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Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War
From the perilous ocean crossing to the shared bounty of the first Thanksgiving, the Pilgrim settlement of New England has become enshrined as our most sacred national myth. Yet, as bestselling author Nathaniel Philbrick reveals in his spellbinding new book, the true story of the Pilgrims is much more than the well-known tale of piety and sacrifice; it is a fifty-five-year epic that is at once tragic, heroic, exhilarating, and profound.
The Mayflower's religious refugees arrived in Plymouth Harbor during a period of crisis for Native Americans as disease spread by European fishermen devastated their populations. Initially the two groups-the Wampanoags, under the charismatic and calculating chief Massasoit, and the Pilgrims, whose pugnacious military officer Miles Standish was barely five feet tall-maintained a fragile working relationship. But within decades, New England would erupt into King Philip's War, a savagely bloody conflict that nearly wiped out English colonists and natives alike and forever altered the face of the fledgling colonies and the country that would grow from them.
With towering figures like William Bradford and the distinctly American hero Benjamin Church at the center of his narrative, Philbrick has fashioned a fresh and compelling portrait of the dawn of American history-a history dominated right from the start by issues of race, violence, and religion.
The Mayflower's religious refugees arrived in Plymouth Harbor during a period of crisis for Native Americans as disease spread by European fishermen devastated their populations. Initially the two groups-the Wampanoags, under the charismatic and calculating chief Massasoit, and the Pilgrims, whose pugnacious military officer Miles Standish was barely five feet tall-maintained a fragile working relationship. But within decades, New England would erupt into King Philip's War, a savagely bloody conflict that nearly wiped out English colonists and natives alike and forever altered the face of the fledgling colonies and the country that would grow from them.
With towering figures like William Bradford and the distinctly American hero Benjamin Church at the center of his narrative, Philbrick has fashioned a fresh and compelling portrait of the dawn of American history-a history dominated right from the start by issues of race, violence, and religion.
Editorial Reviews
Few periods in American history are as clouded in mythology and romantic fantasy as the Pilgrim settlement of New England. The Mayflower, Plymouth Rock, the first Thanksgiving, Miles Standish, John Alden and Priscilla ("Speak for yourself, John") Mullins -- this is the stuff of legend, and we have thrilled to it for generations. Among many other things, it is what Nathaniel Philbrick calls "a restorative myth of national origins," one that encourages us in the conviction that we are a nation uniquely blessed by God and that we have reached a level of righteousness unattained by any other country.It is a comforting mythology, but it has little basis in fact. The voyage of the Mayflower was a painful and fatal (one crew member died) transatlantic passage by people who knew nothing about the sea and had "almost no relevant experience when it came to carving a settlement out of the American wilderness." Wherever they first set foot on the American continent, it wasn't Plymouth, and it certainly wasn't Plymouth Rock. The first Thanksgiving (in 1621) was indeed attended by Indians as well as Pilgrims, but they didn't sit at the tidy table depicted in Victorian popular art; they "stood, squatted, or sat on the ground as they clustered around outdoor fires, where the deer and birds turned on wooden spits and where pottages -- stews into which varieties of meats and vegetables were thrown -- simmered invitingly." As for Priscilla Mullins, John Alden and Miles Standish, that tale is nothing more than a product of the imagination of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
These cherished myths, in other words, bear approximately as much resemblance to reality as does, say, the story of George Washington and the cherry tree. In Mayflower, his study of the Pilgrim settlement, Philbrick dispatches them in a few paragraphs. It takes considerably longer, and requires vastly more detail, for him to get closer to the truth about relations between the Pilgrims and the Indians. Popular mythology tends to focus on Massasoit, the chief of the Pokanokets who allied his tribe with the English settlers, and Squanto, the English-speaking Indian who formed a close, mutually rewarding friendship with William Bradford, governor of Plymouth Plantation for three decades. Some of what that mythology tells us is indeed true, but as Philbrick is at pains to demonstrate, the full truth is vastly more complicated.
Philbrick, who lives on Nantucket Island and has written often about the sea and those who sail it -- he won the National Book Award for nonfiction in 2000 for In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex -- specializes in popular history, a genre often sneered at by academic historians but treasured by readers, who welcome its emphasis on narrative and lu...
