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Instructions:

You are one of the first settlers, who came with the Mayflower and coasted on the American shores in 1620. You survived the crossing and the first year in the colony. You write a letter to a friend or a member of your family, who stayed in Great-Britain. You are free to choose if you want to convince your addressee to join you in Plymouth Colony or to stay in Great-Britain, but some things must be told in your letter. So, in your letter, you have to:

·         Explain who the people were, who travelled with you, and why you decided to settle in America.

·         Describe how the journey on the Mayflower was.

·         Describe where the Colony was established.

·         Explain what happened on the first winter and which problems the Colony and the Settlers had.

·         Describe how the colony was organised.

·         Explain who the Native Americans were (which tribe), how the relations between them and the Settlers were.

Be careful, choose wisely the date, on which you are writing the letter: it will impact the things and event you may describe or not.

Criteria:

·         You have to respect the form of a letter:

o   Write the date and a place at the top, on the right corner of the letter

o   Write the salutation (Dear + person’s name)

o   Write a formal ending (for example: “sincerely”, “love”, “warm regards”).

·         You have to give all the information requested in the instructions.

·         Your letter must be plausible and convincing: your letter must be historically accurate.

·         Be creative! You will be rewarded if your letter is inventive: there were no computer or typewriter at that time so use your most beautiful handwriting, an envelope and seal it!

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Questions you have to answer and things you have to explain

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Questions you have to answer and things you have to explain

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1. Where was the colony established? Was it the place they had in mind? You can draw a quick map to show the differences.
2. How was organized the colony?
3. What kind of difficulties did the Settlers run into ? Describe them.
4. What were the relations with the Native Americans?
5. How did the colony grew the next 10 years? Give some importants moments.

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The Embarkation of the Pilgrims (1857) by American painter Robert Walter Weir at the Brooklyn Museum

The Pilgrims, also known as the Pilgrim Fathers, were the English settlers who traveled to America on the and established the Plymouth Colony in Plymouth, Massachusetts ( John Smith had named this territory New Plymouth in 1620, sharing the name of the Pilgrims' final departure port of Plymouth, Devon). The Pilgrims' leadership came from the religious congregations of Brownists, or Separatist Puritans, who had fled religious persecution in England for the tolerance of 17th-century Holland in the Netherlands.

They held many of the same Puritan Calvinist religious beliefs but, unlike most other Puritans, they maintained that their congregations should separate from the English state church, which led to them being labeled Separatists. After several years living in exile in Holland, they determined to establish a new settlement in the New World and arranged with investors to fund them. They established Plymouth Colony in 1620, where they erected Congregationalist churches. The Pilgrims' story became a central theme in the history and culture of the United States.

Memorial at Immingham, England, to the departure of congregation members for Holland in 1608

The core of the group was brought together around 1605 when they quit the Church of England to form Separatist congregations in Nottinghamshire, England, led by John Robinson, Richard Clyfton, and John Smyth. Their congregations held Brownist beliefs-that true churches were voluntary democratic congregations, not whole Christian nations-as taught by Robert Browne, John Greenwood, and Henry Barrowe. As Separatists, they held that their differences with the Church of England were irreconcilable and that their worship should be independent of the trappings, traditions, and organization of a central church.

The Separatist movement was controversial. Under the Act of Uniformity 1559, it was illegal not to attend official Church of England services, with a fine of one shilling (£0.05; about £20 today) for each missed Sunday and holy day. The penalties included imprisonment and larger fines for conducting unofficial services. The Seditious Sectaries Act 1592 was specifically aimed at outlawing the Brownists. Under this policy, London Underground Church members were repeatedly imprisoned from 1566, and then Robert Browne and his followers were imprisoned in Norfolk during the 1580s. Henry Barrow, John Greenwood, and John Penry were executed for sedition in 1593. Browne had taken his followers into exile in Middelburg, and Penry urged the London Separatists to emigrate in order to escape persecution,[citation needed ] so after his death they went to Amsterdam.

The Archbishop of York was Matthew Hutton. He displayed some sympathy to the Puritan cause, writing to Robert Cecil, Secretary of State to James I in 1604:

The Puritans though they differ in Ceremonies and accidentes, yet they agree with us in substance of religion, and I thinke all or the moste parte of them love his Majestie, and the presente state, and I hope will yield to conformitie. But the Papistes are opposite and contrarie in very many substantiall pointes of religion, and cannot but wishe the Popes authoritie and popish religion to be established.

Many Puritans had hoped that reforms and reconciliation would be possible when James came to power which would allow them independence, but the Hampton Court Conference of 1604 denied nearly all of the concessions which they had requested-except for an authorized English translation of the Bible. The same year, Richard Bancroft became Archbishop of Canterbury and launched a campaign against Puritanism and the Separatists. He suspended 300 ministers and fired 80 more, which led some of them to found more Separatist churches. Robinson, Clifton, and their followers founded a Brownist church, making a covenant with God "to walk in all his ways made known, or to be made known, unto them, according to their best endeavours, whatsoever it should cost them, the Lord assisting them".

Archbishop Hutton died in 1606 and Tobias Matthew was appointed as his replacement. He was one of James's chief supporters at the 1604 conference, and he promptly began a campaign to purge the archdiocese of non-conforming influences, including Puritans, Separatists, and those wishing to return to the Catholic faith. Disobedient clergy were replaced, and prominent Separatists were confronted, fined, and imprisoned. He is credited with driving people out of the country who refused to attend Anglican services.

William Brewster was a former diplomatic assistant to the Netherlands. He was living in the Scrooby manor house while serving as postmaster for the village and bailiff to the Archbishop of York. He had been impressed by Clyfton's services and had begun participating in services led by John Smyth in Gainsborough, Lincolnshire. After a time, he arranged for a congregation to meet privately at the Scrooby manor house. Services were held beginning in 1606 with Clyfton as pastor, John Robinson as teacher, and Brewster as the presiding elder. Shortly after, Smyth and members of the Gainsborough group moved on to Amsterdam. Brewster was fined £20 (about £4,593 today) in absentia for his non-compliance with the church. This followed his September 1607 resignation from the postmaster position, about the time that the congregation had decided to follow the Smyth party to Amsterdam.

Scrooby member William Bradford of Austerfield kept a journal of the congregation's events which was eventually published as Of Plymouth Plantation. He wrote concerning this time period:

But after these things they could not long continue in any peaceable condition, but were hunted & persecuted on every side, so as their former afflictions were but as flea-bitings in comparison of these which now came upon them. For some were taken & clapt up in prison, others had their houses besett & watcht night and day, & hardly escaped their hands; and the most were faine to flie & leave their howses & habitations, and the means of their livelehood.

Title page of a pamphlet published by William Brewster in Leiden

Permission from the city council of Leiden, allowing the Pilgrims to settle there, dated February 12, 1609.

The Pilgrims moved to the Netherlands around 1607-08 and lived in Leiden, Holland, a city of 30,000 inhabitants. Leiden was a thriving industrial center, and many members were able to support themselves working at Leiden University or in the textile, printing, and brewing trades. Others were less able to bring in sufficient income, hampered by their rural backgrounds and the language barrier; for those, accommodation was constructed on an estate bought by Robinson and three partners. Bradford wrote of their years in Leiden:

For these & other reasons they removed to Leyden, a fair & bewtifull citie, and of a sweete situation, but made more famous by ye universitie wherwith it is adorned, in which of late had been so many learned man. But wanting that traffike by sea which Amerstdam injoyes, it was not so beneficiall for their outward means of living & estats. But being now hear pitchet they fell to such trads & imployments as they best could; valewing peace & their spirituall comforte above any other riches whatsoever. And at length they came to raise a competente & comforteable living, but with hard and continuall labor.

William Brewster had been teaching English at the university, and Robinson enrolled in 1615 to pursue his doctorate. There he participated in a series of debates, particularly regarding the contentious issue of Calvinism versus Arminianism (siding with the Calvinists against the Remonstrants). Brewster acquired typesetting equipment about 1616 in a venture financed by Thomas Brewer, and began publishing the debates through a local press.

The Netherlands, however, was a land whose culture and language were strange and difficult for the English congregation to understand or learn. They found the Dutch political situation to be unstable, and their children were becoming more and more Dutch as the years passed. The congregation came to believe that they faced eventual extinction if they remained there.

By 1617, the congregation was stable and relatively secure, but there were ongoing issues which needed to be resolved. Bradford noted that many members of the congregation were showing signs of early aging, compounding the difficulties which some had in supporting themselves. A few had spent their savings and so gave up and returned to England, and the leaders feared that more would follow and that the congregation would become unsustainable. The employment issues made it unattractive for others to come to Leiden, and younger members had begun leaving to find employment and adventure elsewhere. Also compelling was the possibility of missionary work in some distant land, an opportunity that rarely arose in a Protestant stronghold.

Bradford lists some of the reasons for which the Pilgrims felt that they had to leave, including the discouragements that they faced in the Netherlands and the hope of attracting others by finding "a better, and easier place of living", the children of the group being "drawn away by evil examples into extravagance and dangerous courses", and the "great hope, for the propagating and advancing the gospel of the kingdom of Christ in those remote parts of the world." Edward Winslow's list was similar. In addition to the economic worries and missionary possibilities, he stressed that it was important for the people to retain their English identity, culture, and language. They also believed that the English Church in Leiden could do little to benefit the larger community there.

At the same time, there were many uncertainties about moving to such a place as America, as stories had come back about failed colonies. There were fears that the native people would be violent, that there would be no source of food or water, that they might be exposed to unknown diseases, and that travel by sea was always hazardous. Balancing all this was a local political situation which was in danger of becoming unstable. The truce was faltering in the Eighty Years' War, and there was fear over what the attitudes of Spain might be toward them.

Possible destinations included Guiana on the northeast coast of South America where the Dutch had established Essequibo colony, or another site near the Virginia settlements. Virginia was an attractive destination because the presence of the older colony might offer better security and trade opportunities; however, they also felt that they should not settle too near, since that might inadvertently duplicate the political environment back in England. The London Company administered a territory of considerable size in the region, and the intended settlement location was at the mouth of the Hudson River (which instead became the Dutch colony of New Netherland). This plan allayed their concerns of social, political, and religious conflicts, but still promised the military and economic benefits of being close to an established colony.

Robert Cushman and John Carver were sent to England to solicit a land patent. Their negotiations were delayed because of conflicts internal to the London Company, but ultimately a patent was secured in the name of John Wincob on June 9 ( Old Style)/June 19 (New Style), 1619. The charter was granted with the king's condition that the Leiden group's religion would not receive official recognition.

Preparations then stalled because of the continued problems within the London Company, and competing Dutch companies approached the congregation with the possibility of settling in the Hudson River area. David Baeckelandt suggests that the Leiden group was approached by Englishman Matthew Slade, son-in-law of Petrus Placius, a cartographer for the Dutch East India Company. Slade was also a spy for the English Ambassador, and the Pilgrims' plans were therefore known both at court and among influential investors in the Virginia Company's colony at Jamestown. Negotiations were broken off with the Dutch, however, at the encouragement of English merchant Thomas Weston, who assured them that he could resolve the London Company delays. The London Company intended to claim the area explored by Hudson before the Dutch could become fully established, and the first Dutch settlers did not arrive in the area until 1624.

Weston did come with a substantial change, telling the Leiden group that parties in England had obtained a land grant north of the existing Virginia territory to be called New England. This was only partially true; the new grant did come to pass, but not until late in 1620 when the Plymouth Council for New England received its charter. It was expected that this area could be fished profitably, and it was not under the control of the existing Virginia government.

A second change was known only to parties in England who did not inform the larger group. New investors had been brought into the venture who wanted the terms altered so that half of the settled land and property would revert to the investors at the end of the seven-year contract. Also, there had been a provision in the original agreement that allowed each settler to have two days per week to work on personal business, but this provision was dropped from the final agreement without the knowledge of the Pilgrims.

Amid these negotiations, William Brewster found himself involved with religious unrest emerging in Scotland. In 1618, King James had promulgated the Five Articles of Perth which were seen in Scotland as an attempt to encroach on their Presbyterian tradition. Brewster published several pamphlets that were critical of this law, and they were smuggled into Scotland by April 1619. These pamphlets were traced back to Leiden, and the English authorities unsuccessfully attempted to arrest Brewster. English ambassador Dudley Carleton became aware of the situation and began pressuring the Dutch government to extradite Brewster, and the Dutch responded by arresting Thomas Brewer the financier in September. Brewster's whereabouts remain unknown between then and the colonists' departure, but the Dutch authorities did seize the typesetting materials which he had used to print his pamphlets. Meanwhile, Brewer was sent to England for questioning, where he stonewalled government officials until well into 1620. He was ultimately convicted in England for his continued religious publication activities and sentenced in 1626 to a 14-year prison term.

