name of Thomas Weston, who’d assembled a group of investors looking to finance a new colony in North America – one that could supply a host of trade goods in return. Smooth-talking but ruthless, he extracted harsh terms for the Pilgrim’s passage, furnishing few provisions and hiring an old, unreliable merchant vessel for the trip, the Mayflower. The passengers would include non-Pilgrims, too. Many in the Leiden community, including their pastor, decided against making the voyage under these conditions.
The negotiations cost valuable time, too. Instead of setting out in balmy summer, it was now stormy Autumn, They’d arrive at their destination – without food – in the dead of winter. The passage itself was horrific. Near-constant gales almost broke the ship apart. Two months at sea exhausted the ship’s stores, and passengers suffered greatly from hunger and disease.
When Captain Jones first spotted land on November 6, 1620, he knew he needed to get the passengers ashore quickly if they were going to survive. But there was a problem – the gales had blown the ship too far North. Instead of Virginia, where they’d been granted a colony, they were in Cape Cod.
Realizing their precarious situation, the Captain and passengers drafted what was to become known as the Mayflower Compact. This agreement created the framework for a democratic settlement. As the first action of a community on foreign shores, it set a remarkable precedent for the future.
Key idea 2
The Struggle to Survive
Landing in Massachusetts meant scouting a location for the new colony in unknown territory. Miles Standish, the Pilgrim’s hired soldier, led small scouting parties along the frozen shore. While conditions were terrible on land, they were far worse on the ship. Disease and starvation claimed more and more lives.
Unnervingly, despite traveling for weeks to locate a safe harbor, they’d seen no people. Where passengers expected to see crowded villages, they saw only empty land. In part, this was due to seasonal migration patterns of native tribes inland during the winter. But in 1620, there was another reason.
Bubonic plague had swept through native populations on the East Coast from 1616 to 1619. Introduced through trade with European fishermen further North off the coast of Maine, with no native immunity, the plague is estimated to have killed between 70 and 90 percent of native people. The trauma and power vacuum left in its wake meant tribal societies collapsed. It was into this chaotic political landscape that the Pilgrims first stepped ashore.
Scouting parties came across stores of flint corn buried under deserted villages, too. Knowing they were stealing, but reluctant to pass up any supplies that might ensure their survival, the colonists took it, resolving to pay the owners back when they could. Spotting their first native inhabitants, the English were astonished when they fled in terror.
While the Pilgrims hunted and fished to stave off starvation, and lost many of their number to malnutrition, scurvy, and typhus, their indigenous neighbors in Plymouth, the Pokanoket, had also seen their fortunes fall greatly since the plague. They’d lost many and were now under the thumb of a rival tribe, the Narragansett. Their sachem, or chief, Massasoit, had observed these English colonists were mostly families with children and seemed here to stay.
As Massasoit weighed his tribe’s uncertain future, the Pilgrims’ losses mounted, too. In the depth of that first New England winter, more than half the original Mayflower passengers died. Defense became paramount. Then, on a Friday in early March 1621, during a Pilgrim meeting to discuss military strategy, someone noticed a native warrior observing from a nearby hilltop. Unlike raiding parties, this warrior was alone. He strode confidently into the heart of the Pilgrim’s settlement and greeted them with the now infamous words, “Welcome, Englishmen.”
Mouths agape, the Pilgrims could only stare.
Key idea 3
The First Thanksgiving
When the tall, naked Samoset introduced himself, it was as sachem of a people near Monhegan Island in Maine. This area was frequented by English fishermen, and it was from them that he’d learned English. He told the Pilgrims their new home was once a thriving village, wiped out by plague. He told them about the leader of the region, the sachem Massasoit, who lived with the Pokanoket about 40 miles south. Massasoit was kindly disposed toward their settlement, but other sachems weren’t. The Pilgrims had offended their regional rivals, the Nauset, for instance, by stealing corn the previous year.
