The Mayflower and the Pilgrims' New World* (2 page)

Captain William Turner
• led attack on Indians at Connecticut River

Pastor John Cotton
• Plymouth minister

John Leverett
• Massachusetts governor

Wamsutta/Alexander
• Massasoit's eldest son

Weetamoo
• Alexander's wife, female Pocasset sachem

Metacom/Philip
• Massasoit's younger son, “King Philip”

Tuspaquin
• Amie's husband, “Black sachem” of Nemasket

John Sassamon
• interpreter for Alexander and Philip; one of John Eliot's pupils

Awashonks
• (son Peter) female sakonnet sachem

Tobias
• one of Philip's senior counselors, accused of murdering John sassamon

Totoson
• sachem from Buzzard's Bay, attacked Dartmouth and Clark's garrison

Nimrod
• one of Philip's leading warriors

Canonchet
• Narragansett sachem

Quinnapin
• Narragansett sachem and Weetamoo's husband during King Philip's War, Mary Rowlandson's master

Annawon
• Philip's principal captain

Job Kattenanit
• Praying Indian, becomes spy for English

Sagamore Sam
• Nipmuck sachem, bargains with English for ransom of Mary Rowlandson

PREFACE

WE'VE ALL HEARD at least some version of the story of the
Mayflower,
how in 1620 the Pilgrims sailed to the New World in search of religious freedom; how after drawing up the Mayflower Compact, they landed at Plymouth Rock and befriended the local Wampanoag Indians, who taught them how to plant corn and whose leader, or sachem, Massasoit, helped them celebrate the First Thanksgiving.

But the story of the Pilgrims does not end with the First Thanksgiving. When we look at how the Pilgrims and the Wampanoags maintained more than fifty years of peace and how that peace suddenly erupted into King Philip's War, one of the deadliest wars ever fought on American soil, the real history of Plymouth Colony becomes something altogether new, rich, troubling, and complex. Instead of the story we already know, it becomes the story we
need
to know.

 

◆◆◆ It was King Philip who led me to the Pilgrims. Philip was the son of Massasoit, the Wampanoag leader who formed an alliance with the Pilgrims in 1621. I was researching the history of my adopted home, Nantucket Island, when I encountered a reference to Philip in the town's records. In attempting to answer the question of why Philip—whose headquarters were in modern Bristol, Rhode Island—had traveled more than sixty-five miles across the water to Nantucket, I realized that I had to begin with Philip's father, Massasoit, and the Pilgrims.

My first impression of the period consisted of two conflicting ideas: the time-honored tradition of how the Pilgrims came to symbolize all that is good about America, and the now equally familiar modern tale of how the evil Europeans killed the innocent Native Americans. I soon learned that the real-life Indians and English of the seventeenth century were too smart, too generous, too greedy, too brave—in short, too human—to behave so predictably.

Without Massasoit's help, the Pilgrims would never have survived their first year in America, and they remained supporters of the sachem to the very end. For his part, Massasoit realized almost from the start that his own fortunes were linked to those of the English. In this respect, there is a surprising amount of truth in the traditional story of the First Thanksgiving.

But the Indians and English of Plymouth Colony did not live in perfect harmony. It was fifty-five years of struggle and compromise—a difficult process of give-and-take. As long as both sides recognized that they needed each other, there was peace. The moment any of them gave up on the difficult work of living with their neighbors, they risked losing everything. It was a lesson that the first generation of Plymouth Colony had learned over the course of more than three long decades. That it could be so quickly forgotten by their children remains a lesson for us today.

King Philip's War lasted only fourteen months, but it changed the face of New England. After fifty-five years of peace, the lives of Native and English peoples had become so closely intertwined that when fighting broke out in June 1675, many of the region's Indians found themselves, in the words of a contemporary writer, “in a kind of maze, not knowing what to do.”

some Indians chose to support Philip; others joined the colonial forces; still others attempted to stay out of the conflict altogether. When the English authorities decided that all Indians—no matter whose side they said they were on—were now their enemies, the violence quickly spread. soon, the entire region was a terrifying war zone. By the end of the fighting, a third of the hundred or so towns in New England had been burned and abandoned.