Not all of the congregation were able to depart on the first trip. Many members were not able to settle their affairs within the time constraints, and the budget was limited for travel and supplies; also, the group decided that the initial settlement should be undertaken primarily by younger and stronger members. The remainder agreed to follow if and when they could. Robinson would remain in Leiden with the larger portion of the congregation, and Brewster was to lead the American congregation. The church in America would be run independently, but it was agreed that membership would automatically be granted in either congregation to members who moved between the continents.

With personal and business matters agreed upon, the Pilgrims procured supplies and a small ship. was to bring some passengers from the Netherlands to England, then on to America where it would be kept for the fishing business, with a crew hired for support services during the first year. The larger ship was leased for transport and exploration services.

Contemporary depiction of the Pilgrims leaving Delfthaven aboard the Speedwell by Adam Willaerts. c. 1620

The was originally named Swiftsure. It was built in 1577 at 60 tons and was part of the English fleet that defeated the Spanish Armada. It departed Delfshaven in July 1620 with the Leiden colonists, after a canal ride from Leyden of about seven hours. It reached Southampton, Hampshire, and met with the and the additional colonists hired by the investors. With final arrangements made, the two vessels set out on August 5 ( Old Style)/August 15 (New Style).

Model of a typical merchantman of the period, showing the cramped conditions that had to be endured

Soon after, the Speedwell crew reported that their ship was taking on water, so both were diverted to Dartmouth, Devon. The crew inspected Speedwell for leaks and sealed them, but their second attempt to depart got them only as far as Plymouth, Devon. The crew decided that Speedwell was untrustworthy, and her owners sold her; the ship's master and some of the crew transferred to the Mayflower for the trip. William Bradford observed that the Speedwell seemed "overmasted", thus putting a strain on the hull; and he expressed suspicions that crew members might have deliberately caused it, allowing them to abandon their year-long commitments. Passenger Robert Cushman wrote that the leaking was caused by a loose board.

Of the 120 combined passengers on the two ships, 102 were chosen to travel on the Mayflower with the supplies consolidated. Of these, about half had come by way of Leiden, and about 28 of the adults were members of the congregation. The reduced party finally sailed successfully on September 6 ( Old Style)/September 16 (New Style), 1620.

Initially the trip went smoothly, but under way they were met with strong winds and storms. One of these caused a main beam to crack, and the possibility was considered of turning back, even though they were more than halfway to their destination. However, they repaired the ship sufficiently to continue by using a "great iron screw" brought along by the colonists (probably a jack to be used for either house construction or a cider press). Passenger John Howland was washed overboard in the storm, but he caught a top-sail halyard trailing in the water and was pulled back on board.

One crew member and one passenger died before they reached land. A child was born at sea and named Oceanus.

1620 place names mentioned by Bradford

The Mayflower passengers sighted land on November 9, 1620 after enduring miserable conditions for about 65 days, and William Brewster led them in singing Psalm 100. They confirmed that the area was Cape Cod within the New England territory recommended by Weston. They attempted to sail the ship around the cape towards the Hudson River, but they encountered shoals and difficult currents around Cape Malabar (the old French name for Monomoy Island). They decided to turn around, and the ship was anchored in Provincetown Harbor by November 11/21.

The charter was incomplete for the Plymouth Council for New England when the colonists departed England (it was granted while they were in transit on November 3/13). They arrived without a patent; the older Wincob patent was from their abandoned dealings with the London Company. Some of the passengers, aware of the situation, suggested that they were free to do as they chose upon landing, without a patent in place, and to ignore the contract with the investors.

The Leiden congregants, therefore, drafted a brief contract known as the Mayflower Compact, promising cooperation among the settlers "for the general good of the Colony unto which we promise all due submission and obedience." It organized them into what was called a "civill body politick," in which issues would be decided by voting, the key ingredient of democracy. It was ratified by majority rule, with 41 adult male Pilgrims signing for the 102 passengers (74 males and 28 females). Included in the company were 13 male servants and three female servants, along with some sailors and craftsmen hired for short-term service to the colony. At this time, John Carver was chosen as the colony's first governor. It was Carver who had chartered the Mayflower and his is the first signature on the Mayflower Compact, being the most respected and affluent member of the group. The Mayflower Compact is considered to be one of the seeds of American democracy, and historian has called it the world's first written constitution.

Thorough exploration of the area was delayed for more than two weeks because the shallop or pinnace (a smaller sailing vessel) which they brought had been partially dismantled to fit aboard the Mayflower and was further damaged in transit. Small parties, however, waded to the beach to fetch firewood and attend to long-deferred personal hygiene.

Myles Standish was an English soldier from Chorley whom the colonists had met while in Leiden, and they had asked him to join them as their military adviser. He and Christopher Jones led several exploratory trips ashore while awaiting the shallop's repair. They encountered an old European-built house and iron kettle, left behind by some ship's crew, and a few recently cultivated fields showing corn stubble.

They came upon an artificial mound near the dunes which they partially uncovered and found to be an Indian grave. Farther along, a similar mound was found, more recently made, and they discovered that some of the burial mounds also contained corn. The colonists took some of the corn, intending to use it as seed for planting, while they reburied the rest. William Bradford later recorded in his book Of Plymouth Plantation that, after the shallop had been repaired,

They also found two of the Indian's houses covered with mats, and some of their implements in them; but the people had run away and could not be seen. Without permission they took more corn, and beans of various colours. These they brought away, intending to give them full satisfaction when they should meet with any of them, - as about six months afterwards they did.

And it is to be noted as a special providence of God, and a great mercy to this poor people, that they thus got seed to plant corn the next year, or they might have starved; for they had none, nor any likelihood of getting any, till too late for the planting season.

By December, most of the passengers and crew had become ill, coughing violently. Many also were suffering from the effects of scurvy. There had already been ice and snowfall, hampering exploration efforts, and nearly half of the Pilgrim passengers died during the first winter.

Explorations resumed on December 6/16. The shallop party headed south along the cape, consisting of seven colonists from Leiden, three from London, and seven crew; they chose to land at the area inhabited by the Nauset people (the area around Brewster, Chatham, Eastham, Harwich, and Orleans) where they saw some people on the shore who fled when they approached. Inland they found more mounds, one containing acorns which they exhumed, and more graves, which they decided not to disturb. They remained ashore overnight and heard cries near the encampment. The following morning, they were attacked by Indians who shot at them with arrows. The colonists retrieved their firearms and shot back, then chased them into the woods but did not find them. There was no more contact with them for several months.

The Indians were already familiar with the English, who had intermittently visited the area for fishing and trade before Mayflower arrived. In the Cape Cod area, relations were poor following a visit several years earlier by Thomas Hunt. Hunt kidnapped 20 people from Patuxet (the site of Plymouth Colony) and another seven from Nausett, and he attempted to sell them as slaves in Europe. One of the Patuxet men was Squanto, who became an ally of the Plymouth Colony. He had escaped slavery and made his way to England, where he became fluent in English. He ultimately returned to America, only to discover that his entire village had died from plague.

Samuel de Champlain's 1605 map of Plymouth Harbor showing the Wampanoag village of Patuxet, with some modern place names added for reference. The star marks the approximate location of the Plymouth Colony.

Plymouth Rock commemorates the landing of the Mayflower in 1620

Continuing westward, the shallop's mast and rudder were broken by storms and the sail was lost. They rowed for safety, encountering the harbor formed by Duxbury and Plymouth barrier beaches. They remained at this spot for two days to recuperate and repair equipment. They named it Clark's Island for a Mayflower mate who first set foot on it.

They resumed exploration on Monday, December 11/21 when the party crossed over to the mainland and surveyed the area that ultimately became the settlement. The anniversary of this survey is observed in Massachusetts as Forefathers' Day and is traditionally associated with the Plymouth Rock landing tradition. This land was especially suited to winter building because it had already been cleared, and the tall hills provided a good defensive position.

The cleared village was known as Patuxet to the Wampanoag people and was abandoned about three years earlier following a plague that killed all of its residents. The "Indian fever" involved hemorrhaging and is assumed to have been fulminating smallpox. The outbreak had been severe enough that the colonists discovered unburied skeletons in the dwellings.

The exploratory party returned to the Mayflower, which was anchored twenty-five miles (40 km) away, having been brought to the harbor on December 16/26. The Pilgrims evaluated the nearby sites and selected a hill in Plymouth (so named on earlier charts) on December 19/29.

The Pilgrims began construction immediately, with the first common house nearly completed by January 9/19, 20 feet square and built for general use. At this point, each single man was ordered to join himself to one of the 19 families in order to eliminate the need to build any more houses than absolutely necessary. Each extended family was assigned a plot one-half rod wide and three rods long for each household member, then each family built its own dwelling. They brought supplies ashore, and the settlement was mostly complete by early February.

When the first house was finished, it immediately became a hospital for the ill Pilgrims. Thirty-one of the company were dead by the end of February, with deaths still rising. Coles Hill became the first cemetery, on a prominence above the beach, and they allowed grass to overgrow the graves for fear that the Indians would discover how weakened the settlement had actually become.

Between the landing and March, only 47 colonists had survived the diseases that they contracted on the ship. During the worst of the sickness, only six or seven of the group were able to feed and care for the rest. In this time, half the Mayflower crew also died.

William Bradford became governor in 1621 upon the death of John Carver. On March 22, 1621, the Pilgrims of Plymouth Colony signed a peace treaty with Massasoit of the Wampanoags. Bradford surrendered the patent of Plymouth Colony to the freemen in 1640, minus a small reserve of three tracts of land. He served as governor for 11 consecutive years, and was elected to various other terms before his death in 1657.

The colony contained Bristol County, Plymouth County, and Barnstable County, Massachusetts. The Massachusetts Bay Colony was reorganized and issued a new charter as the Province of Massachusetts Bay in 1691, and Plymouth ended its history as a separate colony.

Bradford's history

The first use of the word pilgrims for the Mayflower passengers appeared in William Bradford's 1651 Of Plymouth Plantation. In recounting his group's July 1620 departure from Leiden, he used the imagery of Hebrews 11 ( Hebrews 11:13-16) about Old Testament "strangers and pilgrims" who had the opportunity to return to their old country but instead longed for a better, heavenly country.

So they lefte goodly & pleasante citie, which had been ther resting place, nere 12 years; but they knew they were pilgrimes, & looked not much on these things; but lift up their eyes to y e heavens, their dearest cuntrie, and quieted their spirits.

There is no record of the term Pilgrims being used to describe Plymouth's founders for 150 years after Bradford wrote this passage, except when quoting him. The Mayflower's story was retold by historians Nathaniel Morton (in 1669) and Cotton Mather (in 1702), and both paraphrased Bradford's passage and used his word pilgrims. At Plymouth's Forefathers' Day observance in 1793, Rev. Chandler Robbins recited this passage.

1920 U.S. stamp celebrating the Pilgrim Tercentenary

The name Pilgrims was probably not in popular use before about 1798, even though Plymouth celebrated Forefathers' Day several times between 1769 and 1798 and used a variety of terms to honor Plymouth's founders. The term Pilgrims was not mentioned, other than in Robbins' 1793 recitation. The first documented use of the term that was not simply quoting Bradford was at a December 22, 1798 celebration of Forefathers' Day in Boston. A song composed for the occasion used the word Pilgrims, and the participants drank a toast to "The Pilgrims of Leyden". The term was used prominently during Plymouth's next Forefather's Day celebration in 1800, and was used in Forefathers' Day observances thereafter.

By the 1820s, the term Pilgrims was becoming more common. Daniel Webster repeatedly referred to "the Pilgrims" in his December 22, 1820 address for Plymouth's bicentennial which was widely read. Harriet Vaughan Cheney used it in her 1824 novel A Peep at the Pilgrims in Sixteen Thirty-Six, and the term also gained popularity with the 1825 publication of Felicia Hemans's classic poem "The Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers".

1. ^ Johnson, Daniel L. (1990). Theology and Identity - Traditions, Movements, and Polity in the United Church of Christ. Cleveland, Ohio: United Church Press. pp. 4. ISBN 0-8298-0807-8.

2. UK Retail Price Index inflation figures are based on data from

3. ^ "The Bawdy Court: Exhibits - Belief and Persecution". University of Nottingham.

4. ^ Luckock, Herbert Mortimer (1882). Studies in the History of the Book of Common Prayer. London: Rivingtons. p. 219. OCLC 1071106.

5. ^ Sheils, William Joseph (2004). "Matthew, Tobie (1544?-1628)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press.

6. ^ "English Dissenters: Barrowists". Ex Libris. January 1, 2008. Archived from the original on October 10, 2008.

7. ^ Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Brewster, William" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 04 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 514. After an unsuccessful attempt in 1607 (for which he was imprisoned for a short time), he, with other Separatists, removed to Holland in 1608 to obtain greater freedom of worship.

