Empires Apart (13 page)

What was particularly significant about the Pequot War and the Mystic Massacre was where it occurred. The atrocities happened not among the slave fields of Virginia, Jamaica or Carolina, where life was always cheap, but among the farms and chapels of pious New England where the riches of this life were supposed to take second place to the virtues that promised eternal riches in the life to come.

Colonies like Virginia and Barbados reflected the standard form of English colonialism; to the north a radically different economic model had sprung up. New England was the glaring exception to the general picture of slave-based colonisation. While by 1700 slaves formed three-quarters of the population in some colonies, in Massachusetts they numbered less than 2 per cent. New England presented a fundamentally different approach to colonisation. Almost the only feature it shared with the colonies further south was its attitude towards the natives, starting with an equal dependence on disease to get rid of the native population. When the Pilgrim Fathers landed in 1620 they found land cleared and ready for them, and no surviving natives to defend it.

The voyage of the Pilgrim Fathers is the abiding foundation myth of US history. Rather than the slave-holding oligarchs of Virginia and the south, the Plymouth colonists of the north are depicted as the moral bedrock of later American development. (The charmingly named settlement of Cupid's Cove preceded the foundation of Plymouth by ten years but as it was located in what became Canada it is no longer considered part of ‘American' history.) These hardy New England pioneers, it is said, lived a life of honest labour and devout prayer, at peace with their environment, their native neighbours and their God. Encouraged by their example, an ever-increasing throng of huddled masses followed them from the poverty of Europe to the endless opportunities across the Atlantic.

In reality the colony established at Plymouth in 1620 had virtually no economic or political significance. Life was incredibly hard and, even without the malaria and other perils of Virginia and the Caribbean, colonists died at an alarming rate. Half the settlers died in the first year. The local natives, contrary to later folklore, were not particularly welcoming. Not surprisingly the huddled masses back in Europe did not rush to follow the Plymouth pioneers, although by 1630 the colony had a population of around 1,500.

Nevertheless the mythological and cultural significance of the Pilgrim Fathers is hard to overstate. Every American schoolchild knows how the gallant band of Puritans escaped to religious freedom on the
Mayflower
, endured unimaginable hardships and eventually survived with the help of friendly natives to celebrate the first Thanksgiving in their Promised Land. It is a heartwarming story of faith, endurance, tolerance and above all triumph. Some of it is even true.

In an odd quirk of history the
Mayflower's
first brush with colonialism was not in North America but much closer to home. The English learnt to colonise in their brutal conquest of Ireland at the start of the seventeenth century. The
Mayflower
played an important role in that campaign by ferrying supplies to the English occupying forces in Sligo and Donegal just eighteen years before ferrying the Pilgrim Fathers across the Atlantic.

The
Mayflower
sailed from Plymouth for the New World with a group of fundamentalist Puritans on board. The sect had first moved to Holland, not to escape persecution in England but to escape such mortal sins as alcohol and dance. There they joined forces with French Huguenot refugees worshipping at the Vrouwekerk (Church of Our Lady) in Leiden. They discovered that the Dutch were just as sinful, and decided to move on. Most of those aboard the
Mayflower
(66 of the 110) were not members of the sect and were travelling for a variety of reasons, many of them financial. The Puritans referred to themselves as ‘saints' and their fellow travellers as ‘strangers'. Once in the New World the divisions between the two groups broke down and the appalling hardships of the first winter bound the settlers together. Less than fifty survived and what happened next has become the stuff of legend.

The traditional story recounts that on 16 March 1621, an Abnaki native strolled into the Plymouth settlement and started chatting in English which he had learnt from English fishermen. He later returned with another native, named Squanto, who claimed to have visited England and Spain.

Squanto was instrumental in helping the Pilgrims to survive. He taught them which plants were poisonous and which had healing powers, how to tap the maples for their sap and above all how to cultivate corn. Their first harvest that October was very successful and the Pilgrims held a three day celebration to which they invited Squanto, the native chieftain Massasoit and nearly a hundred peaceful natives.

