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| If April showers bring May flowers, then what do Mayflowers bring? |
Four hundred years ago come this fall, an English version of the Spanish caraval swung around the hook end of Cape Cod and dropped anchor. Its passengers then promptly:
a. had a weird religious service on the boat
b. piled out on shore the next day so they could do some laundry
c. collected a bunch of shellfish, cooked it all up, puked it all out
d. sent a bunch of their guys up-Cape in a crappy little boat called a shallop just to see what they could see.
I only mention this here today because that bunch of fugitives from merrie old England did manage to accomplish a few things, as well as colossally fail at a bunch of other things. Oh, and they also didn't do a lot of stuff they were supposed to have done. Oh yeah, and they did some other stuff that nobody ever expected they could do.
Let's get back to that bunch working their way up-Cape from what would later be called Provincetown. The side of the Cape they were sailing on is called the bayside and has a really weird tidal change. At high tide, the water goes right up to the shore no problem. Low tide is another story alltogether. The water that used to be at the shoreline is now three miles out, with clam flats and tidal pools and absolutely nothing afloat as far as the eye can see. The Englishmen in the shallop discovered this the hard way when their ratso little boat ran out of water. They had to get out and drag it as far as they could in the direction of shore. Once there, they spotted a pair of locals and a dog in the distance, but when they chased after the pair, the locals disappeared. What would you have done if you saw this lot running after you?
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| Stop that dog! |
Yeah, I would have been so outta there too.
Sometime later, they came across a hill where there had clearly been some digging going on rather recently, so they stuck their own spades in and uncovered a bigass iron kettle filled with some kind of dried grain that nobody had ever seen before, but were pretty sure would make tasty tortillas, so they stole it. Still later, they discovered a gravesite (they dug it up of course, cuz snacks?) containing a kid, a woman and a REALLY HUGE GUY who were all unfortunately dead and snackless. What followed can only be described as uncharacteristic good sense: they reburied the stiffs.
Camping on Cape Cod in the fall is kind of nice. The greenheaded flies, gnats, mosqitos and horseflies are all beginning to mellow, the tourists have mostly gone, and the nights are crisp and cool. Or cold. And without moonlight or starlight, long before Thomas Edison or ever a dependable whale oil supply, it's dark. Our fugitive corn-stealing, grave-defiling Englishmen-by-way-of-Holland did exactly what you'd expect them to do: cut down a dry, dead tree and set fire to it out on the beach. Now they were
a. warm
b. less afraid
c. visible TO EVERYONE for MILES.
A bunch of those everyones thought it'd be fun to scare these weirdos back to ol' Blighty, so they got as close to the fire as they could without being seen and yelled their war-cry: "WOAH! Wo-wo-WOACH!" After dyeing their shorts brown and yellow, the Englishmen somehow managed to get some sleep before dawn.
Sunrise saw their boat on the way to floating in water, so the Englishmen thought they could scarf down some breakfast of inedible ship's biscuit and dried fish. Their friends from last night, however, completely pissed-off that their beach was still crawling with illegal immigrants, let fly their war-cries and a flock of arrows. So many in fact that the English were pinned behind a pile of logs they hadn't burned yet. And here is where we detour to the arcane world of early 17th century firearms technology so that you can appreciate why and how badly the English were screwed.
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| Anybody got a s-l-o-o-o-o-w match? I say, we're jolly-well fornicated now. |
a. one of them sprinted to the boat, arrows whizzing around his ears, grabbed the slow-matches and sprinted back to cover
b. someone else grabbed a burning log from the fire and lit all the slow matches
c. the blast from the guns frightened the locals away
d. the locals missed EVERYBODY.
Oh, and the place this all happened? It's now called First Encounter Beach in the town of Eastham --a place where I grew up.
