Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War

I started this book in 2007, gave up...
Restarted from the beginning in 2010, gave up...
Tried again from the beginning in 2011 and finished....

We're all "familiar" with the Mayflower, Plymouth Rock, the Pilgrims, and the first thanksgiving but probably aren't aware of the actual details behind the story. There's a reason: the story isn't particularly interesting.

To Wit:
A small band of cult-like religious zealots flees Europe to escape religious intolerance by forming their own intolerant colony in the New World. Painfully naive and unprepared, they start by getting swindled in England before they even set out. Once under way, a good many die en route. They choose a poor site for a settlement (Plymouth), and a good number die the first winter. Of the small number who survive, some stay in Plymouth, some return to England over the next 2-3 years, others move to newly founded colonies nearby (such as Boston) which quickly overshadow Plymouth in significance.

The End.

That takes up about 30% of the 358 pages of narrative. What about the remaining 70% ?

The author is unfortunately fascinated with the Indian wars that the next generation of colonists engages in, and spends the bulk of the remaining book detailing (painstakingly) what is called "King Phillip's War"....King Phillip being the nickname of a powerful local chief.

...and he peppers the story with numerical trivia and judgments.

Consider: if 40 Indians fight 40 pilgrims and 20 people die, that's a casualty rate of 25%, which far exceeds that encountered at such epic battles as Gettysburg, or D-Day. From that the author concludes that "King Phillips War is by far the deadliest war fought by Americans".

I submit to the author, that actually Americas deadliest battle is the duel fought between Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton and Vice President Aaron Burr on July 11, 1804.

That had a stunning casualty rate of 50%....far exceeding any US battle fought prior or since.

The first bits (30%) of the book and the last chapter are actually pretty good. Skim the junk in between.

This wasn't exactly what I was expecting in terms of writing as well as the premise of the book.
I had anticipated the book to be written similarly to In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex, which had many facts but was similar to a novel in its storytelling.
Mayflower was rather dry and, whereas I did learn a great deal, I found myself drowning in a sea of facts. The book, as a friend had mentioned, reads more like a textbook, thus less enjoyable.

As far as the story, I was expecting to learn more about the voyage (although it was established that there isn't much in the way of resources on the journey) and about the social aspects in the Pilgrim and/or Puritan communities. I'd have to say that a quarter of the story revolved around community and culture with the other 3/4 dedicated to King Philip's War. Perhaps, the title should have indicated more about Pilgrim/Puritan and Native relations since that was the bulk of the book.

3 stars

This is not a book about the crossing over on the Mayflower, although that is briefly touched on. This book describes the years leading up to the voyage and the Pilgrims first fifty-five years in America.

The first part of the book reads like fiction with passages such as this: “What would have astounded a modern sensibility transported back to that Christmas Day in 1620 was the absolute quiet of the scene. Save for the gurgling of Town Brook, the lap of waves against the shore, and the wind in the bare winter branches, everything was silent as they listed and waited.” The second part of the book—the war years—reads a bit different, but was informative and well written.

What I found interesting was the difference in attitude that the Pilgrims had toward the native people verses the attitude of their descendants. The Pilgrims needed the help of Indians to survive, so they did what they must to keep the peace with their neighbors. But once the second generation came along, and they no longer needed help, peace dissolved and war was inevitable.

I really enjoyed this book, loved the maps, and learned so much. I look forward to reading more books by Nathaniel Philbrick.

Spoiler Alert: The Mayflower lands in Plymouth! Rocks fall, all the Native Americans die.

(One of the most interesting things about Mayflower is how little of it actually dealt with the ship itself. The Pilgrims are settled (well, “settled”), and the Mayflower headed back to England to fall into disrepair and be sold for scrap by page 80. More than half the book is spent on King Philip’s War and the events that lead to it, which actually concerns the two generations after the Mayflower’s passengers.)

Philbrick won a ton of awards with this one (like, say, the National Book Award), all deserved. He takes an excellent look at a period in time frequently overlooked – American history tends to cover 1620, and then make its way to 1770 and the Revolutionary War in the next chapter (with a slight layover in 1692 for the Witch Trials).

It’s incredibly well written, with an excellent balance between the big picture and individual narratives. He’s liberal with anecdotes, which keeps the book from ever getting dry or boring. He quotes contemporary and first person accounts, but not excessively – this is a book to be read for pleasure, not to be used as a resource. I laughed out loud a couple times, and physically shuddered as well. He reached that all-important goal of bringing his subjects to life.

Philbrick also does a good job of presenting a balanced version of events. (Especially considering that most contemporary sources were, at best, biased, because history, as we all know, is written by the victors.) He’s quick to point out the mistakes on both sides – the rash, racially motivated attacks made by the white settlers, and the never ending litany of missteps made by the Pokanokets, especially “King” Philip.

