Page 70 - American Stories, A History of the United States

for America in 1620 aboard the Mayflower, armed with a patent to settle in Virginia and
indebted to English investors who were only marginally interested in religious reform. 2.1
Because of an error in navigation, the Pilgrims landed not in Virginia but in what
is today Massachusetts in New England. The patent for which they had worked so dili-
gently had no validity there. In fact, the crown had granted New England to another 2.2
company. Without a patent, the colonists possessed no authorization to form a civil
government, a serious matter since some sailors who were not Pilgrims threatened
mutiny. To preserve the struggling community from anarchy, 41 men signed an agree- 2.3
ment known as the Mayflower Compact to “covenant and combine our selves together mayflower Compact Agreement
into a civil body politick.” among the Pilgrims aboard the
Although later praised for its democratic character, the Mayflower Compact could Mayflower in 1620 to create a civil 2.4
not ward off disease and hunger. During the first months in Plymouth, death claimed government at Plymouth Colony.
approximately half of the 102 people who had initially set out from England. Moreover,
debts contracted in England severely burdened the new colony. To their credit, the
Pilgrims honored their financial obligations, but it took almost 20 years to satisfy the
English investors. Without Bradford, whom they elected as governor, the settlers might
have been overwhelmed. Through strength of will and self-sacrifice, however, Bradford
persuaded frightened men and women that they could survive in America.
Bradford had help. Almost anyone who has heard of the Plymouth Colony knows
of Squanto, a Patuxet Indian who welcomed the first Pilgrims in excellent English. In
1614, unscrupulous adventurers had kidnapped Squanto and sold him in Spain as a
slave. Somehow he escaped bondage, making his way to London, where merchants who
owned land in Newfoundland taught him to speak English. They apparently hoped that
he would deliver moving public testimonials about immigrating to the New World.
In any case, Squanto returned to the Plymouth area just before the Pilgrims arrived.
Squanto joined Massasoit, a Native American leader, in teaching the Pilgrims much
about hunting and agriculture, a debt that Bradford acknowledged. Although evi-
dence for the so-called First Thanksgiving is sketchy, it is certain that without Native
American support the Europeans would have starved.
European diseases had destroyed many of the Indian villages near Plymouth before
the Pilgrims arrived. Now the Pilgrims were able to move onto cleared land left empty by
the disappearance of the Indians. In time, the Pilgrims replicated the humble little farm
communities they had known in England. They formed Separatist congregations to their
liking, and the population slowly increased. But because Plymouth offered only limited
economic prospects, it attracted few new settlers. In 1691, the colony was absorbed into
its larger and more prosperous neighbor, Massachusetts Bay.

The Puritan Migration to Massachusetts

In the early seventeenth century, an extraordinary spirit of religious reform burst forth
in England, and before it burned itself out, Puritanism had transformed the face of
England and America. Modern historians have difficulty comprehending this powerful
spiritual movement. Some consider the Puritans neurotic individuals who condemned puritans Members of a reformed
liquor and sex, dressed in drab clothes, and minded their neighbors’ business. Protestant sect in Europe and
This crude caricature is based on a profound misunderstanding of the actual America that insisted on removing
nature of this broad popular movement. The seventeenth-century Puritans were more all vestiges of Catholicism from
religious practice.
like today’s radical political reformers, men and women committed to far-reaching
institutional change, than like naive do-gooders or narrow fundamentalists. To their
enemies, of course, the Puritans were irritants, always pointing out civil and ecclesi-
astical imperfections and urging everyone to try to fulfill the commands of Scripture.
Many people, however, shared their vision, and their values remained a dominant ele-
ment in American culture at least until the Civil War.
The Puritans were products of the Protestant Reformation. They accepted a
notion advanced by the sixteenth-century French-Swiss theologian John Calvin that
an omnipotent God predestined some people to salvation and condemned others
to eternal damnation no matter how good or sinful their lives were. But instead
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