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Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War (Hardcover)
by Nathaniel Philbrick
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Author: Nathaniel Philbrick
Publisher: Viking Adult
Pub. in: May, 2006
ISBN: 0670037605
Pages: 480
Measurements: 9.4 x 6.7 x 1.6 inches
Origin of product: USA
Order code: BA00679
Other information: ISBN-13: 978-0670037605
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- Awards & Credential -
The New York Times Bestseller. The author is the winner of National Book Award in the US for his In the Heart of the Sea. |
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- MSL Picks -
Nathaniel Philbrick's Mayflower is a wonderful rendering of the founding of the Plymouth Colony and its first half century.
The book traces the founding event in 1620 to disaffection by a set of English Puritans. They moved to the Netherlands and sought to assure passage to the New World. The ship that they used for this adventure was, of course, the Mayflower.
The book traces the difficult voyage of 102 passengers over two months. Living conditions were nasty. We meet some of the central characters early in this book: Miles Standish, the soldier; William Bradford; Edward Winslow, among others.
Finally, the Mayflower gets to the New World and the ship looked for a proper landing area. After a number of adventures, they settled on what we now call Plymouth. The landing took place later in the year, so that conditions were challenging. Early on, the colonists benefited from a delicate relationship with the Native Americans led by Massasoit, who figured that his weakened tribe (depleted by illness) might gain by allying with the English to protect themselves from other Native American nations. Too, we meet Squanto, another Native American who worked with the colonists.
The first part of the book spends much time describing how the colony stabilized and began to grow. The volume also discusses the relationship of Plymouth with the other colonies being developed in New England.
The book also discusses in detail the tragic King Philip's War. After Massasoit's death, one of his sons, Philip, began war against the colonists in New England (not just Plymouth). It was a violent war, with much death and destruction among colonists and Native Americans' alike. The author notes that Plymouth Colony lost about 8% of its males in the war. This compares to about 4-5% death rate in the Civil War and about 1% in World War II. The death rate from war among Native Americans was 10%. The end result (page 345): "Fifty-six years after the sailing of the Mayflower, the Pilgrims' children had not only defeated the Pokanokets in a devastating war, they had taken conscious, methodical measures to purge the land of its people."
All in all, this book brings to life the challenges facing those who came over on the Mayflower. And it tells the ongoing story of the colonists for a half century after the landing at Plymouth. A very good read and a well recommended work.
(From quoting Steven Peterson, USA)
Target readers:
American history lovers, English majors, and advanced English learners.
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An Empire of Wealth: The Epic History of American Economic Power
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From Publisher
From the bestselling author of In the Heart of the Sea - winner of the National Book Award - the startling story of the Plymouth Colony
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.
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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.
Weíve 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 Winslowóson of former Mayflower passengers Edward and Susanna Winslowóhad provided the Seaflowerís 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 ìmany notorious and execrable murders, killings, and outrages.î As a consequence, these ìheathen malefactorsî 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 Seaflowerís certificate is known today as King Philipís War. Philip was the son of Massasoit, the Wampanoag leader who greeted the Pilgrims in 1621. Fifty-four years later, in 1675, Massasoitís 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 Philipís 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 regionís Indians found themselves, in the words of a contemporary chronicler, ìin a kind of maze, not knowing what to do.î 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 five thousand were dead, with more than three-quarters of those losses suffered by the Native Americans. In terms of percentage of population killed, King Philipís War was more than twice as bloody as the American Civil War and at least seven times more lethal than the American Revolution. Not counted in these statistics are the hundreds of Native Americans who, like the passengers aboard the Seaflower, ended the war as slaves. It had taken fifty-six years to unfold, but one peopleís quest for freedom had resulted in the conquest and enslavement of another.
It was Philip who led me to the Pilgrims. I was researching the history of my adopted home, Nantucket Island, when I encountered a reference to the Wampanoag leader in the townís records. In attempting to answer the question of why Philip, whose headquarters was in modern Bristol, Rhode Island, had traveled more than sixty-five miles across the water to Nantucket, I realized that I must begin with Philipís father, Massasoit, and the Pilgrims.