8. ^ John (1895). The Pilgrim Fathers of New England and their Puritan Successors. Reprinted: 1970. Pasadena, Texas: Pilgrim Publications. pp. 118.

9. ^ Harreld, Donald. "The Dutch Economy in the Golden Age (16th-17th Centuries)". Economic History Services. Archived from the original on September 30, 2007.

10. ^ "Contract of Sale, De Groene Poort". Leiden Pilgrim Archives. Archived from the original on October 13, 2007.

11. ^ Brown, John (1970). The Pilgrim Fathers of New England and their Puritan Successors. Pasadena, Texas: Pilgrim Publications. pp. 194.

12. ^ Kingsbury, Susan Myra, ed. (1906). The Records of the Virginia Company of London. Vol. 1. Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office. p. 228.

13. Bradford & (1898), Book 1, Chapter 5.

14. ^ Brown, John (1895). The Pilgrim Fathers of New England and their Puritan Successors. Reprinted: 1970. Pasadena, Texas: Pilgrim Publications. pp. 185.

15. ^ Bangs, Jeremy Dupertuis (Winter 2003). "Pilgrim Life: Two Myths - Ancient and Modern". New England Ancestors. Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society. 4 (1): 52-55. ISSN 1527-9405. OCLC 43146397.

16. Bradford & (1898), Book 1, Chapters 8-9.

17. Philbrick, Nathaniel, ^ Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War p. 43, Viking, New York, NY, 2006. The Great Charter of the Virginia Company granted self governance to the Virginia Colony and could conceivably also be considered as a "seed of democracy", although it was not a contract in the sense of the Mayflower Compact.

18. "^ John and Catherine Carver Archived July 27, 2011, at the Wayback Machine," Pilgrim Hall Museum Web site. Retrieved January 28, 2011.

19. ^ Brown, John (1895). The Pilgrim Fathers of New England and their Puritan Successors. Reprinted: 1970. Pasadena, Texas: Pilgrim Publications. pp. 198.

20. ^ Klinkenborg, Verlyn (December 2011). "Why Was Life So Hard for the Pilgrims?". American History. 46 (5): 36.

21. Bradford & (1898), Book 1, Chapter 10.

22. John (1895). The Pilgrim Fathers of New England and their Puritan Successors. Reprinted: 1970. Pasadena, Texas: Pilgrim Publications. pp. 203.

23. ^ "Toasts Drank at the Celebration of Our Country's Nativity". Massachusetts Mercury. Boston. December 28, 1798. pp. 2, 4.

24. ^ Webster, Daniel (1854). Edward Everett (ed.). The Works of Daniel Webster. Vol. 1 (8th ed.). Boston: Brown, Little & Co. lxiv-lxv, 1-50.

25. ^ Wolfson, Susan J., ed. (2000). Felicia Hemans. Princeton: Princeton University Press. pp. 416-417. ISBN 978-0-691-05029-4.

Bradford, William; Edward Winslow, Henry Martyn Dexter, ed. (1865) [1622]. Mourt's Relation, or Journal of the Plantation at Plymouth. Boston: John Kimball Wiggin. OCLC 8978744.

Bradford, William (1898) [1651]. Hildebrandt, Ted (ed.). Bradford's History "Of Plimoth Plantation" (PDF). Boston: Wright & Potter Printing Co. Archived (PDF) from the original on October 9, 2022.

Brown, Cornelius (1891). A History of Nottinghamshire. London: Elliot Stock. OCLC 4624771.

Griffis, William. "The Pilgrim Press in Leyden". New England Magazine. Boston: Warren F. Kellogg. 19/25 (January 1899): 559-575.

Matthews, Albert (1915). "The Term Pilgrim Fathers and Early Celebrations of Forefathers' Day". Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts. Boston: The Society. 17: 293-391.

Winslow, Edward (2003). Johnson, Caleb (ed.). "Hypocrisy Unmasked" (PDF). MayflowerHistory.com.

Cheney, Glenn Alan. Thanksgiving: The Pilgrims' First Year in America (New London Librarium, 2007)

Fraser, Rebecca. The Mayflower Generation: the Winslow Family and the Fight for the New World (Vintage, 2017)

Tompkins, Stephen. The Journey to the Mayflower: God's Outlaws and the Invention of Freedom (Hodder and Stoughton, 2020)

Vandrei, Martha. "The Pilgrim's Progress," History Today (May 2020) 70#5 pp 28-41. Covers the historiography 1629 to 2020; online

Whittock, Martyn. Mayflower Lives (Simon and Schuster, 2019).

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The Pilgrims, also known as the Pilgrim Fathers, were the English settlers who traveled to America on the and established the Plymouth Colony in Plymouth, Massachusetts ( John Smith had named this territory New Plymouth in 1620, sharing the name of the Pilgrims' final departure port of Plymouth, Devon).

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A pilgrim is someone who travels to a foreign place, sometimes for religious reasons. In U.S. history, the group of people called the Pilgrims were the founders of Plymouth...

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Questions you have to answer and things you have to explain

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Questions you have to answer and things you have to explain

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1. Who were the Settlers ? Describe precisely the people who travelled on the Mayflower.
2. What were their motivations and their purposes by establishing themselves in America?
3. Describe the travel of the English settlers: how did it goes?
4. Who were the Native americans living where the settlers landed?
5. Who was Squanto or Tisquantum?

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In the autumn of 1620 the Mayflower, a merchant ship which normally carried goods and products, set sail from the port of Plymouth and began an intrepid journey with around one hundred passengers eager to start a new life in a distant and unexplored land across the Atlantic.

The ship set sail from the southern coast of England in September with a number of passengers keen to begin a new life in America. Many of these were known as 'Saints', Protestant Separatists who had experienced difficulty with religious freedom and lifestyle in Europe. The hope for many of these passengers was to establish in the New World a church and a way of life; they would later become known as the 'Pilgrims'.
The Mayflower and The Speedwell in Dartmouth Harbour, England
Many years before this journey, a number of dissatisfied English Protestants from Nottinghamshire left England to move to Leyden, Holland, keen to escape the Church of England doctrine which they believed was as corrupt as the Catholic Church. They differed from the Puritans who held the same concerns but were keen to rejuvenate and guide the church from within. Whilst the Separatists who moved to Holland experienced a freedom of religion not experienced back in England, the secularist society was difficult to get used to. The cosmopolitan lifestyle proved worryingly enticing for the Saints' younger community members and they soon realised that their values were at odds with both English and Dutch communities.

They made the decision to get organised and move to a place free from distraction and interference; the New World beckoned. Back in London the arrangements were being made for the journey with the help of an important merchant who helped fund the expedition. Meanwhile, the Virginia Company agreed that a settlement could be made on the East Coast. By August 1620 this small group of around forty Saints joined a larger collection of colonists, many of whom were more secular in their beliefs, and set sail on what had originally been planned as two vessels. The Mayflower and the Speedwell were to be used for the journey, however the latter began to leak almost as soon as the journey began, forcing the passengers to fit onto the Mayflower in squashed and far from ideal conditions in order to get to their intended destination.

Families, lone travellers, pregnant women, dogs, cats and birds found themselves cramped aboard the vessel. Remarkably, the two pregnant women survived the journey. One gave birth at sea to a son called Oceanus and another, the first English child born to the Pilgrims in America, Peregrine. The voyagers also included servants and farmers who were intending to settle in the Colony of Virginia. The vessel included a number of officers and crew who stayed with the ship when it reached its destination and later still, during a severe and freezing winter.
On board the replica of The Mayflower, Mayflower II. Stitched from several images. Author: Kenneth C. Zirkel, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
Life on the ship was extremely difficult with the passengers in confined spaces, packed together like sardines. The cabins were small in both width and height with very thin walls making it a difficult place to sleep or stay in. Even more constricting were the below decks where anyone who stood over five feet tall would not have been able to stand upright. These conditions were endured for a long two month journey.

The arduous trip was time consuming and at many times mundane, with the voyagers forced to create their own entertainment such as playing cards or reading by candlelight. The food on board the ship was prepared by the firebox which was essentially a fire built on an iron tray filled with a layer of sand, making mealtimes a very rudimentary event for the passengers who took it in turns to cook from the fire and make meals out of daily food rations.

Other items aboard the ship included supplies that the passengers had brought with them to start a new life across the Atlantic. Whilst some pets were taken including dogs and cats, sheep, goats and poultry were also included. The boat itself was supplied with two other boats as well as artillery and what is believed to be other forms of weaponry such as gunpowder and cannons. The pilgrims did not only feel an enduring need to defend themselves against unknown entities in foreign lands, but also from fellow Europeans. The ship became a vessel not just for transporting people but also for taking the necessary tools in order to begin a new life in the New World.
Signing the Mayflower Compact on board The Mayflower, 1620
The journey taken by the Mayflower was gruelling and proved to be a challenge for both crew and passengers alike. The ship's crew possessed some devices to assist the journey such as the basics for navigation including a compass, a log and line system (a method to measure speed) and even an hourglass in order to track the time. However these tools would prove unhelpful when the ship was met with dangerous gale force winds in the Atlantic Ocean.

The problem of travelling in such treacherous conditions was compounded by the levels of exhaustion, illness, tiredness and general malaise felt onboard ship. The voyage proved to a dangerous experience with poor weather proving a constant hazard for the ship. Huge waves would thrash against the vessel continuously and at one point, part of the timber framework began to shatter due to the sheer force of the waves battering the life out of the vessel. This structural damage needed to be fixed urgently, so the passengers were forced to assist the ship's carpenter in helping to repair the fractured beam. In order to do this, a jackscrew was used, a metal device which luckily had been taken onto the ship in order to help build homes when they reached dry land. Fortunately, this proved sufficient in securing the timber and the ship was able to resume its journey.

Eventually on 9th November 1620 the Mayflower eventually reached dry land, sighting from a distance the promising view of Cape Cod. The original plan of sailing south to the Colony of Virginia was thwarted by strong winds and bad weather. They settled north of the area, anchoring on 11th November. In response to the feeling of division within the ranks, the settlers from the ship signed the Mayflower Compact which essentially consisted of a social agreement to follow certain rules and regulations so that some kind of civil order could be established. This proved to be an important precursor to the idea of secular government in America.

The first winter for the settlers in the New World proved to be deadly. The spread of disease was rife, with poor living conditions aboard the boat and a severe lack of nutrition. Many passengers suffered from scurvy due to vitamin deficiencies which unfortunately was untreatable at the time, whilst other diseases proved more deadly. The result was that around half of the passengers and half of the crew did not survive.

Those who did survive the harsh winter disembarked from the ship in March the following year and began their new life by building huts ashore. With the help of the remaining crew and their captain Christopher Jones, they proceeded to unload their weaponry which included cannons, effectively turning their small primitive settlement into some kind of defensive fortress.

The settlers from the ship began to create a life for themselves, along with the help of the native people of the area who assisted the colonists by teaching them the necessary survival techniques such as hunting and growing crops. By the following summer the now well-established Plymouth settlers celebrated the first harvest with the Wamanoag native Indians in a festival of thanksgiving, a tradition still practised today.

The Mayflower and its journey to the New World was a seismic historical event which changed the course of history for America and the rest of the world. The passengers who survived set in motion a way of life for future generations of American citizens and will always be remembered as having a special place in American history.

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In the autumn of 1620 the Mayflower set sail from the port of Plymouth in Devon, England, and began an intrepid journey with around one hundred passengers eager to start a new life in a distant and unexplored land across the Atlantic...

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The Embarkation of the Pilgrims (1857) by American painter Robert Walter Weir at the Brooklyn Museum

The Pilgrims, also known as the Pilgrim Fathers, were the English settlers who traveled to America on the and established the Plymouth Colony in Plymouth, Massachusetts ( John Smith had named this territory New Plymouth in 1620, sharing the name of the Pilgrims' final departure port of Plymouth, Devon). The Pilgrims' leadership came from the religious congregations of Brownists, or Separatist Puritans, who had fled religious persecution in England for the tolerance of 17th-century Holland in the Netherlands.

They held many of the same Puritan Calvinist religious beliefs but, unlike most other Puritans, they maintained that their congregations should separate from the English state church, which led to them being labeled Separatists. After several years living in exile in Holland, they determined to establish a new settlement in the New World and arranged with investors to fund them. They established Plymouth Colony in 1620, where they erected Congregationalist churches. The Pilgrims' story became a central theme in the history and culture of the United States.

Memorial at Immingham, England, to the departure of congregation members for Holland in 1608

The core of the group was brought together around 1605 when they quit the Church of England to form Separatist congregations in Nottinghamshire, England, led by John Robinson, Richard Clyfton, and John Smyth. Their congregations held Brownist beliefs-that true churches were voluntary democratic congregations, not whole Christian nations-as taught by Robert Browne, John Greenwood, and Henry Barrowe. As Separatists, they held that their differences with the Church of England were irreconcilable and that their worship should be independent of the trappings, traditions, and organization of a central church.