A couple of more miserable, cold nights and raw, stinging salty spray days later, the crew were in high spirits because their miserable boat was headed straight for rocky cliffs later called Manomhet cliffs, but I'm pretty sure were first named the "OhmyfuckingGODwe'reallgonnaDIE!" cliffs. The boat's rudder was cracked, so the only thing they could do in order to steer the damn thing was to all row on one side of the boat, which of course made the boat want to capsize even more than it usually did. Between the rowing, the cracked rudder, howling wind and angry sea, another amazing thing happened: they somehow slid by the cliffs and lots of dangerous partly submerged rocks, and were blown right onto the sandy beach surrounding an island they failed to notice before. Exhausted, they all piled out of the boat, dragged it a bit further onshore, tossed the keys to the boat valet and went to sleep in the gathering gloom.
The next morning dawned bright and clear, so the English awoke, had a crap off the side of a log, and took a look around. What they saw was a barrier beach further offshore, and a green, invitingly cleared field next to the mainland shore close by, with a fresh water stream running through it. After taking some soundings to see if the harbor was deep enough for the Mayflower, they all tramped around on the shore for a bit, had a drink from the stream, noted the abandoned native wetus and the exposed, bleached bones, and concluded it would make a dandy place to live. So they all piled back into the shallop and made their way back across the bay to where they had left the rest of their friends.
Sometime during all this exploring and larceny, their leaders realized they had missed their landing goal of the mouth of the Hudson River. This minor navigational error had rather drastic consequences: it made the entire enterprise they had planned legally NULL AND VOID. The practical implication of this was that anybody who was just the slightest bit miffed could quite legally say, "Bugger-off you tossers!" and go start up their own colony, go back to England, sell the whole shebang to France, Spain or trade it all for a handful of magic-effing-beans it they wanted to, and face no legal punishment whatsoever. To fix this, they got all the men together and drew up a document of self-government history has called the Mayflower Compact. Basically, it said they'd form themselves into something called a "body politic" and be governed by English laws, or if there wasn't just the right English law available, then they'd make new ones, and to otherwise not do a whole Lord of the Flies-thing on each other.
The next order of business was to convince the ship to stick around until spring, because there weren't any houses, package stores, supermarkets, dry cleaners or any decent pizza yet. There are no reliable historical sources to explain the decision of Sailing Master Christopher Jones to stick around, but I theorize the foolowing:
a. winter weather crossing the Atlantic is always super shitty
b. Jones had become impressed by the faith of his Pilgrim passengers and wanted to help them
c. Pilgrim women were totally hot
The second thing they needed to do was to build some houses, because --and not to quote George R. R. Martin, but --winter was coming, and not some pussy English winter, but a totally badass Massachew-FuckYou-setts winter, with snow up to your buttholes, wind, rain, hail, freeing rain, frozen bird carcasses falling out of the sky, ocean temperatures approaching absolute zero and frost on the pumpkin. The first house they built was the Common House. This was a place big enough for about twenty people, so big enough for workers to rest and sleep in while they built the other houses. Later on, the Common House was changed into the Meetinghouse where they had their all frickin' day long religious meetings on Sunday.
The other houses were small affairs: one room, drafty fireplace, thatched roof, dirt floor, tiny windors covered by oily paper, maybe a sleeping loft so that the residents didn't have to sleep with their animals at night. But at least they had four walls and a roof, because shit was about to get real.
As the English were at work one fine day, a large and mostly naked Indian strode into their midst, seemed to enjoy the commotion he was causing, and said, "Hello Englishmen!" --in English, no less! He explained in broken English and rudimentary sign language was that his name was Samoset and he was here at the request of the Sachem Massasoit, the local chief whose land the English were presently squatting on. He said that someone who knew English really well would visit soon, along with the Big Chief himself. After looking around a bit and taking a leak on what would later become a street, Samoset left, leaving the Pilgrims all a-twitter. Now they had to be diplomats --or failing that, soldiers --or failing that, fertilizer.