A few quick observations:

I would very much like to slap Increase Mather across the face. (Preferably so hard that Cotton feels it, too.) What an enormous tool.

These people were crap at naming their children. Everyone was John, Mary, William, or FEAR. Or Cotton. No wonder they were all a little wacked.

I love the irony of having a huge, gluttonous holiday celebration in honor of the Pilgrims, who regularly arrested and punished people for having big holiday celebrations. They would put us all in the stocks.

Is there any worse story than Thomas Granger’s? He will always (and I mean always – it’s already been 350+ years) be known for being convicted of bestiality – and executed for it. That’s embarrassing.

And, finally: How pissed is Miles Standish right now, what with how many times he was called short in this book?

This was a good (though not as good as In the Heart of the Sea) yet challenging read.

Though titled after the Mayflower, this is really a story about the Pilgrims, their search for religious freedom, and their relationship with the Native Indians that culminates in a detailed account of King Philip's war.

The book is well-researched and well-written, if occasionally hard to follow; there's just a lot of info here. In addition, the narrative shifts constantly to reflect whatever references were used at the time, which means introducing lots of characters.

Prior to reading this, I knew very little about the Pilgrims - except for popular mythology - and I think this book gave me a much better appreciation for the significance of the Mayflower and her passengers as well as a more realistic idea of the relationship between the natives and European settlers.

I was especially intrigued by the evolving and complex relationship that facilitated alliances on one hand and incited war on the other.

I also was horrified by the descriptions of violence perpetrated by both sides: dismembering the dead (both sides), displaying the severed heads of their fallen enemies (Pilgrims), scalping live victims (Indians), burning women and children alive (Pilgrims), and awarding body parts to soldiers as trophies (Pilgrims).

Bottom line: I learned a lot and it's not all nice (though all ordained by God...LOL).

Would recommend this to American History buffs. What a bloody and cruel history it is.

While a little exhausting, I liked it enough to order yet another work by the same author.

The Mayflower sails on, more than 400 years after the little ship’s historic voyage from England to Massachusetts. And millions of Americans recall that voyage with particular affection when the Thanksgiving season comes around each November. Yet the Pilgrims’ journey to Plymouth was only a small part of a much longer and more complex history, as Nathaniel Philbrick makes clear in his 2006 book Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War.

Philbrick has become one of the pre-eminent maritime historians of contemporary times; his 2000 book In the Heart of the Sea, a chronicle of the ill-fated whaling expedition that inspired Herman Melville’s composition of Moby Dick, was a National Book Award winner. And like that earlier book, Philbrick’s Mayflower delves into all that is difficult, messy, and painful about a historical episode that others might want to mythologize.

The early chapters of Mayflower do indeed capture the challenges that the Pilgrims experienced as they sailed to New England, arrived at exactly the wrong time of year, and endured a “starving winter” of 1620-21 that left many of their number dead. By the autumn of 1621, when they celebrated that first Thanksgiving, the Pilgrims were indeed thankful to be alive, and understandably so.

Philbrick dutifully sets forth what the Pilgrims and their Native American guests ate at that first Thanksgiving table – deer, ducks, turkey, and possibly fish, with freshly brewed beer to wash it all down. Philbrick feels obliged to remind us that “Alas, the Pilgrims were without pumpkin pies or cranberry sauce”, and that “The Pilgrims are with their fingers and their knives” (p. 118). While the term “thanksgiving” had specifically religious overtones, “there was also much about the gathering that was similar to a traditional English harvest festival” from medieval times (p. 117).

Yet there is much more for Philbrick to reveal about the Pilgrims and their descendants in colonial Massachusetts – a grim scenario that takes the reader a long way from “Countless Victorian-era engravings” in which “the Pilgrims…spend the day sitting around a long table draped with a white linen cloth, clasping each other’s hands in prayer as a few curious Indians looked on” (p. 117). Indeed, by the time the first Thanksgiving meal is finished, there are more than 200 pages still left in the book, and the tale that Philbrick recounts is largely a grim one.

The Pilgrims experienced cultural and religious tensions as more numerous Puritans – fellow Englishmen who wished to reform the Church of England rather than separate from it in the Pilgrim manner – established the nearby Massachusetts Bay colony that eventually absorbed and incorporated the Plymouth Colony. And, as in other parts of colonial America, questions of land deals caused tension between English and Indigenous inhabitants.

The Wampanoag leader Massasoit was, famously, a friend to the Pilgrims; his generous behavior toward the hapless Plymouth colonists helped many of them survive that harsh winter of 1620-21, and may have saved the entire colony from destruction. But Massasoit’s generosity did not help his sons in their dealings with the Pilgrims.