My initial impression of the period was bounded by two conflicting preconceptions: 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 annihilated 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 braveóin short, too humanó to behave so predictably.
Without Massasoitís help, the Pilgrims would never have survived the first year, and they remained steadfast 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 tired, threadbare story of the First Thanksgiving.
But the Indians and English of Plymouth Colony did not live in a static idyll of mutual support. Instead, it was fifty-five years of struggle and compromiseóa dynamic, often harrowing process of give and take. As long as both sides recognized that they needed each other, there was peace. The next generation, however, came to see things differently.
When Philipís warriors attacked in June of 1675, it was not because relentless and faceless forces had given the Indians no other choice. Those forces had existed from the very beginning. War came to New England because two leadersóPhilip and his English counterpart, Josiah Winslowóallowed it to happen. For Indians and English alike, there was nothing inevitable about King Philipís War, and the outbreak of fighting caught almost everyone by surprise.
When violence and fear grip a society, there is an almost overpowering temptation to demonize the enemy. Given the unprecedented level of suffering and death during King Philipís War, the temptations were especially great, and it is not surprising that both Indians and English began to view their former neighbors as subhuman and evil. What is surprising is that even in the midst of one of the deadliest wars in American history, there were Englishmen who believed the Indians were not inherently malevolent and there were Indians who believed the same about the English. They were the ones whose rambunctious and intrinsically rebellious faith in humanity finally brought the war to an end, and they are the heroes of this story.
* * *
It would be left to subsequent generations of New Englanders to concoct the nostalgic and reassuring legends that have become the staple of annual Thanksgiving Day celebrations. As we shall see, the Pilgrims had more important things to worry about than who was the first to set foot on Plymouth Rock.
It is true that most of what we know about seventeenth-century New England comes from the English. In recent decades, however, archaeologists, anthropologists, and folklorists have significantly increased our understanding of the Native American culture of the time. This does not alter the fact that any account of the period must depend, for the most part, on contemporary narratives, histories, letters, documents, and poems written by English men and women.
I have focused on two people, one familiar, the other less so: Plymouth governor William Bradford and Benjamin Church, a carpenter turned Indian fighter whose maternal grandfather had sailed on the Mayflower. Bradford and Church could not have been more differentóone was pious and stalwart, the other was audacious and proudóbut both wrote revealingly about their lives in the New World. Together, they tell a fifty-six-year intergenerational saga of discovery, accommodation, community, and waróa pattern that was repeated time and time again as the United States worked its way west and, ultimately, out into the world.
It is a story that is at once fundamental and obscure, and it begins with a ship on a wide and blustery sea.
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The Washington Post (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-31 00:00>
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 lucid prose. He is not as graceful a stylist as the genre's most celebrated living practitioner, David McCullough, but his work is entirely accessible and gives every evidence of being sound scholarship. He appears to bring no bias to his work except a desire to get as close to the truth as primary and secondary sources allow, in refreshing contrast to the many academic historians who - consciously or not - have permitted political and cultural bias to color their interpretations of the past.
Because Philbrick is in search of the more factually complex and morally ambiguous truth behind essentially self-serving popular mythology, it is important to emphasize that he is not out to denigrate that mythology or those who embrace it. He celebrates the courage, resourcefulness and determination of many of the settlers, most notably Bradford and the remarkable warrior Benjamin Church; he acknowledges and describes in detail the many ways in which Pilgrims and Indians cooperated, in some cases to their mutual advantage; he pays particular tribute to Mary Rowlandson, the settler who was kidnapped by Indians and endured much hardship and privation but ultimately helped broker peace between Indians and Puritans.
He knows, though, that the story of the Pilgrims can't be reduced to doughty Englishmen and women in modest homespun and smiling Indians proffering peace pipes. Like the settlement of the West, the settlement of New England was hard, bloody and violent. If Indians made horrendous attacks on settlers - many of those whom they killed were women and children - the Pilgrims more than responded in kind. Many of the Pilgrims were pious folk, Puritans who crossed the ocean in hopes of worshiping as they wished - they "believed it was necessary to venture back to the absolute beginning of Christianity, before the church had been corrupted by centuries of laxity and abuse, to locate divine truth" - but like the settlers of Israel three centuries later, they were ready to fight when necessary, and they fought with zeal.