These cherished myths, in other words, bear approximately as much resemblance to reality as does, say, the story of George Washington and the cherry tree. In Mayflower, his study of the Pilgrim settlement, Philbrick dispatches them in a few paragraphs. It takes considerably longer, and requires vastly more detail, for him to get closer to the truth about relations between the Pilgrims and the Indians. Popular mythology tends to focus on Massasoit, the chief of the Pokanokets who allied his tribe with the English settlers, and Squanto, the English-speaking Indian who formed a close, mutually rewarding friendship with William Bradford, governor of Plymouth Plantation for three decades. Some of what that mythology tells us is indeed true, but as Philbrick is at pains to demonstrate, the full truth is vastly more complicated.
Philbrick, who lives on Nantucket Island and has written often about the sea and those who sail it -- he won the National Book Award for nonfiction in 2000 for In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex -- specializes in popular history, a genre often sneered at by academic historians but treasured by readers, who welcome its emphasis on narrative and lu...
Readers Top Reviews
R HelenC. BallGerard
Every American knows the story of the Pilgrims and the First Thanksgiving. A group of Puritans escaping religious persecution set sail for America and land on Plymouth Rock. Unprepared for life in New England, most die the first winter from cold and hunger. Only when Squanto and his Indian friends show the Puritans how to plant corn are they able to survive and flourish in the New World. Together, the Pilgrims and Indians celebrate the harvest that forever is remembered as the First Thanksgiving. Imagine my shock, then, when I read Nathaniel Philbrick's book and discovered that hardly any of this is actually true. The first landing of the Pilgrims was not at Plymouth Rock, but across the bay in Provincetown Harbour. Squanto was not just a benign helper, but a politically ambitious player. These revelations and more make "Mayflower" an important and worthwhile read. I only wish that Philbrick had spent more time discussing the lives of the Mayflower voyagers, both on the journey and in the colony. Understanding who these figures were and their relationships to each other, what their day to day lives were like, and how they lived and died, would have made a fascinating study. Instead, the book is primarily a discussion of English-Indian relations through the early years of the colony and culminating in King Philip's War. The Indians are often portrayed as the `noble savage' while the English are the cruel interlopers. Violence on the part of the Indians is always responsive or within acceptable boundaries; violence on the part of the Puritans, always aggressive and excessive. It would have been nice to read a more objective and less apologetic version of history; but Philbrick's "Mayflower" is still interesting and recommended for anyone who wants to know what "really" happened in history.
F.H. Kuijper
History is at its most potent when the lessons of yesterday flow naturally into today. Here, brilliantly constructed, is a river of resonance. We have warlords and constantly shifting alliances, treachery, bribery, bungling. We have religious extremism, racial hatred, military carnage and cover-ups. This could be Afghanistan or Iraq, as bloodily relevant as the latest roadside bomb. Instead, across four centuries, Nathaniel Philbrick offers us the New England of the Mayflower pilgrims, the benign myths that helped shape modern America and what really happened. Sign up to our Bookmarks newsletter Read more He tells two essential tales separated by the moral corrosion of 50 years. The first, often inspiring in its fortitude, sees a young corduroy worker called William Bradford help lead his Puritan flock from exile in the Netherlands to the promise of Plymouth Rock. These settlers die in huge numbers from starvation and disease. Only a friendship forged with the Pokanoket Indians and their chief, Massasoit, gives them hope, then prosperity. But the one, over time, kills the other. In the beginning, the Indians trade and prosper as partners. Too soon, though, the market in furs changes and they have nothing left to sell except their land, which means the ability to feed themselves. Gradually, they become hungrier, poorer, more desperate while the second generation of Mayflower pilgrims and the sons of the 'Strangers' who came with them - religious asylum seekers and economic migrants thrust together on a single ship - look on with mounting scorn. Massasoit's son, Wamsutta, is chief now and vows that no more land will be sold. He dies in suspicious circumstances and his young brother, Philip, seeks a policy that may see his tribe survive. But the white men see no point in helping him. They stumble into the slaughter called 'King Philip's War'. What follows is sometimes unbearably tragic. In 15 months - from May 1675 to August 1676 - Plymouth Colony sees 8 per cent of its men fall in battle, almost double the Civil War killing rate. And a Native American population that once totalled 20,000 counts 2,000 lost in battle, 3,000 dead of sickness and starvation, 1,000 shipped away as slaves and 2,000 more doomed to wander far afield in search of a new home. The casualties and the aftermath are brutal. Worse, brutality consumes both sides as they struggle for supremacy. Take the 'Great Swamp Fight' that later American writers hailed as 'one of the most glorious victories ever achieved in our history'. But 200 English troops, out of a thousand, are dead or wounded; and perhaps 600 men, women and children from the Narrangansett tribe are burnt to death in the remnants of the fort they built as security against being dragged into the Pokanokets' war. English 'intelligence' wasn't up to deducing that, however. It predicted an at...