The following year the harvest was not as successful but in the third year the harvest was bountiful again and Governor William Bradford ordered a day of celebration on 29 November, thereafter known as Thanksgiving Day.

The facts described in the traditional version of this story are probably correct; even the presence of English-speaking natives at such an early date is quite possible as west country fishermen for long built seasonal camps along the coast. However, the overall impression given in hundreds of school text books is more than a little misleading. What
is left out is more important than what is included. The charming story of interracial harmony reflects only one side of the historical coin. The natives soon got tired of making charitable donations to interlopers intent on occupying their land and as a consequence in the second year the Pilgrims ran short of food. What is missing from the conventional myth is that the colonists knew just how to handle uppity ‘Indians', not with Christian tolerance but with the tried and tested methods of Spaniard and Virginian. In 1622, just a year after Squanto arrived at their camp, the Pilgrim Fathers invited a larger group of natives to gather for a conciliatory meeting and then attacked them, proving the superiority of muskets over bows and arrows. Seven natives were captured and then ceremonially hanged. Among the seven was the tribal shaman, to whom the Puritans took particular exception. His head was cut off and mounted on top of the fort at Plymouth to demonstrate to the world whose God was the true God. The next year Governor Bradford was able to gather the Pilgrims for the first real Thanksgiving. (This is the same Governor Bradford who described the natives as barbarous, treacherous savages, and fifteen years later was glorying in natives ‘frying in the fire' after the Mystic Massacre.)

The Pilgrim Fathers myth is a classic example of selective history, of the way nations use their histories not as photographs with which to capture their pasts but as mirrors in which to see themselves. And if many conventional US histories provide a less than complete picture of the Mayflower colonists' first few years others add an extra dimension: the divine. In these versions Squanto is elevated into ‘a special instrument of God' (a description first applied by Plymouth's Governor Bradford). Squanto's story is made to mirror Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt through plague and famine. What are sometimes described as Squanto's ‘visits' to England and Spain are more correctly described as his capture by slave traders and shipment to Europe. There he was bought by monks and converted to Christianity. Returning from captivity, thanks to the generosity of fellow believers in London, Squanto discovered that God had visited the plague on his tribe and their heathen neighbours: 95,000
natives had died, leaving the country almost empty of human habitation. According to one source Squanto realised that his enslavement had been God's way of saving him from a far worse fate. God had chosen him for a divine purpose, and that purpose of course was to show the Pilgrim Fathers the milk and honey of the Promised Land. Truly Squanto was ‘God's hand of deliverance'.

It is easy to be cynical about the small and quite atypical group of settlers on the
Mayflower
, but the reality is that they survived appalling hardships that few modern Europeans or Americans would be willing to endure for the sake of their immortal soul. They were characterised not only by the arrogant certainty that they, uniquely, could unlock the gates of heaven but also by the conviction that to do so required effort, both spiritual and physical. They came to America to work. They were not looking for gold to loot or slaves to do their work for them. They positively welcomed the fact that the soil of New England had none of the tropical abundance of colonies further south. Idle hands were the playthings of Satan himself.

The significance of the Pilgrim Fathers legend in American culture is enormous. The story itself and the facts behind it are not important but the underlying messages are. Most, if not all, tribal groups believe they are special, in some way superior to other mortals. They may put this down to something inherent in themselves or to the power of their gods. What the Pilgrim Fathers myth does for Americans is to consolidate both of these beliefs. The Pilgrims, and by extension all Americans, succeeded because they were chosen by God
and
because of honest toil. Americans are the ‘chosen people', a model for other nations, and they deserve to be. God chose them not on a capricious whim but in recognition of their own efforts. Many years later the philosophical justification of American imperialism was articulated by John O'Sullivan in the concept of ‘manifest destiny':America's god-given destiny was to rule over lesser people. That philosophy can be traced back as far as 1637, and the paradigm shift that occurred in the world view of New England colonists following the Mystic Massacre. But the massacre has been airbrushed from
American history. The sanitised legend of the Pilgrim Fathers provides reassurance that manifest destiny is about the just reward for virtue, not the bloodstained prize of conquest.