The appointed day came. Massasoit, his chief powwows and warriors showed up. They were greeted by all the Pilgrim men who were strong enough to bear arms, their field drummer and a bugler, who escorted all and sundry to the Common House for a sit-down. There, the English learned that:
a. the place they were in was called Pautuxett
b. everyone who used to live there died of a horrible plague
c. the blast from the guns frightened the locals away
d. the locals missed EVERYBODY.
Oh, and the place this all happened? It's now called First Encounter Beach in the town of Eastham --a place where I grew up.
A couple of more miserable, cold nights and raw, stinging salty spray days later, the crew were in high spirits because their miserable boat was headed straight for rocky cliffs later called Manomhet cliffs, but I'm pretty sure were first named the "OhmyfuckingGODwe'reallgonnaDIE!" cliffs. The boat's rudder was cracked, so the only thing they could do in order to steer the damn thing was to all row on one side of the boat, which of course made the boat want to capsize even more than it usually did. Between the rowing, the cracked rudder, howling wind and angry sea, another amazing thing happened: they somehow slid by the cliffs and lots of dangerous partly submerged rocks, and were blown right onto the sandy beach surrounding an island they failed to notice before. Exhausted, they all piled out of the boat, dragged it a bit further onshore, tossed the keys to the boat valet and went to sleep in the gathering gloom.
The next morning dawned bright and clear, so the English awoke, had a crap off the side of a log, and took a look around. What they saw was a barrier beach further offshore, and a green, invitingly cleared field next to the mainland shore close by, with a fresh water stream running through it. After taking some soundings to see if the harbor was deep enough for the Mayflower, they all tramped around on the shore for a bit, had a drink from the stream, noted the abandoned native wetus and the exposed, bleached bones, and concluded it would make a dandy place to live. So they all piled back into the shallop and made their way back across the bay to where they had left the rest of their friends.
Sometime during all this exploring and larceny, their leaders realized they had missed their landing goal of the mouth of the Hudson River. This minor navigational error had rather drastic consequences: it made the entire enterprise they had planned legally NULL AND VOID. The practical implication of this was that anybody who was just the slightest bit miffed could quite legally say, "Bugger-off you tossers!" and go start up their own colony, go back to England, sell the whole shebang to France, Spain or trade it all for a handful of magic-effing-beans it they wanted to, and face no legal punishment whatsoever. To fix this, they got all the men together and drew up a document of self-government history has called the Mayflower Compact. Basically, it said they'd form themselves into something called a "body politic" and be governed by English laws, or if there wasn't just the right English law available, then they'd make new ones, and to otherwise not do a whole Lord of the Flies-thing on each other.
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| I was really hoping for a Mayflower coupe instead of a compact. |
a. winter weather crossing the Atlantic is always super shitty
b. Jones had become impressed by the faith of his Pilgrim passengers and wanted to help them
c. Pilgrim women were totally hot
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| YEAH we are, bitchezzz! |
The second thing they needed to do was to build some houses, because --and not to quote George R. R. Martin, but --winter was coming, and not some pussy English winter, but a totally badass Massachew-FuckYou-setts winter, with snow up to your buttholes, wind, rain, hail, freeing rain, frozen bird carcasses falling out of the sky, ocean temperatures approaching absolute zero and frost on the pumpkin. The first house they built was the Common House. This was a place big enough for about twenty people, so big enough for workers to rest and sleep in while they built the other houses. Later on, the Common House was changed into the Meetinghouse where they had their all frickin' day long religious meetings on Sunday.
The other houses were small affairs: one room, drafty fireplace, thatched roof, dirt floor, tiny windors covered by oily paper, maybe a sleeping loft so that the residents didn't have to sleep with their animals at night. But at least they had four walls and a roof, because shit was about to get real.