During that long first winter, Massasoit had watched the English struggle. He listened as a former native abductee, Squanto, warned the Pokanoket not to attack the English. Squanto claimed that colonists had barrels of plague hidden under their houses as a weapon. A survivor of English captivity, Squanto spoke perfect English, and spread rumors amongst local tribes about the English to leverage his own position as interpreter.
For this reason, Massasoit decided to meet the English, with all due ceremony, and work out a peaceful coexistence. The Pilgrims were well practiced in diplomatic protocols, having negotiated life on foreign shores already in the Netherlands. With Squanto as interpreter, despite Massasoit doubting Squanto’s loyalty, the two groups worked out a remarkable agreement in which they’d live peacefully together, and protect one another.
Massasoit had effectively cast his lot in with the English as allies against larger and more powerful neighbors. Meanwhile, Squanto introduced the newcomers to mound agriculture and cross-planting, which included burying a few fish along with corn, beans, and squash seeds in small dirt mounds. As the fish decay, they nourish the fast-growing corn shoots. These shoots, in turn, provide stability for the bean and squash plants to climb, and the squash leaves shade the soil to retain moisture. This regional knowledge helped the new settlement reap harvests where their English seeds once failed. The colony began to flourish.
But the Nauset and Narragansett were eager to intervene. One local sachem, Corbitant, from the Mattapoisett just east of Massasoit’s village, tried to convince the Pokanoket to abandon their leader and fight the English. When Squanto and Massasoit were kidnapped by Corbitant’s warriors, Miles Standish and a band of English soldiers attacked brutally in retaliation. Word spread. Soon nine local sachems traveled to Plymouth Colony to pledge their allegiance to the English.
By Fall of 1621, the Pilgrims of Plymouth had much to celebrate: an abundant harvest, due to Squanto’s guidance, and peace with their neighbors. They drew on traditional English harvest festivals and planned a community meal in celebration. When Massasoit and about a hundred Pokanoket arrived with five freshly killed deer, it became a historic celebration.
Key idea 4
The Politics of Change
But even as the settlement prospered, things in New England were changing. Ships of additional colonists sent by the London merchant’s association arrived in Massachusetts, and these newcomers were very different from the devout Pilgrims. Mostly secular young men, they changed the colony’s culture enough for the devout puritans to take notice and offense.
When news of a vicious native massacre at Jamestown made its way to Plymouth, Miles Standish, who provided security for the settlement, promoted the idea of building a wooden fort for defense. Meanwhile, Squanto was spreading contradictory rumors between local native groups and the English, looking to gain power. Claiming the Pokanoket had betrayed their English allies and were about to attack, Squanto almost started a war.
In the aftermath, on a trading mission with Plymouth’s governor William Bradford, Squanto fell gravely ill and within a few days was dead. Plymouth had lost its most valued interpreter, and sachem Corbitant was rumored to be the murderer.
But when the colony’s governor received word that Massasoit had fallen gravely ill, he dispatched Edward Winslow to bring medical aid. Winslow lovingly tended the sachem and his people through what was likely an outbreak of typhus, once again solidifying relations. But it was further evidence that the Pokanoket’s fate was now completely in the hands of the English.
By 1630 new waves of settlers in other parts of Massachusetts Bay created yet more tensions. They brought livestock, taking up vast amounts of land. These new colonists weren’t pious immigrants interested in a godly community, either, and had never been dependent on native help to survive.
The natives had only one thing to bargain with in this new economy: their tribal lands. As native leaders sold off vast tracts, it sped up the culture shift in New England and saw things evolve far from the Pilgrim’s vision. From Connecticut to Maine, colonists were squeezing out their neighbors and reacting with brute force when indigenous residents resisted.
Key idea 5
The Winds of War
As things in New England shifted radically, so too did things in England. If the Puritans had once been separatists because of the excesses of the Church of England, the English Civil War saw Oliver Cromwell and his armies impose puritanism on England itself. Where they’d once had reason to flee their homeland to practice their religion, now all of England was under puritan rule – and the reason for their suffering to establish a colony seemed for naught. Many colonists returned to England to join the conflict.