Plymouth would have remained an aberration in English colonial history, destined to disappear like other transient colonies springing up from Newfoundland south, but for events in England where king and country were pushing down the road that would end in civil war. Religious fervour was reaching new heights, with Protestant fundamentalists under attack by an increasingly oppressive monarch. The result was a wave of emigration fuelled purely by religion. The arrival of a thousand Puritan settlers in a fleet of seventeen ships to found Boston in 1630, rather than the solitary
Mayflower
reaching the New World in 1620, is the true takeoff point in the history of New England.

Technically the term Pilgrim (with a capital P) is reserved for the
Mayflower
colonists. They were separatists, who wanted complete severance from the existing religious orders in England. The later Massachusetts colonists were Puritans, not Pilgrims, who were content to remain within the existing Church but wanted it to be purified. The leader of the Boston settlers, John Winthrop, was particularly concerned that his flock would be corrupted by the pernicious doctrines of the Pilgrim separatists. Purists get very upset when the two groups are confused. President Reagan outraged them by appealing for a return to the values of ‘that old Pilgrim John Winthrop'. President Bush I made things worse when, despite claiming to be a descendant of Pilgrims himself, he dedicated a Thanksgiving speech to ‘John Winthrop and his fellow pilgrims'. Bush I made his grasp of history even plainer when he went on to refer (in 1992) to the Pilgrims' arrival ‘more than a hundred years ago' – nearer four hundred years, actually.

Of the 21,000 migrants who travelled to New England in the seventeenth century, two-thirds arrived in just twelve years between 1630 and the start of the civil war in 1642. During one short period a stream of
migrants left England for reasons that had nothing to do with economics, and it is one of the ironies of American history that today their primary legacy is the economic wealth they made possible. These settlers quickly spread out beyond Boston demonstrating a degree of popular energy unknown in the colonies further south. The scale and speed of colonisation was unprecedented. Ten years after the founding of Jamestown Virginia still had an immigrant population of less than four hundred. After forty years Virginia's non-native population was barely more than 13,000. By contrast Winthrop's Massachusetts colony started with a thousand settlers on day one. Thirty years later there were 33,000 settlers living in New England. Within a few years there were vibrant colonies right along the New England coast. Unlike many of the colonies to the south (and the French settlements to the north) these settlements were self-perpetuating. The Puritans arrived as families and bred rapidly. (By 1700 two in five New Englanders were female compared with one in five Virginians.) The colonists relied on their children to help farm the new land rather than constant immigration of indentured servants or slaves.

By the end of the century the New England colonies were clearly the most dynamic of any European colonies anywhere in the world, and the most likely to become a model for developments elsewhere. The reason lies in religion.

Religious fundamentalism is the key to understanding the early history of New England. Most migrants to the south had little or no choice. By contrast the vast majority of those arriving in Boston wanted to be there. Even though they knew that the chances of survival, let alone prospering, were slim, they were prepared to pay significant sums to leave everything that they knew and voyage to a better life. And if God willed that this life would be in heaven rather than on earth so be it. They knew that conditions would be hard, but they were not afraid to join their maker if that is what He ordained. New England was populated by men and women with the religious certainty of today's suicide bombers.

After the initial burst of enthusiasm in the period immediately before the English Civil War there was relatively little further immigration into
New England for the rest of the century. Religion ceased to be a factor in spurring migration from England. Over the next twenty years two-thirds of those migrating from English ports were bound for the West Indies, searching for Mammon not God. Indeed there was reverse migration when the civil war started;some Plymouth colonists returned to important posts in Cromwell's army and government. The Rev. Hugh Peters, the pastor at Salem, Massachusetts, became the chief chaplain in Cromwell's army, and after the restoration of the monarchy under Charles II was executed for his role in the death of King Charles I. (The English Civil War in some ways prefigured the American Civil War, as New England Puritans returned to fight with the Roundheads and Virginia welcomed escaping Cavaliers. In one of the most obscure battles in American history northern Puritans defeated southern Royalists in the battle of the Severn near Annapolis, Maryland, in 1655.)