The History of the Pilgrims
Some 100 people, many of them seeking religious freedom in the New World, set sail
from England on the Mayflower in September 1620. That November, the ship landed on
the shores of Cape Cod, in present-day Massachusetts. A scouting party was sent out, and in
late December the group landed at Plymouth Harbor, where they would form the first
permanent settlement of Europeans in New England. These original settlers of Plymouth
Colony are known as the Pilgrims.
The Mayflower Voyage
The group that set out from Plymouth, in southwestern England, in September 1620
included 35 members of a radical Puritan group known as the English Separatist Church. In
1607, after illegally breaking from the Church of England, the Separatists settled in the
Netherlands, first in Amsterdam and later in the town of Leiden, where they remained for
the next decade under the relatively lenient Dutch laws. Due to economic difficulties, as
well as fears that they would lose their English language and heritage, they began to make
plans to settle in the New World. Their intended destination was a region near the Hudson
River, which at the time was thought to be part of the already established colony of
Virginia. In 1620, the would-be settlers joined a London stock company that would finance
their trip aboard the Mayflower.
Some of the most notable passengers on the Mayflower included William Bradford, a
leader of the Separatist church who wrote the still-classic account of the Mayflower voyage
and the founding of Plymouth Colony. While still on board the ship, a group of 41 men
signed the so-called Mayflower Compact, in which they agreed to join together in a "civil
body politic." This document would become the foundation of the new colony's
government.
Settling at Plymouth
Rough seas and storms prevented the Mayflower from reaching their initial
destination, and after a voyage of 65 days the ship reached the shores of Cape Cod. After
sending an exploring party ashore, the Mayflower landed at what they would call
Plymouth Harbor, on the western side of Cape Cod Bay, in mid-December. During the next
several months, the settlers lived mostly on the Mayflower and ferried back and forth from
shore to build their new storage and living quarters. The settlement's first fort and
watchtower was built on what is now known as Burial Hill (the area contains the graves of
Bradford and other original settlers).
More than half of the English settlers died during that first winter, as a result of poor
nutrition and housing that proved inadequate in the harsh weather. The leaders played
important roles in keeping the remaining settlers together. In April 1621, after the death of
the settlement's first governor, John Carver, Bradford was unanimously chosen to hold that
position; he would be reelected 30 times and served as governor of Plymouth for all but
five years until 1656.
Relations with Native Americans
The native inhabitants of the region around Plymouth Colony were the various tribes of the
Wampanoag people, who had lived there for some 10,000 years before the Europeans
arrived. Soon after the Pilgrims built their settlement, they came into contact with
Squanto, an English-speaking Native American. Squanto was a member of the Pawtuxet
tribe (from present-day Massachusetts and Rhode Island) who had been seized by the
explorer John Smith's men in 1614-15. Meant for slavery, he somehow managed to escape
to England, and returned to his native land to find most of his tribe had died of plague. In
addition to interpreting and mediating between the colonial leaders and Native American
chiefs, Squanto taught the Pilgrims how to plant corn, which became an important crop, as
well as where to fish and hunt beaver. In the fall of 1621, the Pilgrims famously shared a
harvest feast with the Pokanokets; the meal is now considered the basis for the
Thanksgiving holiday.
Squanto died in 1622, while serving as Bradford's guide on an expedition around
Cape Cod. Other tribes were not so well disposed towards European settlers, and the
alliance with the Pilgrims disrupted relations among Native American peoples in the
region. Over the next decades, relations between settlers and Native Americans
deteriorated as the former group occupied more and more land. By the time William
Bradford died in 1657, he had already expressed anxiety that New England would soon be
torn apart by violence. In 1675, Bradford's predictions came true, in the form of King
Philip's War. (Philip was the English name a Native American.) That conflict left some
5,000 inhabitants of New England dead, three quarters of those Native Americans.
The Pilgrim Legacy in New England
Repressive policies toward religious nonconformists in England under King James I
and his successor, Charles I, had driven many men and women to follow the Pilgrims' path
to the New World. Three more ships traveled to Plymouth after the Mayflower, including
the Fortune (1621), the Anne and the Little James (both 1623). In 1630, a group of some
1,000 Puritan refugees under Governor John Winthrop settled in Massachusetts
according to a charter obtained from King Charles I by the Massachusetts Bay Company.
Winthrop soon established Boston as the capital of Massachusetts Bay Colony, which would
become the most populous and prosperous colony in the region.