Thanksgiving and All That: Mayflower

By Bruce Collier November 2, 2006 Issue

Nathaniel Philbrick’s Mayflower tells of the voyage of one of the world’s most famous ships, and the settlement of New England’s Plymouth Colony in the early years of the 17th century. The first Thanksgiving is described, as well as what happened over the next 50 years. In this concise, well-researched book, Philbrick takes Pilgrims, Indians, and the holiday down from the pretty calendar pictures and puts them all in historical perspective. Avoiding facile stereotypes on either side, he shows us the complex, harrowing, and deeply human beginnings of the United States.

We begin in England, with a group of religious dissidents making life miserable for themselves by insisting that the Church of England be “purified” of ungodly ceremony. In an effort to get back to basics, the Puritans found themselves in the odd role, writes Philbrick, of revolutionary conservatives.

Persecuted by the king, they fled to religiously tolerant Holland, where they began planning their journey, or “pilgrimage,” to a place where they could live and worship as they chose. The natural choice was America. Interestingly, they chose not to stay in Holland because they didn’t want themselves and their children to assimilate into Dutch culture. They wanted to remain Englishmen, just not in England. Hence, the Pilgrims had to invent “New” England.

It took some fancy dancing to accomplish. The Pilgrims’ leaders repeatedly made deals with speculators (“merchant adventurers”) to finance and equip vessels, only to be duped and defrauded. Eventually they found a group of relatively honest and commercially responsible people, and procured a former wine-shipping vessel, the Mayflower, to make the trip across the Atlantic in 1620. The intended destination was to be the mouth of the Hudson River. Bad weather and ignorance of New England waters led Mayflower and her passengers to sail through Cape Cod, and land at what came to be known as Plymouth Rock. They were pleased then disconcerted, to find their new home seemed uninhabited.

They were wrong. The native people consisted of a somewhat confusing array of tribes, taking their names from rivers and regions. Among the tribes were Pokanokets, Narragansetts, Nausets, Pequots, Mohegans, Nipmucks, Sakonnets, and Wampanoags. Many had never seen white people before. Others had met French trappers and cod fisherman, and had traded with them. The Pilgrims’ first encounters with the locals stemmed from their most desperate and immediate need — food.

Though long on faith, the Pilgrims were short on practical skills. The early attempts to plant English crops such as peas and barley met with failure. They seemed unwilling to learn how to fish, although they did hunt game. The natives made contact partly in response to the Pilgrims’ habit of taking caches of Indian corn buried in storage pits. The Pilgrims compensated the natives, offering them cloth, manufactured goods, and tools. In exchange, the natives showed the Pilgrims how to plant corn, squash, and other native produce.

Thus began a process of mutual adjustment changing both cultures forever, writes Philbrick. For the natives, the Pilgrims’ high-tech goods made life much easier. For the Pilgrims, the memories of persecution and crooked dealing in the old world and hardship in the new would foster that mixture of independence and distrust of authority that would help establish the American character.

The first “thanksgiving” dinner was a harvest feast, a hybrid of native and European traditions. Philbrick says the traditional account is pretty accurate, though without the long tables or pumpkin pie. Ducks, not turkeys, were the fowl most eaten, along with beans, squash, corn, and fish. The natives enjoyed the Pilgrims’ rum. The Pilgrims took a liking to the novelty of fresh drinking water freely available in the new land.

The good times didn’t last. The Pilgrims began trading the natives for land, and though Philbrick says the prices were probably fair by the standards of the time, loss of land led the natives to realize they were running out of room. Along with this were the pre-existing tribal rivalries and hatreds. The Pilgrims added an element of technology, notably firepower, to the mix. The tribes had ulterior motives to court them. The tribes wanted them, and their guns, on their side.

Following decades of mixtures of harmony and exploitation, a war erupted in 1675. Known as King Philip’s War, it lasted 14 months and was proportionately far bloodier than the American Revolution and Civil War. Philip, a sachem, or chieftain, of the Pokanokets, led a mixed native force against a mixed force of English and other Indians in a war of raids, small battles, and mutual atrocities. The war ended with Philip’s death. A number of Indians who had sided with Philip were punished by enslavement in the Caribbean. It was the 19th century when this historical hodge-podge was reworked into the legend of the Pilgrim Fathers and the Friendly Indians.

Mayflower is an entertaining, informative read, with plenty of maps, essential to understanding the cramped geography of the area, as well as contemporary portraits. Philbrick comes down more on the side of the natives, but endeavors to articulate reasons for the behavior of all parties. This is real history, not just heroes and villains, and the winners and losers were on both sides.

Mayflower, 461 pages, Viking. Available at bookstores, local libraries, and online booksellers.

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