Encouraged by Longfellow and other mythologizers, we have tended to think of the Pilgrims as earnest, uncomplicated and rather innocent, motivated solely by religious faith and goodhearted in their dealings with New England's native population. There is a measure of truth to this, in that some settlers wanted to treat the Indians fairly and tried hard to live peacefully beside them, but they were also fiercely determined to gain a foothold in this new land and did not hesitate to act violently in order to gain one. The famous Mayflower Compact that they wrote and signed during the Atlantic crossing did contain a few of the seeds from which the United States and its democratic system eventually sprang, but the settlers were not especially democratic themselves. They disliked and suppressed dissent, enslaved Indians and shipped them off to brutal conditions in the West Indies and clung with such stubborn rigidity to their belief that they alone understood God's will that they were incapable of comprehending the Indians' very different culture.
The early years of Plymouth Plantation were exceedingly difficult but comparatively peaceful so far as relations with the many Indian tribes were concerned. Gradually, though, as English settlers moved ever deeper into New England and as Indians grasped the full extent of the threat to their established way of life, the settlers grew more belligerent, and the Indians grew more hostile. Indian raids on isolated settlements became more frequent and more brutal. The burning of Springfield in 1675, in what is now known as Massachusetts (after a tribe that was especially unfriendly to the Puritans), seems to have been the turning point. One prominent settler said it proved that all Indians were "the children of the devil, full of all subtlety and malice," a sentiment that many others came to share.
The ultimate result was an oddly forgotten chapter in American history: King Philip's War. Taking its name after the son of Massasoit who became chief of the Pokanokets, this dreadful little war started not long after the raid on Springfield and lasted for about two years, with gruesome consequences for everyone involved. Plymouth Colony lost eight percent of its male population - by comparison, "during the forty-five months of World War II, the United States lost just under 1 percent of its adult male population" - but these losses "appear almost inconsequential when compared to those of the Indians." The total Indian population before the war was about 20,000; by war's end, "at least 2,000 had been killed in battle or died of their injuries; 3,000 had died of sickness and starvation, 1,000 had been shipped out of the country as slaves, while an estimated 2,000 eventually fled to either the Iroquois to the west or the Abenakis to the north. Overall, the Native American population of southern New England had sustained a loss of somewhere between 60 and 80 percent."
It was a costly and entirely unnecessary war, brought about by Philip's vanity, Puritan stubbornness and a pervasive atmosphere of mistrust and misunderstanding. After the war finally ended, it quickly vanished from the public consciousness except in the places where it was fought: "Thanksgiving and its reassuring image of Indian-English cooperation became the predominant myth of the Pilgrims... In the American popular imagination, the nation's history began with the Pilgrims and then leapfrogged more than 150 years to Lexington and Concord and the Revolution."
All of which is very much in the American grain. We like our history sanitized and theme-parked and self-congratulatory, not bloody and angry and unflattering. But if Mayflower achieves the wide readership it deserves, perhaps a few Americans will be moved to reconsider all that. |
Will (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-31 00:00>
We Americans know little of our own history, and that's a shame. The early history of this country is a feast for the curious, a fascinating story of hardship, survival, faith, foolishness, compassion and cruelty.
Philbrick's Mayflower is a pretty addition to the current crop of superbly written historical narratives about the early history of European America. Before I picked up his book, I knew almost nothing about the Pilgrims and Puritans, nor did I care. The tedius high school and college studies foisted on us in the literature and history of early New England were enough to turn anyone away from the subject. Philbrick, however, changed all that for me. His lively style and intimate familiarity with - and love of - the history of the region immediately won me over. And, the portraits he draws of individuals whose names we all know, Miles Standish, Governor Bradford, and others are startling, if not deep.