gerardpeter
The stories we love to hear most are those we know best. Nathaniel Philbrick recounts again the tale of the Pilgrim Fathers. He does a good job. We go back to 16th century England to pick up on a small group of puritans. We follow them to Holland and then across the Atlantic to Cape Cod. The first months are the worst, but enough survive – just – to welcome later migrants, fleeing religious wars in Europe or seeking fortune. He charts what proves to be a fateful relationship with those who came before them, Indians [the term he prefers throughout]. The latter chapters recount in detail the violence of Philip’s War of 1675. There we end. The events are brought alive through the people who lived through them. This is tale of heroes and villains – often both the same man. In the text judgements are mollified by asking the reader to remember that these were different times. This is especially true of the brutality of conflict between the Puritans and the native Americans. A conflict which in the end removed the latter from the land, many very directly on slave ships. In a short epilogue he discusses how history has seen these men and women. The principal problem is that all sources are those of the colonists. The natives left no written records – and of course, they lost. Interestingly, it was a long time before the Pilgrim Fathers were really celebrated. Thanksgiving was not commemorated until 1863 – and then in a way the original diners would have scarcely recognized. At the same time a growing sense of injustice and national feeling inflamed descendants of the native Americans. Nathaniel Philbrick does not address directly the important questions [arguably but certainly the one that will be asked of students in college and school]. Did the Puritans make America or did America make the Puritans? How did a people at prayer become a community at war? Did the possession of land and the freedom from persecution sow deadly seeds? In a phrase he quotes often from Isaiah were the descendants of the Fathers the “degenerate plant of a strange vine”? But he tells the story and tells it well.
David Southworth
This award-winning historian, Nathaniel Philback, provides a well-researched account of the key players and events that shaped the early years of the American colonies, at least in New England. The story covers two key time periods. First, the build and to and then the initial landing of the Mayflower in Massachusetts. Second, and far more interesting, are the leaders a few decades after that initial landing, of those who worked to maintain the security of the colony, ensuring its eventual survival. Most interesting is Benjamin Church, a military leader whom many see as the founding father of what became "special operations" in the US military. The only reason this is not five stars is that it is doubtful how much of the story is original and not a regurgitation of earlier books. Regardless, anyone interested in this time period specifically or American history, in general, will likely enjoy this brisk read.