The Separatist movement was controversial. Under the Act of Uniformity 1559, it was illegal not to attend official Church of England services, with a fine of one shilling (£0.05; about £20 today) for each missed Sunday and holy day. The penalties included imprisonment and larger fines for conducting unofficial services. The Seditious Sectaries Act 1592 was specifically aimed at outlawing the Brownists. Under this policy, London Underground Church members were repeatedly imprisoned from 1566, and then Robert Browne and his followers were imprisoned in Norfolk during the 1580s. Henry Barrow, John Greenwood, and John Penry were executed for sedition in 1593. Browne had taken his followers into exile in Middelburg, and Penry urged the London Separatists to emigrate in order to escape persecution,[citation needed ] so after his death they went to Amsterdam.

The Archbishop of York was Matthew Hutton. He displayed some sympathy to the Puritan cause, writing to Robert Cecil, Secretary of State to James I in 1604:

The Puritans though they differ in Ceremonies and accidentes, yet they agree with us in substance of religion, and I thinke all or the moste parte of them love his Majestie, and the presente state, and I hope will yield to conformitie. But the Papistes are opposite and contrarie in very many substantiall pointes of religion, and cannot but wishe the Popes authoritie and popish religion to be established.

Many Puritans had hoped that reforms and reconciliation would be possible when James came to power which would allow them independence, but the Hampton Court Conference of 1604 denied nearly all of the concessions which they had requested-except for an authorized English translation of the Bible. The same year, Richard Bancroft became Archbishop of Canterbury and launched a campaign against Puritanism and the Separatists. He suspended 300 ministers and fired 80 more, which led some of them to found more Separatist churches. Robinson, Clifton, and their followers founded a Brownist church, making a covenant with God "to walk in all his ways made known, or to be made known, unto them, according to their best endeavours, whatsoever it should cost them, the Lord assisting them".

Archbishop Hutton died in 1606 and Tobias Matthew was appointed as his replacement. He was one of James's chief supporters at the 1604 conference, and he promptly began a campaign to purge the archdiocese of non-conforming influences, including Puritans, Separatists, and those wishing to return to the Catholic faith. Disobedient clergy were replaced, and prominent Separatists were confronted, fined, and imprisoned. He is credited with driving people out of the country who refused to attend Anglican services.

William Brewster was a former diplomatic assistant to the Netherlands. He was living in the Scrooby manor house while serving as postmaster for the village and bailiff to the Archbishop of York. He had been impressed by Clyfton's services and had begun participating in services led by John Smyth in Gainsborough, Lincolnshire. After a time, he arranged for a congregation to meet privately at the Scrooby manor house. Services were held beginning in 1606 with Clyfton as pastor, John Robinson as teacher, and Brewster as the presiding elder. Shortly after, Smyth and members of the Gainsborough group moved on to Amsterdam. Brewster was fined £20 (about £4,593 today) in absentia for his non-compliance with the church. This followed his September 1607 resignation from the postmaster position, about the time that the congregation had decided to follow the Smyth party to Amsterdam.

Scrooby member William Bradford of Austerfield kept a journal of the congregation's events which was eventually published as Of Plymouth Plantation. He wrote concerning this time period:

But after these things they could not long continue in any peaceable condition, but were hunted & persecuted on every side, so as their former afflictions were but as flea-bitings in comparison of these which now came upon them. For some were taken & clapt up in prison, others had their houses besett & watcht night and day, & hardly escaped their hands; and the most were faine to flie & leave their howses & habitations, and the means of their livelehood.

Title page of a pamphlet published by William Brewster in Leiden

Permission from the city council of Leiden, allowing the Pilgrims to settle there, dated February 12, 1609.

The Pilgrims moved to the Netherlands around 1607-08 and lived in Leiden, Holland, a city of 30,000 inhabitants. Leiden was a thriving industrial center, and many members were able to support themselves working at Leiden University or in the textile, printing, and brewing trades. Others were less able to bring in sufficient income, hampered by their rural backgrounds and the language barrier; for those, accommodation was constructed on an estate bought by Robinson and three partners. Bradford wrote of their years in Leiden:

For these & other reasons they removed to Leyden, a fair & bewtifull citie, and of a sweete situation, but made more famous by ye universitie wherwith it is adorned, in which of late had been so many learned man. But wanting that traffike by sea which Amerstdam injoyes, it was not so beneficiall for their outward means of living & estats. But being now hear pitchet they fell to such trads & imployments as they best could; valewing peace & their spirituall comforte above any other riches whatsoever. And at length they came to raise a competente & comforteable living, but with hard and continuall labor.

William Brewster had been teaching English at the university, and Robinson enrolled in 1615 to pursue his doctorate. There he participated in a series of debates, particularly regarding the contentious issue of Calvinism versus Arminianism (siding with the Calvinists against the Remonstrants). Brewster acquired typesetting equipment about 1616 in a venture financed by Thomas Brewer, and began publishing the debates through a local press.

The Netherlands, however, was a land whose culture and language were strange and difficult for the English congregation to understand or learn. They found the Dutch political situation to be unstable, and their children were becoming more and more Dutch as the years passed. The congregation came to believe that they faced eventual extinction if they remained there.

By 1617, the congregation was stable and relatively secure, but there were ongoing issues which needed to be resolved. Bradford noted that many members of the congregation were showing signs of early aging, compounding the difficulties which some had in supporting themselves. A few had spent their savings and so gave up and returned to England, and the leaders feared that more would follow and that the congregation would become unsustainable. The employment issues made it unattractive for others to come to Leiden, and younger members had begun leaving to find employment and adventure elsewhere. Also compelling was the possibility of missionary work in some distant land, an opportunity that rarely arose in a Protestant stronghold.

Bradford lists some of the reasons for which the Pilgrims felt that they had to leave, including the discouragements that they faced in the Netherlands and the hope of attracting others by finding "a better, and easier place of living", the children of the group being "drawn away by evil examples into extravagance and dangerous courses", and the "great hope, for the propagating and advancing the gospel of the kingdom of Christ in those remote parts of the world." Edward Winslow's list was similar. In addition to the economic worries and missionary possibilities, he stressed that it was important for the people to retain their English identity, culture, and language. They also believed that the English Church in Leiden could do little to benefit the larger community there.

At the same time, there were many uncertainties about moving to such a place as America, as stories had come back about failed colonies. There were fears that the native people would be violent, that there would be no source of food or water, that they might be exposed to unknown diseases, and that travel by sea was always hazardous. Balancing all this was a local political situation which was in danger of becoming unstable. The truce was faltering in the Eighty Years' War, and there was fear over what the attitudes of Spain might be toward them.

Possible destinations included Guiana on the northeast coast of South America where the Dutch had established Essequibo colony, or another site near the Virginia settlements. Virginia was an attractive destination because the presence of the older colony might offer better security and trade opportunities; however, they also felt that they should not settle too near, since that might inadvertently duplicate the political environment back in England. The London Company administered a territory of considerable size in the region, and the intended settlement location was at the mouth of the Hudson River (which instead became the Dutch colony of New Netherland). This plan allayed their concerns of social, political, and religious conflicts, but still promised the military and economic benefits of being close to an established colony.

Robert Cushman and John Carver were sent to England to solicit a land patent. Their negotiations were delayed because of conflicts internal to the London Company, but ultimately a patent was secured in the name of John Wincob on June 9 ( Old Style)/June 19 (New Style), 1619. The charter was granted with the king's condition that the Leiden group's religion would not receive official recognition.

Preparations then stalled because of the continued problems within the London Company, and competing Dutch companies approached the congregation with the possibility of settling in the Hudson River area. David Baeckelandt suggests that the Leiden group was approached by Englishman Matthew Slade, son-in-law of Petrus Placius, a cartographer for the Dutch East India Company. Slade was also a spy for the English Ambassador, and the Pilgrims' plans were therefore known both at court and among influential investors in the Virginia Company's colony at Jamestown. Negotiations were broken off with the Dutch, however, at the encouragement of English merchant Thomas Weston, who assured them that he could resolve the London Company delays. The London Company intended to claim the area explored by Hudson before the Dutch could become fully established, and the first Dutch settlers did not arrive in the area until 1624.

Weston did come with a substantial change, telling the Leiden group that parties in England had obtained a land grant north of the existing Virginia territory to be called New England. This was only partially true; the new grant did come to pass, but not until late in 1620 when the Plymouth Council for New England received its charter. It was expected that this area could be fished profitably, and it was not under the control of the existing Virginia government.

A second change was known only to parties in England who did not inform the larger group. New investors had been brought into the venture who wanted the terms altered so that half of the settled land and property would revert to the investors at the end of the seven-year contract. Also, there had been a provision in the original agreement that allowed each settler to have two days per week to work on personal business, but this provision was dropped from the final agreement without the knowledge of the Pilgrims.

Amid these negotiations, William Brewster found himself involved with religious unrest emerging in Scotland. In 1618, King James had promulgated the Five Articles of Perth which were seen in Scotland as an attempt to encroach on their Presbyterian tradition. Brewster published several pamphlets that were critical of this law, and they were smuggled into Scotland by April 1619. These pamphlets were traced back to Leiden, and the English authorities unsuccessfully attempted to arrest Brewster. English ambassador Dudley Carleton became aware of the situation and began pressuring the Dutch government to extradite Brewster, and the Dutch responded by arresting Thomas Brewer the financier in September. Brewster's whereabouts remain unknown between then and the colonists' departure, but the Dutch authorities did seize the typesetting materials which he had used to print his pamphlets. Meanwhile, Brewer was sent to England for questioning, where he stonewalled government officials until well into 1620. He was ultimately convicted in England for his continued religious publication activities and sentenced in 1626 to a 14-year prison term.

Not all of the congregation were able to depart on the first trip. Many members were not able to settle their affairs within the time constraints, and the budget was limited for travel and supplies; also, the group decided that the initial settlement should be undertaken primarily by younger and stronger members. The remainder agreed to follow if and when they could. Robinson would remain in Leiden with the larger portion of the congregation, and Brewster was to lead the American congregation. The church in America would be run independently, but it was agreed that membership would automatically be granted in either congregation to members who moved between the continents.

With personal and business matters agreed upon, the Pilgrims procured supplies and a small ship. was to bring some passengers from the Netherlands to England, then on to America where it would be kept for the fishing business, with a crew hired for support services during the first year. The larger ship was leased for transport and exploration services.

Contemporary depiction of the Pilgrims leaving Delfthaven aboard the Speedwell by Adam Willaerts. c. 1620

The was originally named Swiftsure. It was built in 1577 at 60 tons and was part of the English fleet that defeated the Spanish Armada. It departed Delfshaven in July 1620 with the Leiden colonists, after a canal ride from Leyden of about seven hours. It reached Southampton, Hampshire, and met with the and the additional colonists hired by the investors. With final arrangements made, the two vessels set out on August 5 ( Old Style)/August 15 (New Style).

Model of a typical merchantman of the period, showing the cramped conditions that had to be endured

Soon after, the Speedwell crew reported that their ship was taking on water, so both were diverted to Dartmouth, Devon. The crew inspected Speedwell for leaks and sealed them, but their second attempt to depart got them only as far as Plymouth, Devon. The crew decided that Speedwell was untrustworthy, and her owners sold her; the ship's master and some of the crew transferred to the Mayflower for the trip. William Bradford observed that the Speedwell seemed "overmasted", thus putting a strain on the hull; and he expressed suspicions that crew members might have deliberately caused it, allowing them to abandon their year-long commitments. Passenger Robert Cushman wrote that the leaking was caused by a loose board.

Of the 120 combined passengers on the two ships, 102 were chosen to travel on the Mayflower with the supplies consolidated. Of these, about half had come by way of Leiden, and about 28 of the adults were members of the congregation. The reduced party finally sailed successfully on September 6 ( Old Style)/September 16 (New Style), 1620.

Initially the trip went smoothly, but under way they were met with strong winds and storms. One of these caused a main beam to crack, and the possibility was considered of turning back, even though they were more than halfway to their destination. However, they repaired the ship sufficiently to continue by using a "great iron screw" brought along by the colonists (probably a jack to be used for either house construction or a cider press). Passenger John Howland was washed overboard in the storm, but he caught a top-sail halyard trailing in the water and was pulled back on board.

One crew member and one passenger died before they reached land. A child was born at sea and named Oceanus.

1620 place names mentioned by Bradford

The Mayflower passengers sighted land on November 9, 1620 after enduring miserable conditions for about 65 days, and William Brewster led them in singing Psalm 100. They confirmed that the area was Cape Cod within the New England territory recommended by Weston. They attempted to sail the ship around the cape towards the Hudson River, but they encountered shoals and difficult currents around Cape Malabar (the old French name for Monomoy Island). They decided to turn around, and the ship was anchored in Provincetown Harbor by November 11/21.