As the English were at work one fine day, a large and mostly naked Indian strode into their midst, seemed to enjoy the commotion he was causing, and said, "Hello Englishmen!" --in English, no less! He explained in broken English and rudimentary sign language was that his name was Samoset and he was here at the request of the Sachem Massasoit, the local chief whose land the English were presently squatting on. He said that someone who knew English really well would visit soon, along with the Big Chief himself. After looking around a bit and taking a leak on what would later become a street, Samoset left, leaving the Pilgrims all a-twitter. Now they had to be diplomats --or failing that, soldiers --or failing that, fertilizer.
The appointed day came. Massasoit, his chief powwows and warriors showed up. They were greeted by all the Pilgrim men who were strong enough to bear arms, their field drummer and a bugler, who escorted all and sundry to the Common House for a sit-down. There, the English learned that:
a. the place they were in was called Pautuxett
b. everyone who used to live there died of a horrible plague
c. the Wampanoags thought the English were INSANE for trying to settle Pautuxett because of (b)
d. the English were basically surrounded by a bunch of powerful tribes, any one of whom could seriously kick their asses.
Massasoit learned a couple of things as well:
a. English guns made a lot of smoke and noise
b. English food was really bland
c. Pilgrim women were totally hot --see above
d. the English had the plague stored in barrels under the floor boards of the Common House
-this last bit was a little exageration by their interpreter, Squanto, which probably gave rise to the expression, "You don't know Squanto."
The meeting left with the two sides promising to be friends, or at least not attack each other. To prove his benevolence, Massasoit left said Squanto with the English to teach them tricks on how to survive. He taught them to plant corn, beans and squash alltogether over a hill of dead herring, because hey, herring flavored corn. He also told them which mushrooms were ok, which ones could be used to poison people you didn't like, and which ones you could dry, smoke, and see not just the Christian God, but any other frickin' deity they wanted to talk to and hang out with. And finally, Squanto told them that Massasoit was legit powerful (he was) and could probably fly (he couldn't).
The Next thing the now officially greeted English had to do was to not die. This was harder than it sounds, because not only was there no package stores, supermarkets, dry cleaners or any decent pizza yet; there also was no CVS's, Walgreens or Mom 'n Pop's Pharmacies either. And these were sorely needed, because just about everyone got sick with something called the "bloody fluxe," which consisted of --and I am SO not making this up --watery, evil smelling explosive, bloody and projectile diarrhea. The Indian word for this malady was "flaming poop" and it caused them mild discomfort and mild amusement, but to the English, it was deadly. Half of the original bunch that came over died from this. That's right- America's plantation devoted to religious freedom almost shat itself to death.
The reason flaming poop hit the English so hard was because they were eating a lot of stuff that they had never eaten before. And they were surrounded by germs that they had no immunity to. And they weren't WASHING their F@#KING HANDS like they SHOULD HAVE! Luckily, they hit on a clever strategem to convince their Indian neighbors they were all a-ok. They burried all the dead people late at night and raked over the mass grave where they did it so the Indians wouldn't know how many had died. Cool plan, except for the last poor shlub left.
Come spring, everyone who survived was happy because they were alive; the sailors were happy because they were going home; the Indians were happy because they could move out of their winter forest digs and move to their summer beach camps where they could swim, fish, go clamming, catch lobsters, paddle around the lake and bay in their canoes, do art projects, sing songs, build campfires and make life-long friends. The only person who wasn't happy was a Mrs. Billington, and this was because her son had been missing and nobody knew where the brat had wandered off to. Now I bet you can guess what happened- he had by now passed through a bear's lower digestive tract. However, the truth was that Billington Jr. had been found by the Manomets, who passed them to the bunch who lived in Cummaquid, who passed him to the Nausett, who wouldn't give him up until the Nausett sachem and the Pilgrim elders had a meeting.
Into the shallop again, back around the inside arm of Cape Cod, and tramp-tramp overland to about where the Orleans/Eastham town line is today. The first person the English met was the Nausett sachem, who was too proud and aloof to say much else besides "Hello." The next person they met was the clan leader of the people the English had stolen all the seed corn from the year before. The next person they met was a woman who cried, screamed at and made armpit-farting noises at English because her husband and son had been kidnapped by an English or French ship. To all of this, Governor William Bradford said,
a. Hello
b. sorry about that- we'll give it back to you with interest
c. we didn't do that, but we're sorry about that too.