T. Pangle
The myth of the Pilgrim forefathers has been reconstructed to include less mythical aspects and divulge the honest and human attributes of the lives of the first fathers of the nation. Nathaniel Philbrick's Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War culminates primarily around the documents of two of the most valuable members of the Plymouth Colony: William Bradford and Benjamin Church. What is produced is a gripping retelling of the American creation story, in a more accurate light. The common, mythical way Pilgrims have been viewed is as wholesome family groups, making immediate peace with the Indians, as well as with each other and having a pure form of Protestantism as the ruling factor in their lives. Philbrick seems to say that there is a much more compelling and candid story behind the founding of New England than a fifteen pound turkey and cranberry sauce. Philbrick recognizes in his prologue that the myths of the Pilgrims and the harmonious first Thanksgiving are by today's standards taken "with a grain of salt." In other words, most of Philbrick's American audience is aware of the fact that there is a darker and more realistic side to the Pilgrim myth; however nothing further that the mere awareness really exists is popular American culture. Mayflower sets out to flesh out that awareness with an enthralling and genuine tale of our first American fathers. Therefore, the key purpose of Mayflower is not to debunk the already dying myth of the Pilgrims, but to give the first settlers and their first Indian contacts the truth they deserve. Nathaniel Philbrick was born, raised and educated, for the most part in New England, with the exception of obtaining his Master's in American Literature from Duke University in North Carolina. Though not a trained historian, Philbrick has a true penchant for the art of sailing and has put all of his efforts towards maritime history. Working as a freelance journalist for several maritime publications and doubling as a stay-at-home dad for his two children, Philbrick was able to try his had at many different writing styles. It was not until his family moved to Nantucket in 1986 that he formally began producing historical works. The subject matter of his first book, Away Off Shore: Nantucket Island and Its People, proves how influential a change of location was. It was this transition to popular historical writing that allowed him to write several more historical maritime accounts. His 2000 book, In the Heart of the Sea, won the National Book Award for nonfiction and in 2003 Sea of Glory won the Theodore and Franklin D. Roosevelt Naval History Prize and the Albion-Monroe Award from the National Maritime Historical Society. Philbrick reconstructs this epic that spans nearly a century through the use of primary source documents written by the Pilgrims, themselves, as we...
Short Excerpt Teaser
Preface: The Two Voyages
We all want to know how it was in the beginning. From the Big Bang to the Garden of Eden to the circumstances of our own births, we yearn to travel back to that distant time when everything was new and full of promise. Perhaps then, we tell ourselves, we can start to make sense of the convoluted mess we are in today. But beginnings are rarely as clear-cut as we would like them to be. Take, for example, the event that most Americans associate with the start of the United States: the voyage of the Mayflower.
Wefve all heard at least some version of the story: 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 Wampanoags, who taught them how to plant corn and whose leader or sachem, Massasoit, helped them celebrate the First Thanksgiving. From this inspiring inception came the United States.
Like many Americans, I grew up taking this myth of national origins with a grain of salt. In their wide- brimmed hats and buckled shoes, the Pilgrims were the stuff of holiday parades and bad Victorian poetry. Nothing could be more removed from the ambiguities of modern- day America, I thought, than the Pilgrims and the Mayflower.
But, as I have since discovered, the story of the Pilgrims does not end with the First Thanksgiving. When we look to how the Pilgrims and their children maintained more than fifty years of peace with the Wampanoags and how that peace suddenly erupted into one of the deadliest wars ever fought on American soil, the 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.
In 1676, fifty-six years after the sailing of the Mayflower, a similarly named but far less famous ship, the Seaflower, departed from the shores of New England. Like the Mayflower, she carried a human cargo. But instead of 102 potential colonists, the Seaflower was bound for the Caribbean with 180 Native American slaves.
The governor of Plymouth Colony, Josiah Winslow=son of former Mayflower passengers Edward and Susanna Winslow=had provided the Seaflowerfs captain with the necessary documentation. In a certificate bearing his official seal, Winslow explained that these Native men, women, and children had joined in an uprising against the colony and were guilty of 8many notorious and execrable murders, killings, and outrages.e As a consequence, these 8heathen malefactorse had been condemned to perpetual slavery.
The Seaflower was one of several New England vessels bound for the West Indies with Native slaves. But by 1676, plantation owners in Barbados and Jamaica had little interest in slaves who had already shown a willingness to revolt. No evidence exists as to what happened to the Indians aboard the Seaflower, but we do know that the captain of one American slave ship was forced to venture all the way to Africa before he finally disposed of his cargo. And so, over a half century after the sailing of the Mayflower, a vessel from New England completed a transatlantic passage of a different sort.
The rebellion referred to by Winslow in the Seaflowerfs certificate is known today as King Philipfs War. Philip was the son of Massasoit, the Wampanoag leader who greeted the Pilgrims in 1621. Fifty-four years later, in 1675, Massasoitfs son went to war. The fragile bonds that had held the Indians and English together in the decades since the sailing of the Mayflower had been irreparably broken.