In 1646, now Governor Winslow was dispatched to England on another diplomatic mission for the colonists and came to the notice of Cromwell himself. Winslow kept delaying his return to the colony, effectively abandoning them. Miles Standish left Plymouth to found another colony in Duxbury, where he died in 1656. With so many of the original colonists back in England or elsewhere, by 1650 many declared the Plymouth experiment to be over.
Meanwhile, Massasoit had raised his two sons, now sporting the English names Alexander and Philip, to succeed him as sachem for the Pokanoket. While Massasoit urged them to honor their English allies, his sons were skeptical.
Indeed, Alexander kept selling land to rival colonies from Rhode Island against Massasoit’s agreement with Plymouth colony. When Alexander fled Plymouth justice for the offense, it was Governor Winslow’s son, Josiah, who was dispatched to bring Alexander back.
After a violent confrontation, Alexander died of mysterious causes within a week. Rumors flew that Alexander had been murdered by Josiah Winslow and his men. Back in 1623, it was the elder Winslow who won the gratitude of Massasoit by nursing his people back to health. Thirty-six years later, Winslow’s son had attacked Massasoit’s son, leaving the latter dead.
Enraged at the murder, Philip gained a martyr for the cause of war. He garnered support from frustrated sachems from Maine to Connecticut. Wherever he went he retold the story of Alexander’s murder, and flamed native frustration to incite violence.
It worked. But by the time the guerrilla war ended just 14 months later, much of New England was traumatized, and Philip’s people would face devastating consequences.
Key idea 6
The Aftermath, from Mayflower to Seaflower
If the children of the Mayflower passengers had little understanding of what their parents had endured to establish the colony, their ignorance extended to the vital role that indigenous neighbors played in their survival. The intervening decades had seen Massachusetts Bay colony far better situated as a deep water harbor and prosperous trading port. Meanwhile, Plymouth colony bore witness as intertribal politics and infighting claimed the lives of their closest native allies. When the first armed conflict in what became known as King Philip’s War broke out in June 1675, this shared history was all but forgotten.
As raiding bands of native warriors fell on settlement towns and villages, burning them to the ground, the militarized retaliation by the colonists and English forces was swift and terrifying. Indigenous people who surrendered were deported to internment camps and brutalized. Cowed by his dwindling forces, Philip fled to upstate New York, hoping to ally himself with the French to gain ammunition and the fierce Mohawk tribe to replenish his army. When Philip attempted to gain an alliance with the Mohawks through deception – by attacking a small band of their warriors and blaming it on the English – he was found out. Ultimately, Philip was disgraced and defeated.
But the damage was considerable. The war saw more than 5,000 killed, out of New England’s population of 70,000 – and natives suffered most of those losses. In terms of percentages, this makes King Philip’s war twice as bloody as the American Civil War and exponentially bloodier than the Revolutionary War.
Traumatized colonists now wanted complete removal of native peoples from New England. Thus it was that in 1676, 56 years after the sailing of the Mayflower, another vessel set sail, the Seaflower. Ordered by Josiah Winslow, son of original Mayflower passenger and governor Edward Winslow, who’d so lovingly nursed Massasoit and his people back to health, this vessel carried 180 enslaved Native Americans bound for plantations in the Caribbean.
One of many outbound ships carrying enslaved natives that would leave New England ports in 1676, as the children of the Mayflower passengers sold the children of their indigenous allies into slavery.
Final Summary
When the Pilgrims set sail in the Fall of 1620, they had no idea what hardships and alliances awaited them in a new world. Initially dependent on their native neighbors, in just a single generation conflicts and racism escalated. The brutal war that resulted was devastating on all sides and led to a new era of subjugation and enslavement for the Pilgrim’s native allies.