The charter was incomplete for the Plymouth Council for New England when the colonists departed England (it was granted while they were in transit on November 3/13). They arrived without a patent; the older Wincob patent was from their abandoned dealings with the London Company. Some of the passengers, aware of the situation, suggested that they were free to do as they chose upon landing, without a patent in place, and to ignore the contract with the investors.

The Leiden congregants, therefore, drafted a brief contract known as the Mayflower Compact, promising cooperation among the settlers "for the general good of the Colony unto which we promise all due submission and obedience." It organized them into what was called a "civill body politick," in which issues would be decided by voting, the key ingredient of democracy. It was ratified by majority rule, with 41 adult male Pilgrims signing for the 102 passengers (74 males and 28 females). Included in the company were 13 male servants and three female servants, along with some sailors and craftsmen hired for short-term service to the colony. At this time, John Carver was chosen as the colony's first governor. It was Carver who had chartered the Mayflower and his is the first signature on the Mayflower Compact, being the most respected and affluent member of the group. The Mayflower Compact is considered to be one of the seeds of American democracy, and historian has called it the world's first written constitution.

Thorough exploration of the area was delayed for more than two weeks because the shallop or pinnace (a smaller sailing vessel) which they brought had been partially dismantled to fit aboard the Mayflower and was further damaged in transit. Small parties, however, waded to the beach to fetch firewood and attend to long-deferred personal hygiene.

Myles Standish was an English soldier from Chorley whom the colonists had met while in Leiden, and they had asked him to join them as their military adviser. He and Christopher Jones led several exploratory trips ashore while awaiting the shallop's repair. They encountered an old European-built house and iron kettle, left behind by some ship's crew, and a few recently cultivated fields showing corn stubble.

They came upon an artificial mound near the dunes which they partially uncovered and found to be an Indian grave. Farther along, a similar mound was found, more recently made, and they discovered that some of the burial mounds also contained corn. The colonists took some of the corn, intending to use it as seed for planting, while they reburied the rest. William Bradford later recorded in his book Of Plymouth Plantation that, after the shallop had been repaired,

They also found two of the Indian's houses covered with mats, and some of their implements in them; but the people had run away and could not be seen. Without permission they took more corn, and beans of various colours. These they brought away, intending to give them full satisfaction when they should meet with any of them, - as about six months afterwards they did.

And it is to be noted as a special providence of God, and a great mercy to this poor people, that they thus got seed to plant corn the next year, or they might have starved; for they had none, nor any likelihood of getting any, till too late for the planting season.

By December, most of the passengers and crew had become ill, coughing violently. Many also were suffering from the effects of scurvy. There had already been ice and snowfall, hampering exploration efforts, and nearly half of the Pilgrim passengers died during the first winter.

Explorations resumed on December 6/16. The shallop party headed south along the cape, consisting of seven colonists from Leiden, three from London, and seven crew; they chose to land at the area inhabited by the Nauset people (the area around Brewster, Chatham, Eastham, Harwich, and Orleans) where they saw some people on the shore who fled when they approached. Inland they found more mounds, one containing acorns which they exhumed, and more graves, which they decided not to disturb. They remained ashore overnight and heard cries near the encampment. The following morning, they were attacked by Indians who shot at them with arrows. The colonists retrieved their firearms and shot back, then chased them into the woods but did not find them. There was no more contact with them for several months.

The Indians were already familiar with the English, who had intermittently visited the area for fishing and trade before Mayflower arrived. In the Cape Cod area, relations were poor following a visit several years earlier by Thomas Hunt. Hunt kidnapped 20 people from Patuxet (the site of Plymouth Colony) and another seven from Nausett, and he attempted to sell them as slaves in Europe. One of the Patuxet men was Squanto, who became an ally of the Plymouth Colony. He had escaped slavery and made his way to England, where he became fluent in English. He ultimately returned to America, only to discover that his entire village had died from plague.

Samuel de Champlain's 1605 map of Plymouth Harbor showing the Wampanoag village of Patuxet, with some modern place names added for reference. The star marks the approximate location of the Plymouth Colony.

Plymouth Rock commemorates the landing of the Mayflower in 1620

Continuing westward, the shallop's mast and rudder were broken by storms and the sail was lost. They rowed for safety, encountering the harbor formed by Duxbury and Plymouth barrier beaches. They remained at this spot for two days to recuperate and repair equipment. They named it Clark's Island for a Mayflower mate who first set foot on it.

They resumed exploration on Monday, December 11/21 when the party crossed over to the mainland and surveyed the area that ultimately became the settlement. The anniversary of this survey is observed in Massachusetts as Forefathers' Day and is traditionally associated with the Plymouth Rock landing tradition. This land was especially suited to winter building because it had already been cleared, and the tall hills provided a good defensive position.

The cleared village was known as Patuxet to the Wampanoag people and was abandoned about three years earlier following a plague that killed all of its residents. The "Indian fever" involved hemorrhaging and is assumed to have been fulminating smallpox. The outbreak had been severe enough that the colonists discovered unburied skeletons in the dwellings.

The exploratory party returned to the Mayflower, which was anchored twenty-five miles (40 km) away, having been brought to the harbor on December 16/26. The Pilgrims evaluated the nearby sites and selected a hill in Plymouth (so named on earlier charts) on December 19/29.

The Pilgrims began construction immediately, with the first common house nearly completed by January 9/19, 20 feet square and built for general use. At this point, each single man was ordered to join himself to one of the 19 families in order to eliminate the need to build any more houses than absolutely necessary. Each extended family was assigned a plot one-half rod wide and three rods long for each household member, then each family built its own dwelling. They brought supplies ashore, and the settlement was mostly complete by early February.

When the first house was finished, it immediately became a hospital for the ill Pilgrims. Thirty-one of the company were dead by the end of February, with deaths still rising. Coles Hill became the first cemetery, on a prominence above the beach, and they allowed grass to overgrow the graves for fear that the Indians would discover how weakened the settlement had actually become.

Between the landing and March, only 47 colonists had survived the diseases that they contracted on the ship. During the worst of the sickness, only six or seven of the group were able to feed and care for the rest. In this time, half the Mayflower crew also died.

William Bradford became governor in 1621 upon the death of John Carver. On March 22, 1621, the Pilgrims of Plymouth Colony signed a peace treaty with Massasoit of the Wampanoags. Bradford surrendered the patent of Plymouth Colony to the freemen in 1640, minus a small reserve of three tracts of land. He served as governor for 11 consecutive years, and was elected to various other terms before his death in 1657.

The colony contained Bristol County, Plymouth County, and Barnstable County, Massachusetts. The Massachusetts Bay Colony was reorganized and issued a new charter as the Province of Massachusetts Bay in 1691, and Plymouth ended its history as a separate colony.

Bradford's history

The first use of the word pilgrims for the Mayflower passengers appeared in William Bradford's 1651 Of Plymouth Plantation. In recounting his group's July 1620 departure from Leiden, he used the imagery of Hebrews 11 ( Hebrews 11:13-16) about Old Testament "strangers and pilgrims" who had the opportunity to return to their old country but instead longed for a better, heavenly country.

So they lefte goodly & pleasante citie, which had been ther resting place, nere 12 years; but they knew they were pilgrimes, & looked not much on these things; but lift up their eyes to y e heavens, their dearest cuntrie, and quieted their spirits.

There is no record of the term Pilgrims being used to describe Plymouth's founders for 150 years after Bradford wrote this passage, except when quoting him. The Mayflower's story was retold by historians Nathaniel Morton (in 1669) and Cotton Mather (in 1702), and both paraphrased Bradford's passage and used his word pilgrims. At Plymouth's Forefathers' Day observance in 1793, Rev. Chandler Robbins recited this passage.

1920 U.S. stamp celebrating the Pilgrim Tercentenary

The name Pilgrims was probably not in popular use before about 1798, even though Plymouth celebrated Forefathers' Day several times between 1769 and 1798 and used a variety of terms to honor Plymouth's founders. The term Pilgrims was not mentioned, other than in Robbins' 1793 recitation. The first documented use of the term that was not simply quoting Bradford was at a December 22, 1798 celebration of Forefathers' Day in Boston. A song composed for the occasion used the word Pilgrims, and the participants drank a toast to "The Pilgrims of Leyden". The term was used prominently during Plymouth's next Forefather's Day celebration in 1800, and was used in Forefathers' Day observances thereafter.

By the 1820s, the term Pilgrims was becoming more common. Daniel Webster repeatedly referred to "the Pilgrims" in his December 22, 1820 address for Plymouth's bicentennial which was widely read. Harriet Vaughan Cheney used it in her 1824 novel A Peep at the Pilgrims in Sixteen Thirty-Six, and the term also gained popularity with the 1825 publication of Felicia Hemans's classic poem "The Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers".

1. ^ Johnson, Daniel L. (1990). Theology and Identity - Traditions, Movements, and Polity in the United Church of Christ. Cleveland, Ohio: United Church Press. pp. 4. ISBN 0-8298-0807-8.

2. UK Retail Price Index inflation figures are based on data from

3. ^ "The Bawdy Court: Exhibits - Belief and Persecution". University of Nottingham.

4. ^ Luckock, Herbert Mortimer (1882). Studies in the History of the Book of Common Prayer. London: Rivingtons. p. 219. OCLC 1071106.

5. ^ Sheils, William Joseph (2004). "Matthew, Tobie (1544?-1628)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press.

6. ^ "English Dissenters: Barrowists". Ex Libris. January 1, 2008. Archived from the original on October 10, 2008.

7. ^ Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Brewster, William" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 04 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 514. After an unsuccessful attempt in 1607 (for which he was imprisoned for a short time), he, with other Separatists, removed to Holland in 1608 to obtain greater freedom of worship.

8. ^ John (1895). The Pilgrim Fathers of New England and their Puritan Successors. Reprinted: 1970. Pasadena, Texas: Pilgrim Publications. pp. 118.

9. ^ Harreld, Donald. "The Dutch Economy in the Golden Age (16th-17th Centuries)". Economic History Services. Archived from the original on September 30, 2007.

10. ^ "Contract of Sale, De Groene Poort". Leiden Pilgrim Archives. Archived from the original on October 13, 2007.

11. ^ Brown, John (1970). The Pilgrim Fathers of New England and their Puritan Successors. Pasadena, Texas: Pilgrim Publications. pp. 194.

12. ^ Kingsbury, Susan Myra, ed. (1906). The Records of the Virginia Company of London. Vol. 1. Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office. p. 228.

13. Bradford & (1898), Book 1, Chapter 5.

14. ^ Brown, John (1895). The Pilgrim Fathers of New England and their Puritan Successors. Reprinted: 1970. Pasadena, Texas: Pilgrim Publications. pp. 185.

15. ^ Bangs, Jeremy Dupertuis (Winter 2003). "Pilgrim Life: Two Myths - Ancient and Modern". New England Ancestors. Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society. 4 (1): 52-55. ISSN 1527-9405. OCLC 43146397.

16. Bradford & (1898), Book 1, Chapters 8-9.

17. Philbrick, Nathaniel, ^ Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War p. 43, Viking, New York, NY, 2006. The Great Charter of the Virginia Company granted self governance to the Virginia Colony and could conceivably also be considered as a "seed of democracy", although it was not a contract in the sense of the Mayflower Compact.

18. "^ John and Catherine Carver Archived July 27, 2011, at the Wayback Machine," Pilgrim Hall Museum Web site. Retrieved January 28, 2011.

19. ^ Brown, John (1895). The Pilgrim Fathers of New England and their Puritan Successors. Reprinted: 1970. Pasadena, Texas: Pilgrim Publications. pp. 198.

20. ^ Klinkenborg, Verlyn (December 2011). "Why Was Life So Hard for the Pilgrims?". American History. 46 (5): 36.

21. Bradford & (1898), Book 1, Chapter 10.

22. John (1895). The Pilgrim Fathers of New England and their Puritan Successors. Reprinted: 1970. Pasadena, Texas: Pilgrim Publications. pp. 203.

23. ^ "Toasts Drank at the Celebration of Our Country's Nativity". Massachusetts Mercury. Boston. December 28, 1798. pp. 2, 4.

24. ^ Webster, Daniel (1854). Edward Everett (ed.). The Works of Daniel Webster. Vol. 1 (8th ed.). Boston: Brown, Little & Co. lxiv-lxv, 1-50.

25. ^ Wolfson, Susan J., ed. (2000). Felicia Hemans. Princeton: Princeton University Press. pp. 416-417. ISBN 978-0-691-05029-4.

Bradford, William; Edward Winslow, Henry Martyn Dexter, ed. (1865) [1622]. Mourt's Relation, or Journal of the Plantation at Plymouth. Boston: John Kimball Wiggin. OCLC 8978744.

Bradford, William (1898) [1651]. Hildebrandt, Ted (ed.). Bradford's History "Of Plimoth Plantation" (PDF). Boston: Wright & Potter Printing Co. Archived (PDF) from the original on October 9, 2022.

