Mayflower

Just finished Mayflower, by Nathaniel Philbrick, last night. It was a wonderful book about a largely untapped subject in U.S. History. Yes, every second-grader knows about the pilgrims and the Indians and Thanksgiving, but Philbrick goes much deeper, and has written a scholarly but very readable tome on the subject, from the pilgrims' departure for the New World on through the carnage of King Philip's War.

There is lots to chew on in this book, such as that the pilgrims meant to settle on what is now New York harbor, but the captain of the Mayflower didn't want to attempt to go through dangerous shoals, so turned back and landed on Cape Cod. After a skirmish with Indians (and after the pilgrims stole some of their corn and disturbed some graves) they kept on and landed at Plymouth. There was great loss of life, due to disease, and these people had some crazy kind of courage. They were there, of course, for religious freedom, but ironically, when other settlers started arriving that didn't practice their particular Puritanism, they bristled and wanted them gone. When there are news items nowadays about Americans' fundamentalist attitudes toward religion and sexuality, it can be traced back to the simple fact that we were founded by zealots.

After the rocky start with stealing the Indians' corn, the pilgrims forged a good relationship with Massasoit, the sachem of the Pokanokets. Squanto, who is famous today for being a liaison with the Indians and pilgrims, is revealed here to be a schemer who wanted power for himself. He had been to Europe, and was a slippery character. He also died, perhaps murdered by poison, right after the first Thanksgiving. They left that out of my elementary school curriculum.

As more and more English came to New England, things got pricklier with the Indians. There were several tribes in the area, some of whom had long-standing feuds. Eventually Massasoit's son, who called himself Philip, chose to go to war with the English. The key event that started it was some of his men being railroaded in a trial and executed. But what started as a beef with Plymouth plantation led to a full-scale war involving the entire region and every native tribe.

I found this section of the book fascinating, for I had known next to nothing about what came to be called King Philip's War. It plays out like Greek tragedy. Philbrick does a great job of keeping all the tribes and their sachems straight. In the end, Indian turned against Indian, which brought about Philip's downfall (a prophecy said he would never be killed by a Englishman, and that turned out to be true, but horribly true). More than fifty percent of the native peoples of the region were killed or removed during the conflict. Eight percent of the English died (compared to four percent during the Civil War) If the Indians could have seen what would have happened to them, they might have stayed united and driven the English out. Such is history.

There's also a satisfying epilogue, which details how the pilgrims became icons in our history. Thanksgiving wasn't established as a holiday until the Civil War, and Philbrick notes that the pilgrims would have been baffled and horrified by the whole concept.