The next person the English met was the Billington Brat himself. He had had, by this time, an entire spring and most of a summer of playing Indian with real Indians! He had a cool buckskin shirt, a seashell necklace, a bunch of flowers in his hair put there by his very first girlfriend, and a lot of other cool Indian stuff. But the best part? After their early bad start, the Pilgrims and the Nausetts were back on good terms with each other.
The English Pilgrims now found themselves involved in a political situation where they were the newbies. The tribe that Massasoit was a powerful leader of was called the Wampanoag. Their chief rivals were the Massachusett and the Naragansett. The plague that killed everyone in Patuxet and a lot of other Wampanoag villages didn't hit either of these tribes nearly as hard, which is why Massasoit sought out the English at Plymouth as allies. He also had a personal reason for liking the English- they literally saved his life by helping him to give a shit.
Another thing the Pilgrims didn't do is have the first Thanksgiving. Or rather they had too many thanksgivings to count. The Pilgrims were a separate sect of Puritanism called --wait for it--Separatists. Separatists were kind of like the Jesus Freaks of the 1600's. They believed that God was everywhere --not just in churches --and anybody could understand scripture --not just priests --and that Bishops, Cardinals and the Pope were exactly the same as garbagemen in God's eyes. These views meant that all of God's creation were worthy of praise, even normal stuff like eating and drinking. As such, Puritans were constantly giving thanks to God --for the wind, the rain, flowers, tasty bacon, eel pie, a sunny day --you get the idea. Thanksgiving as we know it in the USA and Canada have more in common with harvest festivals practiced by farm communities for hundreds of years. The first Thanksgiving was actually ordered by President Abraham Lincoln in order to either thank God for Union victories, or to take people's mind off the obscene carnage of the Civil War.
d. the English were basically surrounded by a bunch of powerful tribes, any one of whom could seriously kick their asses.
Massasoit learned a couple of things as well:
a. English guns made a lot of smoke and noise
b. English food was really bland
c. Pilgrim women were totally hot --see above
d. the English had the plague stored in barrels under the floor boards of the Common House
-this last bit was a little exageration by their interpreter, Squanto, which probably gave rise to the expression, "You don't know Squanto."
The meeting left with the two sides promising to be friends, or at least not attack each other. To prove his benevolence, Massasoit left said Squanto with the English to teach them tricks on how to survive. He taught them to plant corn, beans and squash alltogether over a hill of dead herring, because hey, herring flavored corn. He also told them which mushrooms were ok, which ones could be used to poison people you didn't like, and which ones you could dry, smoke, and see not just the Christian God, but any other frickin' deity they wanted to talk to and hang out with. And finally, Squanto told them that Massasoit was legit powerful (he was) and could probably fly (he couldn't).
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| "...and rabbits can be used as high explosives." |
The reason flaming poop hit the English so hard was because they were eating a lot of stuff that they had never eaten before. And they were surrounded by germs that they had no immunity to. And they weren't WASHING their F@#KING HANDS like they SHOULD HAVE! Luckily, they hit on a clever strategem to convince their Indian neighbors they were all a-ok. They burried all the dead people late at night and raked over the mass grave where they did it so the Indians wouldn't know how many had died. Cool plan, except for the last poor shlub left.
Come spring, everyone who survived was happy because they were alive; the sailors were happy because they were going home; the Indians were happy because they could move out of their winter forest digs and move to their summer beach camps where they could swim, fish, go clamming, catch lobsters, paddle around the lake and bay in their canoes, do art projects, sing songs, build campfires and make life-long friends. The only person who wasn't happy was a Mrs. Billington, and this was because her son had been missing and nobody knew where the brat had wandered off to. Now I bet you can guess what happened- he had by now passed through a bear's lower digestive tract. However, the truth was that Billington Jr. had been found by the Manomets, who passed them to the bunch who lived in Cummaquid, who passed him to the Nausett, who wouldn't give him up until the Nausett sachem and the Pilgrim elders had a meeting.
