February 23, 2012

Unit 6 – The Pilgrims

Unit Six – The Pilgrims

In the seventeenth century (between the year 1601 and the year 1700) there was much religious persecution. Persecution means to mistreat a group of people for a specific reason, and in this case – because of the religion they practiced and believed in.

In some countries the Catholics persecuted the Protestants, in other countries the Protestants persecuted the Catholics, and sometimes one kind of Protestants persecuted another. There were people in England who did not like the ceremonies of the Church of England as established by law. These people were called Puritans.

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Some of these went so far as to separate themselves from the Established Church, and thus got the name of Separatists. They were persecuted in England, and many of them fled to Holland.

Among these were the members of a little Separatist congregation in the town of Scrooby, in the north of England. They were led by their pastor John Robinson, church elders William Brewster, and William Bradford. In 1607, the year in which Jamestown was settled, these persecuted people left England and settled in Holland, where they lived about thirteen years.

These people were called the Pilgrims because they had wandered about for the sake of their religion. They started to think about moving their colony to America. There were several things about their settlement in Holland that were bothering them, such as:

The colony was aging, and there were not enough young people to keep it going much longer
There were few employment opportunities in Holland
The young adults were going back to England
They did not care for the “evils” of the culture around them
Europe was becoming more and more unstable as it hurled itself towards the 30 years war
There were too few, if any, missionary possibilities (missionary work is spreading the “good news” of your religion to others)

Thus, the Pilgrims came to America in a ship called the Mayflower. There were about a hundred of them, though less than half were actual “Pilgrims” that were coming to form a religious colony, the rest were what they called “strangers” that had no interest in religion. These voyagers had a very difficult passage for several reasons;

First, they left late in the year. September 6, 1620. Second, they encountered stormy seas and strong westerly winds that came from the Gulf Stream.

Even though land was sighted on November 9th, the Pilgrims did not land in “Plymouth” until the 17th of December.

Unfortunately for them, they had a land grant that only included a very specific place at the mouth of the Hudson River, but the passageway was too shallow for them to attempt the voyage. They first came ashore at Provincetown Harbor on November 11, 1620.

Some of the people on the ship were OK with this landing, however there were others who were disturbed at not actually having a contract to settle here. They spent several days off the coast writing up the Mayflower Compact, a set of laws by which they would be governed, before finally going ashore.

They stayed here for several weeks and sent out a few exploratory expeditions. During this time they ran into trouble with the Indians
and decided that they would get in the ship and find a better area in which to settle. This decision brought them to Plymouth Harbor, where they settled.

All the Indians who had lived at this place had died a few years before of a sickness, and the Pilgrims found the Indian fields unoccupied.

They first landed at this place on the 17th day of December, 1620, but due to bad weather they did not make it ashore until December 23rd.

The bad voyage, the poor food with which they were provided, and a lack of good shelter in a cold climate took its toll on the colonists and pretty soon they were almost all sick.

Forty-four out of the hundred Pilgrims died before the winter was ended, and by the time the first year was over half of them were dead. Among the dead was the leader John Carver and William Bradford was selected as the leader n the spring of 1601.

The Pilgrims were afraid of the Indians, some of whom had attacked the first exploring party that had landed. To prevent the Indians from finding out how much the party had been weakened by disease, they leveled all the graves, and planted Indian corn over the place in which the dead were buried.

One day, after the winter was over, an Indian walked into the village and said in English, "Welcome, Englishmen." He was a chief named Samoset, who had learned a little English from the fishermen on the coast of Maine.

Samoset afterward brought with him an Indian named Squanto who had been carried away to England by a cruel captain many years before, and then brought back.

Squanto remained with the Pilgrims, and taught them how to plant their corn as the Indians did, by putting one or two fish into every hill for manure. He taught them many other things, and acted as their interpreter in their trading with the Indians. He told the Indians that they must keep peace with the Colony because they had “sickness” stored in their cellar along with the gunpowder! The neighboring chief, Massasoit, was also a good friend to the Pilgrims as long as he lived.

Church of England The following autumn, after a small harvest was obtained, the Pilgrims set aside a church day to celebrate and give thanks to God. Many of the Indians attended the celebration and brought with them several deer to eat. The colonists themselves had acquired many waterfowl and turkeys for the occasion.

Edward Winslow, who would in later years become governor, wrote an account of this event:

Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a special manner rejoice together after we had gathered the fruits of our labor. They four in one day killed as much fowl as, with a little help beside, served the company almost a week. At which time, amongst other recreations, we exercised our arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and among the rest their greatest king Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five deer, which we brought to the plantation and bestowed on our governor, and upon the captain and others. And although it be not always so plentiful as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want that we often wish you partakers of our plenty.

Even though the first “thanksgiving” was considered a time of plenty, this was not usually the case and the people of Plymouth spent the first several years in the colony hungry, food was scarce during those times. They had often nothing but oysters or clams to eat for a long time together, and nothing to drink but water.

Just like the colonists in Jamestown, the Plymouth people tried to live a communal life with equal access to food and other provisions based on a common stock.

And just like the Jamestown colony, Plymouth met with the same fat and lazy workers, lack of food, and no prosperity. In the case of the Plymouth people, even the women resented having to cook for and tend to men that were not their own husbands.

In 1624 each family received a small allotment of land for its own, and from that time on, their satisfaction increases and so did the food supply. The Pilgrims were happy to be in Plymouth.