Brown, Cornelius (1891). A History of Nottinghamshire. London: Elliot Stock. OCLC 4624771.

Griffis, William. "The Pilgrim Press in Leyden". New England Magazine. Boston: Warren F. Kellogg. 19/25 (January 1899): 559-575.

Matthews, Albert (1915). "The Term Pilgrim Fathers and Early Celebrations of Forefathers' Day". Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts. Boston: The Society. 17: 293-391.

Winslow, Edward (2003). Johnson, Caleb (ed.). "Hypocrisy Unmasked" (PDF). MayflowerHistory.com.

Cheney, Glenn Alan. Thanksgiving: The Pilgrims' First Year in America (New London Librarium, 2007)

Fraser, Rebecca. The Mayflower Generation: the Winslow Family and the Fight for the New World (Vintage, 2017)

Tompkins, Stephen. The Journey to the Mayflower: God's Outlaws and the Invention of Freedom (Hodder and Stoughton, 2020)

Vandrei, Martha. "The Pilgrim's Progress," History Today (May 2020) 70#5 pp 28-41. Covers the historiography 1629 to 2020; online

Whittock, Martyn. Mayflower Lives (Simon and Schuster, 2019).

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The Pilgrims, also known as the Pilgrim Fathers, were the English settlers who traveled to America on the and established the Plymouth Colony in Plymouth, Massachusetts ( John Smith had named this territory New Plymouth in 1620, sharing the name of the Pilgrims' final departure port of Plymouth, Devon).

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This article was most recently revised and updated by

Pilgrim Fathers, in American colonial history, settlers of Plymouth, Massachusetts, the first permanent colony in New England (1620). Of the 102 colonists, 35 were members of the English Separatist Church (a radical faction of Puritanism) who had earlier fled to Leiden, the Netherlands, to escape persecution at home. Seeking a more abundant life along with religious freedom, the Separatists negotiated with a London stock company to finance a pilgrimage to America. Approximately two-thirds of those making the trip aboard the were non-Separatists, hired to protect the company's interests; these included John Alden and Myles Standish.

These first settlers, initially referred to as the Old Comers and later as the Forefathers, did not become known as the Pilgrim Fathers until two centuries after their arrival. A responsive chord was struck with the discovery of a manuscript of Gov. William Bradford referring to the "saints" who had left Holland as "pilgrimes." At a commemorative bicentennial celebration in 1820, orator Daniel Webster used the phrase Pilgrim Fathers, and the term became common usage thereafter.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica Adam Augustyn.

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Pilgrim Fathers | Definition, History, & Facts

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Pilgrim Fathers, in American colonial history, settlers of Plymouth, Massachusetts, the first permanent colony in New England (1620). Initially referred to as the Old Comers and later the Forefathers, they did not become known as the Pilgrim Fathers until two centuries after their arrival.

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"Out of small beginnings have greater things been produced by His (God's) hand that made all things of nothing, and gives being to all things that are are; and as one small candle may light a thousand, so the light here kindled has shone unto many."
Many of the early European visitors to North America came seeking their fortunes. Trappers earned money selling furs; conquistadors came looking for gold. The early Pilgrims had only one goal: they wanted to worship God as they saw fit. They wanted to pray and read the Bible together without persecution. They believed that both the Catholic Church and the Church of England had become corrupted by greedy leaders. They wanted to start a new religion.

William Bradford joined this group, known as the Separatists, at the age of 18, against his family's wishes. He and the other church members were persecuted in England. They found some peace in Holland but dreamed of starting their own settlement, with their own culture and religion. At the age of 30, Bradford sold everything he had and sailed for North America on the Mayflower. He became the governor of Plymouth, the new colony in America, and served in this position for more than 30 years.
Fun Facts

William Bradford was born in Yorkshire in 1590. His father died when he was a baby. His mother and grandparents died when he was a small child. William was an orphan at the age of seven.

He and his sister, Alice, were raised by their uncle, Robert Bradford.

Bradford was a sickly child and enjoyed reading the Bible to pass the time. He learned about the Separatist church during his teenage years and soon converted.

He married Dorothy May in Holland and they had one child.

Knowing how hard the journey would be, William and Dorothy left their child with friends when they sailed on the Mayflower. Dorothy fell off the ship and drowned as it sat in the port at Cape Cod.

William must have been very sad, but he quickly got to work in Plymouth, encouraging the other colonists to build homes.

Bradford was made governor of the Plymouth Colony after John Carver's death. He tried hard to be fair and make good decisions for the colony. He helped establish peaceful relationships with the Indians.

Bradford kept detailed journals of the Plymouth Colony. These journals are the main source of information we have about the people. The journals have been published as a book, History of Plymouth Plantation.

William Bradford married widow, Alice Carpenter Southworth in 1623. They had three children.

Bradford became ill during the winter of 1657. He died that May at age 68. He had devoted his life to building the Plymouth Colony.

Vocabulary

1. Persecution: to be emotionally or physically harmed because of one's beliefs

2. Orphan: one whose parents have died

Questions and Answers
Question: What jobs did Bradford do in his role as governor?

Answer: He was a very busy man. He oversaw the courts, kept the finances, communicated with investors, and negotiated relationships with the Indians.
Learn More
Visit Scholastic to learn more about William Bradford.

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William Bradford was born in Yorkshire in 1590. His father died when he was a baby. His mother and grandparents died when he was a small child.

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The Embarkation of the Pilgrims (1857) by American painter Robert Walter Weir at the Brooklyn Museum

The Pilgrims, also known as the Pilgrim Fathers, were the English settlers who traveled to America on the and established the Plymouth Colony in Plymouth, Massachusetts ( John Smith had named this territory New Plymouth in 1620, sharing the name of the Pilgrims' final departure port of Plymouth, Devon). The Pilgrims' leadership came from the religious congregations of Brownists, or Separatist Puritans, who had fled religious persecution in England for the tolerance of 17th-century Holland in the Netherlands.

They held many of the same Puritan Calvinist religious beliefs but, unlike most other Puritans, they maintained that their congregations should separate from the English state church, which led to them being labeled Separatists. After several years living in exile in Holland, they determined to establish a new settlement in the New World and arranged with investors to fund them. They established Plymouth Colony in 1620, where they erected Congregationalist churches. The Pilgrims' story became a central theme in the history and culture of the United States.

Memorial at Immingham, England, to the departure of congregation members for Holland in 1608

The core of the group was brought together around 1605 when they quit the Church of England to form Separatist congregations in Nottinghamshire, England, led by John Robinson, Richard Clyfton, and John Smyth. Their congregations held Brownist beliefs-that true churches were voluntary democratic congregations, not whole Christian nations-as taught by Robert Browne, John Greenwood, and Henry Barrowe. As Separatists, they held that their differences with the Church of England were irreconcilable and that their worship should be independent of the trappings, traditions, and organization of a central church.

The Separatist movement was controversial. Under the Act of Uniformity 1559, it was illegal not to attend official Church of England services, with a fine of one shilling (£0.05; about £20 today) for each missed Sunday and holy day. The penalties included imprisonment and larger fines for conducting unofficial services. The Seditious Sectaries Act 1592 was specifically aimed at outlawing the Brownists. Under this policy, London Underground Church members were repeatedly imprisoned from 1566, and then Robert Browne and his followers were imprisoned in Norfolk during the 1580s. Henry Barrow, John Greenwood, and John Penry were executed for sedition in 1593. Browne had taken his followers into exile in Middelburg, and Penry urged the London Separatists to emigrate in order to escape persecution,[citation needed ] so after his death they went to Amsterdam.

The Archbishop of York was Matthew Hutton. He displayed some sympathy to the Puritan cause, writing to Robert Cecil, Secretary of State to James I in 1604:

The Puritans though they differ in Ceremonies and accidentes, yet they agree with us in substance of religion, and I thinke all or the moste parte of them love his Majestie, and the presente state, and I hope will yield to conformitie. But the Papistes are opposite and contrarie in very many substantiall pointes of religion, and cannot but wishe the Popes authoritie and popish religion to be established.

Many Puritans had hoped that reforms and reconciliation would be possible when James came to power which would allow them independence, but the Hampton Court Conference of 1604 denied nearly all of the concessions which they had requested-except for an authorized English translation of the Bible. The same year, Richard Bancroft became Archbishop of Canterbury and launched a campaign against Puritanism and the Separatists. He suspended 300 ministers and fired 80 more, which led some of them to found more Separatist churches. Robinson, Clifton, and their followers founded a Brownist church, making a covenant with God "to walk in all his ways made known, or to be made known, unto them, according to their best endeavours, whatsoever it should cost them, the Lord assisting them".

Archbishop Hutton died in 1606 and Tobias Matthew was appointed as his replacement. He was one of James's chief supporters at the 1604 conference, and he promptly began a campaign to purge the archdiocese of non-conforming influences, including Puritans, Separatists, and those wishing to return to the Catholic faith. Disobedient clergy were replaced, and prominent Separatists were confronted, fined, and imprisoned. He is credited with driving people out of the country who refused to attend Anglican services.

William Brewster was a former diplomatic assistant to the Netherlands. He was living in the Scrooby manor house while serving as postmaster for the village and bailiff to the Archbishop of York. He had been impressed by Clyfton's services and had begun participating in services led by John Smyth in Gainsborough, Lincolnshire. After a time, he arranged for a congregation to meet privately at the Scrooby manor house. Services were held beginning in 1606 with Clyfton as pastor, John Robinson as teacher, and Brewster as the presiding elder. Shortly after, Smyth and members of the Gainsborough group moved on to Amsterdam. Brewster was fined £20 (about £4,593 today) in absentia for his non-compliance with the church. This followed his September 1607 resignation from the postmaster position, about the time that the congregation had decided to follow the Smyth party to Amsterdam.

Scrooby member William Bradford of Austerfield kept a journal of the congregation's events which was eventually published as Of Plymouth Plantation. He wrote concerning this time period:

But after these things they could not long continue in any peaceable condition, but were hunted & persecuted on every side, so as their former afflictions were but as flea-bitings in comparison of these which now came upon them. For some were taken & clapt up in prison, others had their houses besett & watcht night and day, & hardly escaped their hands; and the most were faine to flie & leave their howses & habitations, and the means of their livelehood.

Title page of a pamphlet published by William Brewster in Leiden

Permission from the city council of Leiden, allowing the Pilgrims to settle there, dated February 12, 1609.

The Pilgrims moved to the Netherlands around 1607-08 and lived in Leiden, Holland, a city of 30,000 inhabitants. Leiden was a thriving industrial center, and many members were able to support themselves working at Leiden University or in the textile, printing, and brewing trades. Others were less able to bring in sufficient income, hampered by their rural backgrounds and the language barrier; for those, accommodation was constructed on an estate bought by Robinson and three partners. Bradford wrote of their years in Leiden:

For these & other reasons they removed to Leyden, a fair & bewtifull citie, and of a sweete situation, but made more famous by ye universitie wherwith it is adorned, in which of late had been so many learned man. But wanting that traffike by sea which Amerstdam injoyes, it was not so beneficiall for their outward means of living & estats. But being now hear pitchet they fell to such trads & imployments as they best could; valewing peace & their spirituall comforte above any other riches whatsoever. And at length they came to raise a competente & comforteable living, but with hard and continuall labor.

William Brewster had been teaching English at the university, and Robinson enrolled in 1615 to pursue his doctorate. There he participated in a series of debates, particularly regarding the contentious issue of Calvinism versus Arminianism (siding with the Calvinists against the Remonstrants). Brewster acquired typesetting equipment about 1616 in a venture financed by Thomas Brewer, and began publishing the debates through a local press.

The Netherlands, however, was a land whose culture and language were strange and difficult for the English congregation to understand or learn. They found the Dutch political situation to be unstable, and their children were becoming more and more Dutch as the years passed. The congregation came to believe that they faced eventual extinction if they remained there.

By 1617, the congregation was stable and relatively secure, but there were ongoing issues which needed to be resolved. Bradford noted that many members of the congregation were showing signs of early aging, compounding the difficulties which some had in supporting themselves. A few had spent their savings and so gave up and returned to England, and the leaders feared that more would follow and that the congregation would become unsustainable. The employment issues made it unattractive for others to come to Leiden, and younger members had begun leaving to find employment and adventure elsewhere. Also compelling was the possibility of missionary work in some distant land, an opportunity that rarely arose in a Protestant stronghold.

Bradford lists some of the reasons for which the Pilgrims felt that they had to leave, including the discouragements that they faced in the Netherlands and the hope of attracting others by finding "a better, and easier place of living", the children of the group being "drawn away by evil examples into extravagance and dangerous courses", and the "great hope, for the propagating and advancing the gospel of the kingdom of Christ in those remote parts of the world." Edward Winslow's list was similar. In addition to the economic worries and missionary possibilities, he stressed that it was important for the people to retain their English identity, culture, and language. They also believed that the English Church in Leiden could do little to benefit the larger community there.