King Philipfs 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 intimately intertwined that when fighting broke out, many of the regionfs Indians found themselves, in the words of a contemporary chronicler, 8in a kind of maze, not knowing what to do.e Some Indians chose to support Philip; others joined the colonial forces; still others attempted to stay out of the conflict altogether. Violence quickly spread until the entire region became a terrifying war zone. A third of the hundred or so towns in New England were burned and abandoned. There was even a proposal to build a barricade around the core settlements of Massachusetts and surrender the towns outside the perimeter to Philip and his allies.
The colonial forces ultimately triumphed, but at a horrifying cost. There were approximately seventy thousand people in New England at the outbreak of hostilities. By the end of the war, somewhere in the neighborhood of ...
We all want to know how it was in the beginning. From the Big Bang to the Garden of Eden to the circumstances of our own births, we yearn to travel back to that distant time when everything was new and full of promise. Perhaps then, we tell ourselves, we can start to make sense of the convoluted mess we are in today. But beginnings are rarely as clear-cut as we would like them to be. Take, for example, the event that most Americans associate with the start of the United States: the voyage of the Mayflower.
Wefve all heard at least some version of the story: 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 Wampanoags, who taught them how to plant corn and whose leader or sachem, Massasoit, helped them celebrate the First Thanksgiving. From this inspiring inception came the United States.
Like many Americans, I grew up taking this myth of national origins with a grain of salt. In their wide- brimmed hats and buckled shoes, the Pilgrims were the stuff of holiday parades and bad Victorian poetry. Nothing could be more removed from the ambiguities of modern- day America, I thought, than the Pilgrims and the Mayflower.
But, as I have since discovered, the story of the Pilgrims does not end with the First Thanksgiving. When we look to how the Pilgrims and their children maintained more than fifty years of peace with the Wampanoags and how that peace suddenly erupted into one of the deadliest wars ever fought on American soil, the 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.
In 1676, fifty-six years after the sailing of the Mayflower, a similarly named but far less famous ship, the Seaflower, departed from the shores of New England. Like the Mayflower, she carried a human cargo. But instead of 102 potential colonists, the Seaflower was bound for the Caribbean with 180 Native American slaves.
The governor of Plymouth Colony, Josiah Winslow=son of former Mayflower passengers Edward and Susanna Winslow=had provided the Seaflowerfs captain with the necessary documentation. In a certificate bearing his official seal, Winslow explained that these Native men, women, and children had joined in an uprising against the colony and were guilty of 8many notorious and execrable murders, killings, and outrages.e As a consequence, these 8heathen malefactorse had been condemned to perpetual slavery.
The Seaflower was one of several New England vessels bound for the West Indies with Native slaves. But by 1676, plantation owners in Barbados and Jamaica had little interest in slaves who had already shown a willingness to revolt. No evidence exists as to what happened to the Indians aboard the Seaflower, but we do know that the captain of one American slave ship was forced to venture all the way to Africa before he finally disposed of his cargo. And so, over a half century after the sailing of the Mayflower, a vessel from New England completed a transatlantic passage of a different sort.
The rebellion referred to by Winslow in the Seaflowerfs certificate is known today as King Philipfs War. Philip was the son of Massasoit, the Wampanoag leader who greeted the Pilgrims in 1621. Fifty-four years later, in 1675, Massasoitfs son went to war. The fragile bonds that had held the Indians and English together in the decades since the sailing of the Mayflower had been irreparably broken.
King Philipfs 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 intimately intertwined that when fighting broke out, many of the regionfs Indians found themselves, in the words of a contemporary chronicler, 8in a kind of maze, not knowing what to do.e Some Indians chose to support Philip; others joined the colonial forces; still others attempted to stay out of the conflict altogether. Violence quickly spread until the entire region became a terrifying war zone. A third of the hundred or so towns in New England were burned and abandoned. There was even a proposal to build a barricade around the core settlements of Massachusetts and surrender the towns outside the perimeter to Philip and his allies.
The colonial forces ultimately triumphed, but at a horrifying cost. There were approximately seventy thousand people in New England at the outbreak of hostilities. By the end of the war, somewhere in the neighborhood of ...