Into the shallop again, back around the inside arm of Cape Cod, and tramp-tramp overland to about where the Orleans/Eastham town line is today. The first person the English met was the Nausett sachem, who was too proud and aloof to say much else besides "Hello." The next person they met was the clan leader of the people the English had stolen all the seed corn from the year before. The next person they met was a woman who cried, screamed at and made armpit-farting noises at English because her husband and son had been kidnapped by an English or French ship. To all of this, Governor William Bradford said,
a. Hello
b. sorry about that- we'll give it back to you with interest
c. we didn't do that, but we're sorry about that too.
The next person the English met was the Billington Brat himself. He had had, by this time, an entire spring and most of a summer of playing Indian with real Indians! He had a cool buckskin shirt, a seashell necklace, a bunch of flowers in his hair put there by his very first girlfriend, and a lot of other cool Indian stuff. But the best part? After their early bad start, the Pilgrims and the Nausetts were back on good terms with each other.
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| "Mom! Dad! Can I scalp my little sister?" |
One day, the settlement at Plymouth was disturbed to hear that their friend, Massasoit, was dying. Governor Bradford dispatched a pair of worthies, Winslow and Brewster, to go see if there was anything to be done. On entering the village and seeing the preparations for a big funeral, the pair thought that Massasoit was already dead. Instead they found a very weak and possibly dying Massasoit, shivering under a bearskin and a couple of wives. Winslow examined the chief's mouth and found it all furry with grodyness, so he cleaned it off with his own hands and gave Massasoit a nip of agua vite (moonshine liquor) to rinse with. This got the chief feeling better, who related his symptoms which included constipation. Winslow went outside, gathered a bunch of dandylions and made a "physick" of it and made the chief drink it all, followed by a moonshine chaser. A half hour passed, then Massasoit got up, ran for the sachem's private poop-tree, and took THE BIGGEST shit ever shat among the Wampanoag.
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| "...and it just might save your life." |
Long story short, the funeral turned into a complete party, where one of Massasoit's powwows told Winslow and Bradford that a Massachusett warrior who had been talking smack about the Pilgrims was hatching a plan to attack Plymouth and kill or enslave everyone there. When news of this got back to Plymouth, their only professional soldier, Myles Standish, got a couple of his boys together and went up to Wessagussett, present-day Weymouth, to where the Massachusett had placed a different group of Englishmen into abject slavery, giving them just enough food to keep them alive and working them within an inch of their lives.
With a cry of "Huzzah!" or "Saint George and My Aunt Fanny" or some such nonsense, all 5' 1" of Myles Standish and the guys he brought with him rushed out, grabbed the offending Massachusett warrior and his pals, killed them all, sawed THE HEAD OFF of the main culpret, popped it in a bag, took it back to Plymouth, and stuck it on a pike.
Now that the message of "Don't Fuck with the Pilgrims or the Wampanoags" was clearly understood, everyone could get on with what they did the best. The English had loads of English kids, cut down tons of trees, built farms and docks and more and bigger houses, and started getting rich in the livestock trade. The Indians went back to their hunting, fishing, light agriculture, campfires on the beach, hanging out with their distant relations whenever they came for a visit and once in a while beating the crap out of each other on a very small scale as the offense dictated it. The English in England chopped the head off of their king, went to war with a bunch of other countries, all turned into Puritans, sent a complete assload of people over to America and settled the East Coast. Oh sure, Massasoit's Grandson, Metecom, a.k.a. King Philip, tried to chuck all the English into the sea during the 1690's, and the victorious English sold all the Indians who didn't side with them into slavery in the Caribbean, but after that, there weren't hardly any Indian problems in New England. Because those Indians that were left were pretty much marginalized, pushed to the sides of society and left alone. Until they built casinos and stuck it back to whitey.