At the same time, there were many uncertainties about moving to such a place as America, as stories had come back about failed colonies. There were fears that the native people would be violent, that there would be no source of food or water, that they might be exposed to unknown diseases, and that travel by sea was always hazardous. Balancing all this was a local political situation which was in danger of becoming unstable. The truce was faltering in the Eighty Years' War, and there was fear over what the attitudes of Spain might be toward them.

Possible destinations included Guiana on the northeast coast of South America where the Dutch had established Essequibo colony, or another site near the Virginia settlements. Virginia was an attractive destination because the presence of the older colony might offer better security and trade opportunities; however, they also felt that they should not settle too near, since that might inadvertently duplicate the political environment back in England. The London Company administered a territory of considerable size in the region, and the intended settlement location was at the mouth of the Hudson River (which instead became the Dutch colony of New Netherland). This plan allayed their concerns of social, political, and religious conflicts, but still promised the military and economic benefits of being close to an established colony.

Robert Cushman and John Carver were sent to England to solicit a land patent. Their negotiations were delayed because of conflicts internal to the London Company, but ultimately a patent was secured in the name of John Wincob on June 9 ( Old Style)/June 19 (New Style), 1619. The charter was granted with the king's condition that the Leiden group's religion would not receive official recognition.

Preparations then stalled because of the continued problems within the London Company, and competing Dutch companies approached the congregation with the possibility of settling in the Hudson River area. David Baeckelandt suggests that the Leiden group was approached by Englishman Matthew Slade, son-in-law of Petrus Placius, a cartographer for the Dutch East India Company. Slade was also a spy for the English Ambassador, and the Pilgrims' plans were therefore known both at court and among influential investors in the Virginia Company's colony at Jamestown. Negotiations were broken off with the Dutch, however, at the encouragement of English merchant Thomas Weston, who assured them that he could resolve the London Company delays. The London Company intended to claim the area explored by Hudson before the Dutch could become fully established, and the first Dutch settlers did not arrive in the area until 1624.

Weston did come with a substantial change, telling the Leiden group that parties in England had obtained a land grant north of the existing Virginia territory to be called New England. This was only partially true; the new grant did come to pass, but not until late in 1620 when the Plymouth Council for New England received its charter. It was expected that this area could be fished profitably, and it was not under the control of the existing Virginia government.

A second change was known only to parties in England who did not inform the larger group. New investors had been brought into the venture who wanted the terms altered so that half of the settled land and property would revert to the investors at the end of the seven-year contract. Also, there had been a provision in the original agreement that allowed each settler to have two days per week to work on personal business, but this provision was dropped from the final agreement without the knowledge of the Pilgrims.

Amid these negotiations, William Brewster found himself involved with religious unrest emerging in Scotland. In 1618, King James had promulgated the Five Articles of Perth which were seen in Scotland as an attempt to encroach on their Presbyterian tradition. Brewster published several pamphlets that were critical of this law, and they were smuggled into Scotland by April 1619. These pamphlets were traced back to Leiden, and the English authorities unsuccessfully attempted to arrest Brewster. English ambassador Dudley Carleton became aware of the situation and began pressuring the Dutch government to extradite Brewster, and the Dutch responded by arresting Thomas Brewer the financier in September. Brewster's whereabouts remain unknown between then and the colonists' departure, but the Dutch authorities did seize the typesetting materials which he had used to print his pamphlets. Meanwhile, Brewer was sent to England for questioning, where he stonewalled government officials until well into 1620. He was ultimately convicted in England for his continued religious publication activities and sentenced in 1626 to a 14-year prison term.

Not all of the congregation were able to depart on the first trip. Many members were not able to settle their affairs within the time constraints, and the budget was limited for travel and supplies; also, the group decided that the initial settlement should be undertaken primarily by younger and stronger members. The remainder agreed to follow if and when they could. Robinson would remain in Leiden with the larger portion of the congregation, and Brewster was to lead the American congregation. The church in America would be run independently, but it was agreed that membership would automatically be granted in either congregation to members who moved between the continents.

With personal and business matters agreed upon, the Pilgrims procured supplies and a small ship. was to bring some passengers from the Netherlands to England, then on to America where it would be kept for the fishing business, with a crew hired for support services during the first year. The larger ship was leased for transport and exploration services.

Contemporary depiction of the Pilgrims leaving Delfthaven aboard the Speedwell by Adam Willaerts. c. 1620

The was originally named Swiftsure. It was built in 1577 at 60 tons and was part of the English fleet that defeated the Spanish Armada. It departed Delfshaven in July 1620 with the Leiden colonists, after a canal ride from Leyden of about seven hours. It reached Southampton, Hampshire, and met with the and the additional colonists hired by the investors. With final arrangements made, the two vessels set out on August 5 ( Old Style)/August 15 (New Style).

Model of a typical merchantman of the period, showing the cramped conditions that had to be endured

Soon after, the Speedwell crew reported that their ship was taking on water, so both were diverted to Dartmouth, Devon. The crew inspected Speedwell for leaks and sealed them, but their second attempt to depart got them only as far as Plymouth, Devon. The crew decided that Speedwell was untrustworthy, and her owners sold her; the ship's master and some of the crew transferred to the Mayflower for the trip. William Bradford observed that the Speedwell seemed "overmasted", thus putting a strain on the hull; and he expressed suspicions that crew members might have deliberately caused it, allowing them to abandon their year-long commitments. Passenger Robert Cushman wrote that the leaking was caused by a loose board.

Of the 120 combined passengers on the two ships, 102 were chosen to travel on the Mayflower with the supplies consolidated. Of these, about half had come by way of Leiden, and about 28 of the adults were members of the congregation. The reduced party finally sailed successfully on September 6 ( Old Style)/September 16 (New Style), 1620.

Initially the trip went smoothly, but under way they were met with strong winds and storms. One of these caused a main beam to crack, and the possibility was considered of turning back, even though they were more than halfway to their destination. However, they repaired the ship sufficiently to continue by using a "great iron screw" brought along by the colonists (probably a jack to be used for either house construction or a cider press). Passenger John Howland was washed overboard in the storm, but he caught a top-sail halyard trailing in the water and was pulled back on board.

One crew member and one passenger died before they reached land. A child was born at sea and named Oceanus.

1620 place names mentioned by Bradford

The Mayflower passengers sighted land on November 9, 1620 after enduring miserable conditions for about 65 days, and William Brewster led them in singing Psalm 100. They confirmed that the area was Cape Cod within the New England territory recommended by Weston. They attempted to sail the ship around the cape towards the Hudson River, but they encountered shoals and difficult currents around Cape Malabar (the old French name for Monomoy Island). They decided to turn around, and the ship was anchored in Provincetown Harbor by November 11/21.

The charter was incomplete for the Plymouth Council for New England when the colonists departed England (it was granted while they were in transit on November 3/13). They arrived without a patent; the older Wincob patent was from their abandoned dealings with the London Company. Some of the passengers, aware of the situation, suggested that they were free to do as they chose upon landing, without a patent in place, and to ignore the contract with the investors.

The Leiden congregants, therefore, drafted a brief contract known as the Mayflower Compact, promising cooperation among the settlers "for the general good of the Colony unto which we promise all due submission and obedience." It organized them into what was called a "civill body politick," in which issues would be decided by voting, the key ingredient of democracy. It was ratified by majority rule, with 41 adult male Pilgrims signing for the 102 passengers (74 males and 28 females). Included in the company were 13 male servants and three female servants, along with some sailors and craftsmen hired for short-term service to the colony. At this time, John Carver was chosen as the colony's first governor. It was Carver who had chartered the Mayflower and his is the first signature on the Mayflower Compact, being the most respected and affluent member of the group. The Mayflower Compact is considered to be one of the seeds of American democracy, and historian has called it the world's first written constitution.

Thorough exploration of the area was delayed for more than two weeks because the shallop or pinnace (a smaller sailing vessel) which they brought had been partially dismantled to fit aboard the Mayflower and was further damaged in transit. Small parties, however, waded to the beach to fetch firewood and attend to long-deferred personal hygiene.

Myles Standish was an English soldier from Chorley whom the colonists had met while in Leiden, and they had asked him to join them as their military adviser. He and Christopher Jones led several exploratory trips ashore while awaiting the shallop's repair. They encountered an old European-built house and iron kettle, left behind by some ship's crew, and a few recently cultivated fields showing corn stubble.

They came upon an artificial mound near the dunes which they partially uncovered and found to be an Indian grave. Farther along, a similar mound was found, more recently made, and they discovered that some of the burial mounds also contained corn. The colonists took some of the corn, intending to use it as seed for planting, while they reburied the rest. William Bradford later recorded in his book Of Plymouth Plantation that, after the shallop had been repaired,

They also found two of the Indian's houses covered with mats, and some of their implements in them; but the people had run away and could not be seen. Without permission they took more corn, and beans of various colours. These they brought away, intending to give them full satisfaction when they should meet with any of them, - as about six months afterwards they did.

And it is to be noted as a special providence of God, and a great mercy to this poor people, that they thus got seed to plant corn the next year, or they might have starved; for they had none, nor any likelihood of getting any, till too late for the planting season.

By December, most of the passengers and crew had become ill, coughing violently. Many also were suffering from the effects of scurvy. There had already been ice and snowfall, hampering exploration efforts, and nearly half of the Pilgrim passengers died during the first winter.

Explorations resumed on December 6/16. The shallop party headed south along the cape, consisting of seven colonists from Leiden, three from London, and seven crew; they chose to land at the area inhabited by the Nauset people (the area around Brewster, Chatham, Eastham, Harwich, and Orleans) where they saw some people on the shore who fled when they approached. Inland they found more mounds, one containing acorns which they exhumed, and more graves, which they decided not to disturb. They remained ashore overnight and heard cries near the encampment. The following morning, they were attacked by Indians who shot at them with arrows. The colonists retrieved their firearms and shot back, then chased them into the woods but did not find them. There was no more contact with them for several months.

The Indians were already familiar with the English, who had intermittently visited the area for fishing and trade before Mayflower arrived. In the Cape Cod area, relations were poor following a visit several years earlier by Thomas Hunt. Hunt kidnapped 20 people from Patuxet (the site of Plymouth Colony) and another seven from Nausett, and he attempted to sell them as slaves in Europe. One of the Patuxet men was Squanto, who became an ally of the Plymouth Colony. He had escaped slavery and made his way to England, where he became fluent in English. He ultimately returned to America, only to discover that his entire village had died from plague.

Samuel de Champlain's 1605 map of Plymouth Harbor showing the Wampanoag village of Patuxet, with some modern place names added for reference. The star marks the approximate location of the Plymouth Colony.

Plymouth Rock commemorates the landing of the Mayflower in 1620

Continuing westward, the shallop's mast and rudder were broken by storms and the sail was lost. They rowed for safety, encountering the harbor formed by Duxbury and Plymouth barrier beaches. They remained at this spot for two days to recuperate and repair equipment. They named it Clark's Island for a Mayflower mate who first set foot on it.

They resumed exploration on Monday, December 11/21 when the party crossed over to the mainland and surveyed the area that ultimately became the settlement. The anniversary of this survey is observed in Massachusetts as Forefathers' Day and is traditionally associated with the Plymouth Rock landing tradition. This land was especially suited to winter building because it had already been cleared, and the tall hills provided a good defensive position.

The cleared village was known as Patuxet to the Wampanoag people and was abandoned about three years earlier following a plague that killed all of its residents. The "Indian fever" involved hemorrhaging and is assumed to have been fulminating smallpox. The outbreak had been severe enough that the colonists discovered unburied skeletons in the dwellings.

The exploratory party returned to the Mayflower, which was anchored twenty-five miles (40 km) away, having been brought to the harbor on December 16/26. The Pilgrims evaluated the nearby sites and selected a hill in Plymouth (so named on earlier charts) on December 19/29.

The Pilgrims began construction immediately, with the first common house nearly completed by January 9/19, 20 feet square and built for general use. At this point, each single man was ordered to join himself to one of the 19 families in order to eliminate the need to build any more houses than absolutely necessary. Each extended family was assigned a plot one-half rod wide and three rods long for each household member, then each family built its own dwelling. They brought supplies ashore, and the settlement was mostly complete by early February.

When the first house was finished, it immediately became a hospital for the ill Pilgrims. Thirty-one of the company were dead by the end of February, with deaths still rising. Coles Hill became the first cemetery, on a prominence above the beach, and they allowed grass to overgrow the graves for fear that the Indians would discover how weakened the settlement had actually become.

Between the landing and March, only 47 colonists had survived the diseases that they contracted on the ship. During the worst of the sickness, only six or seven of the group were able to feed and care for the rest. In this time, half the Mayflower crew also died.