When violence and fear grip a society, there is an almost overpowering temptation to demonize the enemy, and both Indians and English began to view their former neighbors as subhuman and evil. But even in the midst of one of the deadliest wars in American history, there were Englishmen who believed the Indians were not naturally evil, and there were Indians who believed the same about the English. They remembered to treat each other like human beings and to keep learning from each other, just as their parents had done fifty years before. Unfortunately, this was not enough to prevent war from destroying the promise of the First Thanksgiving.

 

◆◆◆ The story of the
Mayflower
ends in tragedy, but it begins with a ship on a wide and blustery sea.

PART I

DISCOYERY

ONE

They Knew They Were Pilgrims

FOR SIXTY-FIVE DAYS, the
Mayflower
had sailed through storms and headwinds, her bottom covered with seaweed and barnacles, her leaky decks spewing salt water onto her passengers' heads. There were 102 of them—104 if you counted the two dogs, a spaniel and a giant, slobbery mastiff.

They were nearly ten weeks into a voyage that was supposed to have been completed during the warm days of summer. But they had started late, and it was now November. Winter was coming on fast. They had long since run out of firewood, and they were reaching the slimy bottoms of their water barrels. Of even greater concern, they were down to their last casks of beer. Due to the terrible quality of the drinking water in seventeenth-century England, beer was considered essential to a healthy diet. And sure enough, with the rationing of their beer came the signs of scurvy: bleeding gums, loosening teeth, and foul-smelling breath. so far only two had died—a sailor and a young servant—but if they didn't reach land soon, many more would follow.

They were a most unusual group of colonists. Instead of noblemen, craftsmen, and servants—the types of people who had founded the Jamestown colony in Virginia—these were, for the most part, families—men, women, and children who were willing to endure almost anything if it meant they could worship God as they pleased. The motivating force behind the voyage had come from a congregation of approximately four hundred English Puritans living in Leiden, Holland.

Like all Puritans, these English exiles believed that the Church of England had been corrupted. But unlike most English Puritans, they believed it was necessary to leave the Church of England if they were to worship God properly—an illegal act at the time. Known as separatists, they represented the radical fringe of the Puritan movement. In 1608, they had decided to do as several groups of English separatists had done before them and move to the more religiously tolerant country of Holland.

•
Photograph of the
Mayflower II
, a replica of the seventeenth-century ship, built in England in the 1950s and now at Plimoth Plantation.

They settled in Leiden, a university town that could not have been more different from the rolling, sheep-dotted fields of their native England. Leiden was a redbrick maze of building-packed streets and carefully engineered canals, a city overrun with refugees from all across Europe. Under the leadership of their charismatic minister, John Robinson, their congregation had more than tripled in size.

But once again, it had become time for them to leave. As foreigners in Holland, many of them had been forced to work backbreaking jobs in the cloth industry, and their health had suffered. Worse yet, their children were becoming Dutch. While the congregation had rejected the Church of England, the vast majority of its members were still proudly English. By sailing to the New World, they hoped to re-create the English village life they so dearly missed while remaining far from King James and his bishops.

It was a stunningly brave plan. With the exception of Jamestown, all other attempts to establish a permanent English settlement on the North American continent had so far failed. And Jamestown, founded in 1607, could hardly be called a success. During the first year, 70 of 108 settlers had died. The following winter came the “starving time,” when 440 of 500 settlers were buried in just six months.

In addition to starvation and disease, there was the threat of Indian attack. At the university library in Leiden were terrifying accounts left by earlier explorers and settlers, telling how the Indians “delight to torment men in the most bloody manner that may be; flaying some alive with the shells of fishes, cutting off the members and joints of others by piecemeal and broiling on the coals.”

But in the end, all arguments for and against sailing to America ended with the conviction that God wanted them to go. These English separatists believed it was their spiritual duty to found an English plantation in the New World. “We verily believe and trust the Lord is with us,” John Robinson and William Brewster, a leading member of the congregation, wrote, “and that He will graciously prosper our endeavors according to the simplicity of our hearts therein.”