For example, Captain Standish, we learn, was so short his rapier had to be reduced by five inches so it wouldn't scrape the ground. The good Pilgrims called him "Captain Shrimp," but never to his face. His temper and boldness were famous; he could respond murderously if sufficiently pushed. In one memorable incident, he lured a pair of Indians to dinner who had threatened him the day before. Both Indians were much bigger than the Captain. As one took his seat, Standish snatched the Indian's knife, which hung on a cord round his neck, and stabbed him to death. Standish's compatriots finished the other. Violent and brutal was life in the Old East.
If there is a constant thread to this history, as Philbrick tells it, it is violence and death. The first winter left only 50 pilgrims alive from the original 102 who traveled on the Mayflower. The ship itself wintered over with the Pilgrims and half its crew died. Nor were the Indians spared. By the time of the Pilgrims' landing, disease had already nearly annihilated the local Native Americans. Some 80 percent of the indigenous population of Plymouth and its environs were dead of one European-induced plague or another. Whole villages had been abandoned. With no one left to bury the dead, corpses were left to rot where they fell. Bleached bones littered the ground.
The Pilgrims were firm in their faith, but even they could be tempted. As starvation treatened and harsh conditions persisted, ethics became situational, even from the very beginning. The good Pilgrims prayed when they landed, but shortly afterward they stole a cache of seed corn from the Indians and apparently never paid for it, nor did they apologize. They were forgiven, however, and befriended by natives. The famous story we learn as children of the Indians showing the Pilgrims how to plant corn, using fish as fertilizer, turns out to be true.
While violence occurred, there was also charity. Massasoit, sachem (chief) of the plague-decimated Pokanoket tribe, was to prove not only friendly but vital to the Pilgrims. He sold them vast tracks of land, preserved the peace, and formed a strong personal bond with a prominent pilgrim, Edward Winslow. Word had come to Winslow that the sachem was dying (or dead). Winslow trudged the 15 miles to Massasoit's village to find the sachem deathly ill, probably with typhus. Winslow was no doctor (Lucky for Massasoit. Had Winslow been a doctor, the sachem might have never have survived the techniques and cures of 17th century medicine.), but he was kind enough to embrace the fallen Indian, scrape his mouth and tongue clear of the brown muck that typhus creates, and ladle English fruit preserves into him. Within hours, Massasoit began to recover. He begged Winslow to take the cure to the other sick members of his tribe. Winslow, loath to touch another under such conditions, it being "much offensive to me, not being accustomed with such poisonous savors," nevertheless did as the sachem asked. These acts of kindness endeared the English to Massasoit. The sachem even renamed his sons Alexander and Philip, English names to honor his allies.
While Massasoit lived, peace endured. A half century passed without the stain of bloodshed over Pilgrim-Indian disputes in territory that Massasoit ruled. History is a meandering stream, however, that often flows in unanticipated directions. While Massasoit and Winslow were friends and allies, their sons were not. Josiah Winslow, one of Edward's sons, became Governor of Plymouth. Philip, son of Massasoit, as sachem, became the nemesis of the colonists, the leader of a native war against the English that would be fought brutally by all parties, see the destruction of several English towns and villages, and eventually destroy the Pokanokets and other once friendly natives.
The New England of King Philip's War was much different than that of 1620. A half-century of peace brought tens of thousands of Puritans and others from England. The natural fecundity of people who had 7 or 8 children also added to the population. Towns were everywhere. That first miserable winter, with Pilgrims hungry and shivering in shelters of mud and waddle, could never have foretold the New England of 1670. By 1670, the Massachusetts Bay colony had been founded, as were Connecticut, New Haven, the rogue religious sanctuary of Rhode Island and other settlements. By the time of King Philip's war, the colonies had even united under a loose confederation.
The good men and women of Plymouth, while devoted Christians, were hardly perfect. They eagerly hanged Quakers merely for being Quakers (at least for a time), and their prosecution of King Philip's war proceeded in a way that would grind against modern sensibilities. Heads were lopped off and posted on the town palisade. "Traitors" - at least those accused and convicted of treason - were hanged, drawn and quartered. These things were brutal but we should not feel especially superior. In modern times we've foresworn hand-to-hand killing for antiseptic measures that can kill tens of thousands from the air. We coolly dismiss such slaughter as "collateral damage," but it is slaughter nevertheless, and on a scale that might have horrified the people of 1670.
