I don’t know about you but when I think of Plymouth, Massachusetts I think of the Mayflower and pilgrim hats. But imagine having to live in cramped quarters on a small ship with hundreds of your fellow pilgrims and all of their belongings for an arduous 66 day journey. It doesn’t sound like much fun does it? Well, that’s exactly what the pilgrims had to endure on their journey to Plymouth, Massachusetts.
The Mayflower first set sail in July of 1620 but after the ship they were traveling with, the Speedwell, leaked several times the journey from England didn’t actually begin until September of 1620. It seems like an ominous start to a journey if you ask me and to be honest during the 1600’s travel by sea was incredibly dangerous.
Lucky for the pilgrims the Mayflower didn’t sink during its long journey across the Atlantic but that’s not to say the expedition didn’t have a few hiccups. The ship hit a storm that did some damage and while there was 1 death there was also 1 birth. Perhaps the biggest mishap was that the ship was heading to Virginia and not to Massachusetts in the first place. The pilgrims had land patents for Virginia and had planned a settlement. However, the ship ended up drifting off course and the settlers landed in Massachusetts, which was an astonishing 600 miles away from their intended destination. Ah, 17thcentury sea travel.
History Nugget: Plymouth, Massachusetts
Edward Percy Moran (American artist, 1862-1935) Pilgrim’s Landing (early 1900s), oil on canvas, 23″ x 29″. Pilgrim Hall Museum, Plymouth, Mass.
After nearly 2 months on the sea, the pilgrims finally landed in Cape Cod, Massachusetts in November of 1620. Some small conflicts with the Natives erupted in what is modern-day Provincetown; it only took a few weeks before the pilgrims were sailing up the coast to Plymouth. Unfortunately for the pilgrims, they picked a terrible time of the year to try to build a settlement. As luck would have it, they did happen upon an abandoned Native American village. The inhabitants of the village had been taken out by an infamous epidemic a few years prior to the pilgrim’s arrival.
November and December are not very forgiving months in Massachusetts and the pilgrims were not well prepared and ended up living on the ship. Thanks to that whole drifting over 600 miles off course their provisions were rapidly dwindling. Over their first winter, nearly half of the passengers from the Mayflower died. It took another 3 months, around March of 1621, until there was enough housing for the pilgrims who had survived to live on the land. In April of 1621, the Mayflower and her crew departed back to the motherland, England.
This Currier & Ives engraving obtained from the Library of Congress shows the landing of the pilgrims at snowy Plymouth, Mass., in 1620.
The Natives –
The pilgrims had seen the Native Americans (the Wampanoag) through their first winter in Plymouth but never actually made contact. Well, that’s not exactly true, as a native stole some pilgrim tools during that first winter. However, around March of 1621 (I know, there was a lot going on in March of 1621) the Natives made their first contact. A Native by the name of Samoset told the pilgrims about his tribe and about a fella named Squanto who had in fact been to England and could speak the language.
“First sight of the Indians.” Illustration published in A Pictorial History of the United States circa 1852
Samoset made several visits to the Pilgrim settlement and even brought back the tools that had been taken. He also set up a meeting between the pilgrims and the Wampanoag Indian chief, Massasoit. He arrived a week later with Squanto in tow, as well as, a small portion of his tribe. As it turned out, Squanto was the only survivor of the village that the pilgrims had happened upon when they arrived in Plymouth. He could speak English because he was captured by an English sea captain and taken back to Europe as a slave. Not an ideal situation.
Interview of Samoset with the Pilgrims, illustration, circa 1864
As it turned out, Massasoit actually needed the pilgrims to help as his tribe had long been fighting with a neighboring tribe, the Narragansett. He proposed a peace treaty with the pilgrims in exchange for their help against the Wampanoag’s foes. The treaty is now known as the Pilgrim-Wampanoag Treaty. It was signed in April of 1621 and honored for an impressive 50 years.
And that folks bring us to the good stuff –
the first Thanksgiving click here to read more.
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Resources
Brooks, Rebecca Beatrice. “The History of Plymouth Colony.” History Of Massachusetts, 2016. http://historyofmassachusetts.org/plymouth-colony-history/
“Mayflower and Mayflower Compact,” Plimouth Plantation, 2018. https://www.plimoth.org/learn/just-kids/homework-help/mayflower-and-mayflower-compact