The eldest son of Massasoit, Wamsutta of Pokanoket, took the Christian name “Alexander” as a demonstration of his willingness to adapt to English ways; but when it was reported in 1662 that Alexander had been selling land to settlers from the rival colony of Rhode Island, Major Josiah Winslow – the son of Edward Winslow, the man who had set down that famous description of the first Thanksgiving – was sent out to arrest Alexander. The Pokanoket leader died on the journey back to Plymouth; there were rumors that he had been cruelly treated on the way; and “Alexander’s younger brother Philip…became convinced that Winslow had poisoned the sachem” (p. 204). While no one, either English or Indigenous, might have known it at the time, the stage was being set for a singularly bloody and cruel war.

Alexander’s bereaved younger brother, Philip, originally had the name Metacomet, but he became known to history as King Philip. As Philip succeeded Alexander as sachem (elected chief) of the Wampanoag, his feelings that the English had to be expelled from Wampanoag land remained consistent, and the war effort that he led against the English, beginning in 1675, came to be known as King Philip’s War.

It was a singularly cruel and bloody conflict, with abundant atrocities being committed on both sides; and there were times when it looked as though “the Indians might do as they had once threatened and drive the English to the very edge of the sea” (p. 302) – particularly at a time when the English faced not only determined Indigenous opposition but also a severe outbreak of influenza across New England.

But King Philip, for all the seeming fearsomeness of his name, had his limitations as a war leader; and the capture and execution of the Narragansett sachem Canonchet, who “had earned the reputation for charismatic leadership that had so far eluded the more famous Philip” (p. 302), was representative of how the war turned in favor of the English.

Also playing an important role in the resolution of the war was Mary Rowlandson, a 38-year-old Englishwoman who spent almost three months as a captive of the Indigenous forces. Six years before writing her account of her experiences, Captivity and Restoration (1682), Rowlandson met with King Philip and served as a sort of unofficial diplomatic negotiator, making good use of her knowledge of both English and Indigenous culture.

Rowlandson, fortunately, made it back to English land, at a site in Princeton, Massachusetts, that is now called “Redemption Rock.” But her experience was far from typical. Casualties on both sides in the 1675-78 war were severe; the economies of colonies that would one day be six American states were wrecked; and Indigenous nations of New England, nations that had thrived in the region for thousands of years, were virtually wiped out. Among the dead was King Philip, shot in a swamp in Rhode Island; his wife and son were sold into slavery in Bermuda.

An epilogue titled “Conscience” describes how the Thanksgiving commemoration evolved into a cultural celebration of which Americans are singularly proud. And yet, as Philbrick points out, “no matter how desperately our nation’s mythologizers might wish it had never happened, King Philip’s War will not go away” (p. 355). The intensity of the contrast between, on the one hand, the high ideals symbolized by the traditional Thanksgiving tableau of 1621 – a peaceful, multicultural celebration of the bounty of the American landscape – and, on the other hand, the brutal and violent reality of King Philip’s War 50 years later, is characteristic of Philbrick’s approach to history, and is at the heart of his book Mayflower.

This was a fairly dense history of the Mayflower and the next 75 - 100 years past the landing. But I really enjoyed the story of the beginning of our settling America.

I sent my DNA sample to the Genographic project run by IBM & National Geographic. I did that to augment the reams of family history notes accumulated by my mother on both sides of the family for many years. So, I had quite a bit of information on her side, but not on my father's. Until this past fall, I thought that I may never find out where his line originated. Other than knowledge of some "Black Dutch" and American Indian, I knew nothing of where we came from on his side. Through DNA I did find out that his family originated in Switzerland on his father's side. Then I learned a little more about how to get around the website and contacted someone sharing DNA extremely close to my own. It was a gold mine. The person had done very close research on the whole line and I subsequently found that my hitherto little known great-grandmother could be traced back to the Mayflower, which I duly recorded and am still doing so. My target is John Alden to whom we are supposed to be directly related. So, I picked up "The Mayflower" newly arrived at the library. It vividly brought alive all the characters that we had learned about in school--William Bradley, for example, and Miles Standish who courted the woman Alden also loved and later married. (Recorded in "The Courtship of Miles Standish" --a celebrated poem by Nathaniel Hawthorne.) The Mayflower illustrates how America came about. Nathaniel Philbrick, who has also written well about Nantucket Islanders and whaling opened up to me a topic I had always found boring and now made interesting. Not only did I begin to understand the Pilgrims and the Puritans better but also the different New England tribes of Indians. Philbrick does a thorough job of showing how and why the whites and the natives of New England clashed. It is a sad story but well worth reading. If we share the same DNA, you might feel closer to our roots and just as enlightened as I do having read The Mayflower.