One would not normally describe a book of history as a "page turner," but this one certainly was. I devoured it in a few days. Oh, and if you're interested in the myths that have so obscured our knowledge of the Pilgrims, Philbrick's Afterward, called "Conscience" explains the origins and debunks many of the things we've been taught. None of this detracts from the Pilgrims, however, who emerge as tough, brave, resourceful and industrious. Their passion for religion eludes me, but their accomplishments are astounding. The book is gem. Put a copy in your library.
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Nathan Edwards (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-31 00:00>
Philbrick certainly does it again with Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War. It may be hard to believe that anything written by anyone could be as compelling as Philbrick's "In the Heart of the Sea", but prepare yourself to be amazed with what Mayflower has to offer. The greatest thing about this work is that almost everyone in America is at least familiar with the story that this incredible author masterfully expounds. Mayflower successfully fills in any gaps in the American holiday story.
Starting from the very beginning with nothing more than a thought of escape from religious hardships, Philbrick follows our celebrated pilgrims all the way through the end of King Philip's War, and then some. Mayflower successfully leaves the reader well satisfied that they have been made privy to any information available today regarding the Plymouth Colony, its creation, and its impact on early life in the new world. One only has to take a glance at the bibliography to realize just how much thoughtful research went into this incredible account. What may be more fascinating is the fact that Philbrick compiles this mountain of research into a well written an extremely readable timeline that spans decade after decade.
Get your eye-drops handy because you will not want to blink; this page turner will have you from cover to cover before you realize it and you will, most certainly, not feel cheated out of even the most minute of details. I would and will recommend "Mayflower" to anyone who can read, because to not take advantage of this enthralling work of literature might be a crime committed against one's own self. By the end of this book you will know the true story behind one of the most widely celebrated traditions in America, as well as what happened next.
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Gene Twilley (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-31 00:00>
I think Mayflower is named as it is because few words seem to invoke the American spirit as much as the name of the Pilgrims' ship. Nathaniel Philbrick gives us a glimpse of the first few generations of the English colonies and [I think] challenges the notions we may hold regarding who the Pilgrims were, why they were here, and what their relationships were like.
Philbrick's style was very readable and enjoyable [which may be do to the fact that I was very interested in the subject matter]. I think that the words he's written are indicative of a man who has given much thought and study to the subject.
What's most striking is the amount of detail the author gives in describing the Native Americans, their culture, and their relationship with the English. What he's done for me is to take a group of people [in this case, many groups of people] and to place a face, customs, dreams, and hopes along with them. In addition, he communicates why they became enemies so quickly and how a fragile relationship between nations can become so quickly broken.
The span of time covered is a portion of the planning prior to the Mayflower departing Leiden with Plymoth's first English settlers to the end of King Philip's War. Again, what the author does so well is to describe the motives, the flaws, and the redeemable characteristics of most all who were involved. I think Philbrick does as well as anyone is able to avoid an "us" against "them" mentality and to lay out a somewhat transparent viewing of the colonists, the native allies, and the native enemies.
There are few qualms that I have with the book, but one of them has to do with the fact that Philbrick sometimes falls prey to the very thing he's set to fight - that is creating a mythology of the history of the Pilgrims. One of the most glaring occurrences of this is the discussion he gives regarding the death of Dorothy Bradford [William Bradford's wife]. He first gives notice that there are no historical documents that give any indication of how she died and then spends quite a few paragraphs speculating that she may have committed suicide. Still, this was the most glaring occurrence and the others did not make for such a difficult read.
Philbrick has created a scholarly and thoughtful work of the peace and war of our nation's early history [saying this with the understanding that our government, language, and customs were affected more by the English than any other European nation colonizing the "New World"]. I don't think you will learn much about the religious history and content of the Pilgrims, but you learn a great deal about their relationship with Native Americans during the time of early English colonization. Definitely worth your time! |
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