A Journal of the Pilgrims at Plymouth
9781465664259
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
Any good book must mean many things to many readers, and this journal offers more than just reflections of past glories and intimations of great tragedy. It is a primary source for American history in that critical period when a beach-head of Anglo culture was established in the New World. In this volume are the earliest accounts of the “Mayflower Compact,” the establishment of a community which has become focal in our national heritage, the signing of this country’s first mutual security pact, and the famous first Thanksgiving. There is no question of the book’s essential authenticity, and most of it has the flavor of having been written on the spot at the time. This sense of immediacy also enhances the value of the journal as a well written story of true adventure. The protagonists quietly suppressed an impending mutiny, even before they landed. While exploring the unknown wastes of Cape Cod, they conducted archeological excavations before they had a roof over their heads. They were attacked by Indians, and yet persisted, built their homes in a foreign land, and soon traveled freely among the natives. This is high adventure indeed! Political implications are of some importance too. The passengers on the Mayflower are famous for their founding of “a civil body politic ... to enact, constitute, and frame such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, [and] offices from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the colony.” Within less than a week of their first conversation with an Indian, the Pilgrims signed an enduring peace treaty with Massasoit, a leader of the neighboring Wampanoags. A year later, they enjoyed trading relations and military alliance with many other Indian groups. The journal may also be viewed as a valuable ethnographic document. Although previous sporadic contacts by explorers and traders had yielded some impressionistic descriptions, the Pilgrims were the first Europeans to be in close and sustained contact with the Indians of southern New England. At first they expected only hostility from the “savages,” but it was not long before they found valuable helpers in Squanto and Samoset, both of whom had learned already some English when they were kidnapped and sold as slaves by English traders. The Pilgrims were obliged to work out a modus vivendi with these “tall and proper men” whose dress seemed outlandish, whose foods were strange, and whose customs were curious enough to deserve description. We are indebted to the authors of this journal for a wealth of information about such patterns during the brief period before they disappeared forever. There are many aspects of the native ways of life of which the Pilgrims were unaware, and others which they treated with only tantalizing brevity, but a wealth of irreplaceable ethnographic data in this volume serves to illuminate our fragmentary understanding of coastal Algonquian cultures.