At this point, you're probably thinking, wow, the Pilgrims were great! They did all this cool stuff, and nothing could stop them. Right. They had some epic fails. The first of these were keeping the company that sponsored them afloat. The Merchant Adventurers of Plymouth, England were supposed to be paid back for the rent on the Mayflower, the tools and livestock they were sent over with, and all kinds of other expenses. When the Mayflower arrived back in England with only rocks
in her hold for ballast, that drove their investors into a frenzy. When the next boat back was filled with just a lot of timber, that was at least something but no way near what the company's debts were. The boat that had beaver pelts in it was slightly better, but by that time, the company had declared bankruptcy and the Pilgrims were basically off the financial hook.
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| This ship is not the Mayflower on it's return voyage, because it has stuff in it. |
Another thing the Pilgrims failed at was the same thing that Jamestown had failed at: finding gold or silver. Ever since the Spanish had sent the first boat loaded with Aztec loot home, the prevailing opinion in Europe was that the Americas were just stuffed full of gold and silver. This ignored the fact that America's mineral wealth was just like Europe's: scattered and unevenly distributed. This is why there were no boom towns in New England and lots of them in Colorado. At least the Pilgrims didn't spend as much time looking for gold as they did in Jamestown. I guess they were just too busy praying.
These were some things the English called Pilgrims did. Here are some things they didn't do. They never "landed" on Plymouth Rock. Oh sure, there WAS a bigass rock made of Dedham pudding-bowl granite at Patuxet when the English arrived, but they never landed on it- they "landed" in Provincetown. However, they did use the rock as a landmark. The whole story got started after a hurricane demolished a dock the Pilgrims had built on or near the rock and the town had planned on building a proper wharf to replace it. Before they broke up and dragged the rock away to make room for it, Elder Faunce, a 90 year old guy who was a kid when some of the original Pilgrims were still alive, said he wanted to be brought to the rock to see "that place that received the first Christian foot-trod in the New World." Well, the story made its rounds and probably would have been forgotten except for one Daniel Webster who heard it on one of his duck hunting trips and worked it into one of his speeches in the Senate. Soon after that, tourists started turning up wanting to see Plymouth Rock. The problem was there was no effing rock to show them, until somebody remembered where the old town dump used to be, and a large fragment of the rock was found. This was pulled out, dragged down the street and put in Pilgrim Hall where tourists could see it for a nickle a piece.
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| Surprisingly, no tourists were willing to pay to see the equally astonishing Plymouth Wok |
But hey, didn't the Indians and Pilgrims actually get together in 1621 for a feast? And weren't there games, and shooting demonstrations (arrows and blunderbuss) and wasn't this the first Thanksgiving? Well, yes, and not really. Yes, Bradford's On Plymouth Plantation does mention this rather rustic party, but no, it wasn't their first thanksgiving, nor would it be their last. Incidentally, turkey was most likely not on the menue in 1621. Goose, venison, succotash, beans, corn, pumpkin, squash, bass, cod, lobster, clams, scalops, blueberry and strawberry dessert with maple sugar, maybe even some kind of alcohol most likely were.
Four hundred years in the future, I wonder what people will think of the English who settled in southeast Massachusetts, or if those Pilgrims will even be remembered at all. In my short lifetime, the Pilgrims have gone from being pious pioneers for religious freedom, to dogmatic prudes who denied religious freedom to non-Puritans, to vanguards of the European imperialists yet to dominate North America, to just more old dead white people that a diverse society should ignore. While our cultural lenses that we see the Pilgrims through are constantly changing, the Pilgrims did what they did for the reasons that made the most sense to them at the time, just as we all do. When 2420 rolls around, I doubt even this poor blog post will be able to be read on whatever technology they're reading stuff with. Perhaps only images will be understood then. In that case, here is what I and my wife look like:
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| That's her on the left |