William Bradford became governor in 1621 upon the death of John Carver. On March 22, 1621, the Pilgrims of Plymouth Colony signed a peace treaty with Massasoit of the Wampanoags. Bradford surrendered the patent of Plymouth Colony to the freemen in 1640, minus a small reserve of three tracts of land. He served as governor for 11 consecutive years, and was elected to various other terms before his death in 1657.

The colony contained Bristol County, Plymouth County, and Barnstable County, Massachusetts. The Massachusetts Bay Colony was reorganized and issued a new charter as the Province of Massachusetts Bay in 1691, and Plymouth ended its history as a separate colony.

Bradford's history

The first use of the word pilgrims for the Mayflower passengers appeared in William Bradford's 1651 Of Plymouth Plantation. In recounting his group's July 1620 departure from Leiden, he used the imagery of Hebrews 11 ( Hebrews 11:13-16) about Old Testament "strangers and pilgrims" who had the opportunity to return to their old country but instead longed for a better, heavenly country.

So they lefte goodly & pleasante citie, which had been ther resting place, nere 12 years; but they knew they were pilgrimes, & looked not much on these things; but lift up their eyes to y e heavens, their dearest cuntrie, and quieted their spirits.

There is no record of the term Pilgrims being used to describe Plymouth's founders for 150 years after Bradford wrote this passage, except when quoting him. The Mayflower's story was retold by historians Nathaniel Morton (in 1669) and Cotton Mather (in 1702), and both paraphrased Bradford's passage and used his word pilgrims. At Plymouth's Forefathers' Day observance in 1793, Rev. Chandler Robbins recited this passage.

1920 U.S. stamp celebrating the Pilgrim Tercentenary

The name Pilgrims was probably not in popular use before about 1798, even though Plymouth celebrated Forefathers' Day several times between 1769 and 1798 and used a variety of terms to honor Plymouth's founders. The term Pilgrims was not mentioned, other than in Robbins' 1793 recitation. The first documented use of the term that was not simply quoting Bradford was at a December 22, 1798 celebration of Forefathers' Day in Boston. A song composed for the occasion used the word Pilgrims, and the participants drank a toast to "The Pilgrims of Leyden". The term was used prominently during Plymouth's next Forefather's Day celebration in 1800, and was used in Forefathers' Day observances thereafter.

By the 1820s, the term Pilgrims was becoming more common. Daniel Webster repeatedly referred to "the Pilgrims" in his December 22, 1820 address for Plymouth's bicentennial which was widely read. Harriet Vaughan Cheney used it in her 1824 novel A Peep at the Pilgrims in Sixteen Thirty-Six, and the term also gained popularity with the 1825 publication of Felicia Hemans's classic poem "The Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers".

1. ^ Johnson, Daniel L. (1990). Theology and Identity - Traditions, Movements, and Polity in the United Church of Christ. Cleveland, Ohio: United Church Press. pp. 4. ISBN 0-8298-0807-8.

2. UK Retail Price Index inflation figures are based on data from

3. ^ "The Bawdy Court: Exhibits - Belief and Persecution". University of Nottingham.

4. ^ Luckock, Herbert Mortimer (1882). Studies in the History of the Book of Common Prayer. London: Rivingtons. p. 219. OCLC 1071106.

5. ^ Sheils, William Joseph (2004). "Matthew, Tobie (1544?-1628)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press.

6. ^ "English Dissenters: Barrowists". Ex Libris. January 1, 2008. Archived from the original on October 10, 2008.

7. ^ Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Brewster, William" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 04 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 514. After an unsuccessful attempt in 1607 (for which he was imprisoned for a short time), he, with other Separatists, removed to Holland in 1608 to obtain greater freedom of worship.

8. ^ John (1895). The Pilgrim Fathers of New England and their Puritan Successors. Reprinted: 1970. Pasadena, Texas: Pilgrim Publications. pp. 118.

9. ^ Harreld, Donald. "The Dutch Economy in the Golden Age (16th-17th Centuries)". Economic History Services. Archived from the original on September 30, 2007.

10. ^ "Contract of Sale, De Groene Poort". Leiden Pilgrim Archives. Archived from the original on October 13, 2007.

11. ^ Brown, John (1970). The Pilgrim Fathers of New England and their Puritan Successors. Pasadena, Texas: Pilgrim Publications. pp. 194.

12. ^ Kingsbury, Susan Myra, ed. (1906). The Records of the Virginia Company of London. Vol. 1. Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office. p. 228.

13. Bradford & (1898), Book 1, Chapter 5.

14. ^ Brown, John (1895). The Pilgrim Fathers of New England and their Puritan Successors. Reprinted: 1970. Pasadena, Texas: Pilgrim Publications. pp. 185.

15. ^ Bangs, Jeremy Dupertuis (Winter 2003). "Pilgrim Life: Two Myths - Ancient and Modern". New England Ancestors. Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society. 4 (1): 52-55. ISSN 1527-9405. OCLC 43146397.

16. Bradford & (1898), Book 1, Chapters 8-9.

17. Philbrick, Nathaniel, ^ Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War p. 43, Viking, New York, NY, 2006. The Great Charter of the Virginia Company granted self governance to the Virginia Colony and could conceivably also be considered as a "seed of democracy", although it was not a contract in the sense of the Mayflower Compact.

18. "^ John and Catherine Carver Archived July 27, 2011, at the Wayback Machine," Pilgrim Hall Museum Web site. Retrieved January 28, 2011.

19. ^ Brown, John (1895). The Pilgrim Fathers of New England and their Puritan Successors. Reprinted: 1970. Pasadena, Texas: Pilgrim Publications. pp. 198.

20. ^ Klinkenborg, Verlyn (December 2011). "Why Was Life So Hard for the Pilgrims?". American History. 46 (5): 36.

21. Bradford & (1898), Book 1, Chapter 10.

22. John (1895). The Pilgrim Fathers of New England and their Puritan Successors. Reprinted: 1970. Pasadena, Texas: Pilgrim Publications. pp. 203.

23. ^ "Toasts Drank at the Celebration of Our Country's Nativity". Massachusetts Mercury. Boston. December 28, 1798. pp. 2, 4.

24. ^ Webster, Daniel (1854). Edward Everett (ed.). The Works of Daniel Webster. Vol. 1 (8th ed.). Boston: Brown, Little & Co. lxiv-lxv, 1-50.

25. ^ Wolfson, Susan J., ed. (2000). Felicia Hemans. Princeton: Princeton University Press. pp. 416-417. ISBN 978-0-691-05029-4.

Bradford, William; Edward Winslow, Henry Martyn Dexter, ed. (1865) [1622]. Mourt's Relation, or Journal of the Plantation at Plymouth. Boston: John Kimball Wiggin. OCLC 8978744.

Bradford, William (1898) [1651]. Hildebrandt, Ted (ed.). Bradford's History "Of Plimoth Plantation" (PDF). Boston: Wright & Potter Printing Co. Archived (PDF) from the original on October 9, 2022.

Brown, Cornelius (1891). A History of Nottinghamshire. London: Elliot Stock. OCLC 4624771.

Griffis, William. "The Pilgrim Press in Leyden". New England Magazine. Boston: Warren F. Kellogg. 19/25 (January 1899): 559-575.

Matthews, Albert (1915). "The Term Pilgrim Fathers and Early Celebrations of Forefathers' Day". Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts. Boston: The Society. 17: 293-391.

Winslow, Edward (2003). Johnson, Caleb (ed.). "Hypocrisy Unmasked" (PDF). MayflowerHistory.com.

Cheney, Glenn Alan. Thanksgiving: The Pilgrims' First Year in America (New London Librarium, 2007)

Fraser, Rebecca. The Mayflower Generation: the Winslow Family and the Fight for the New World (Vintage, 2017)

Tompkins, Stephen. The Journey to the Mayflower: God's Outlaws and the Invention of Freedom (Hodder and Stoughton, 2020)

Vandrei, Martha. "The Pilgrim's Progress," History Today (May 2020) 70#5 pp 28-41. Covers the historiography 1629 to 2020; online

Whittock, Martyn. Mayflower Lives (Simon and Schuster, 2019).

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The Pilgrims, also known as the Pilgrim Fathers, were the English settlers who traveled to America on the and established the Plymouth Colony in Plymouth, Massachusetts ( John Smith had named this territory New Plymouth in 1620, sharing the name of the Pilgrims' final departure port of Plymouth, Devon).

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Block's map of his 1614 voyage, with the first appearance of the term "New Netherland"

The Wampanoag (), also rendered Wôpanâak, are a Native American people of the Northeastern Woodlands based in southeastern Massachusetts and historically parts of eastern Rhode Island. Their territory historically includes the islands of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket.

Today, two Wampanoag tribes are federally recognized:

The Wampanoag language is a dialect of Massachusett, a Southern New England Algonquian language.

At the time of their first English contact in the 17th century, the Wampanoag were a large confederation of at least 24 recorded tribes. Their population numbered in the thousands; 3,000 Wampanoag lived on Martha's Vineyard alone. From 1615 to 1619, a leptospirosis epidemic dramatically reduced the population of the Wampanoag and neighboring tribes. Indigenous deaths from the epidemic allowed European colonists to more easily settle Massachusetts Bay Colony.

More than 50 years later, Wampanoag Chief Sachem Metacom and his allies waged King Philip's War (1675-1676) against the colonists. The war resulted in the death of 40 percent of the surviving Wampanoag. The English sold many Wampanoag men into slavery in Bermuda, the West Indies, or on plantations and farms run by colonists in New England.

Wampanoag people continue to live in their historical homelands and maintain aspects of their culture while adapting to changing socioeconomic needs of the mainstream society.

Wampanoag probably derives from Wapanoos, first documented on Adriaen Block's 1614 map, which was the earliest European representation of the Wampanoag territory. The word is a Lenape term for "Easterners" or literally "People of the Dawn", based on information provided by the people whom Block encountered in the lower Hudson Valley. Increase Mather first used it in 1676 to describe the alliance of tribes who fought against the English in King Philip's War.[citation needed ]

In 1616, John Smith referred to one of the Wampanoag tribes as the Pokanoket. The earliest colonial records and reports used Pokanoket as the name of the tribe whose leaders (the Massasoit Ousemequin until 1661, his son Wamsutta from 1661 to 1662, and Metacom from 1662 to 1676) led the Wampanoag confederation at the time the English began settling southeastern New England. The Pokanoket were based at Sowams, near where Warren, Rhode Island, developed and on the peninsula where Bristol, Rhode Island, arose after King Philip's War. The Seat of Metacom, or King Philip's seat, at Mount Hope Bay in Bristol, Rhode Island became the political center from which Metacomet began King Philip's War, the first intertribal war of Native American resistance to English settlement in North America.

Map of Wampanoag territory c. 1620

The Wampanoag people were semi-sedentary, with seasonal movements between sites in southern New England. The men often traveled far north and south along the Eastern seaboard for seasonal fishing expeditions, and sometimes stayed in those distant locations for weeks and months at a time. The women cultivated varieties of the " three sisters" (maize, climbing beans, and squash) as the staples of their diet, supplemented by fish and game caught by the men. Each community had authority over a well-defined territory from which the people derived their livelihood through a seasonal round of fishing, planting, harvesting, and hunting. Southern New England was populated by various tribes, so hunting grounds had strictly defined boundaries.

The Wampanoag had a matrilineal system, like many indigenous peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands, in which women controlled property, and hereditary status was passed through the maternal line. They were also matrifocal; when a young couple married, they lived with the woman's family. Women elders could approve selection of chiefs or sachems. Men acted in most of the political roles for relations with other bands and tribes, as well as warfare. Women passed plots of land to their female descendants, regardless of their marital status.

The production of food among the Wampanoag was similar to that of many American Indian societies, and food habits were divided along gender lines. Men and women had specific tasks. Women played an active role in many of the stages of food production and processing, so they had important socio-political, economic, and spiritual roles in their communities. Wampanoag men were mainly responsible for hunting and fishing, while women took care of farming and gathering wild fruits, nuts, berries, and shellfish. Women were responsible for up to 75 percent of all food production in Wampanoag societies.

The Wampanoag were organized into a confederation in which a head sachem presided over a number of other sachems. The colonists often referred to him as "king", but the position of a sachem differed in many ways from a king. They were selected by women elders and were bound to consult their own councilors within their tribe, as well as any of the "petty sachems" in the region. They were also responsible for arranging trade privileges, as well as protecting their allies in exchange for material tribute. Both women and men could hold the position of sachem, and women were sometimes chosen over close male relatives.

Pre-marital sexual experimentation was accepted, although the Wampanoag expected fidelity within unions after marriage. Roger Williams (1603-1683) said that "single fornication they count no sin, but after Marriage... they count it heinous for either of them to be false." Polygamy was practiced among the Wampanoag, although monogamy was the norm. Some elite men could take several wives for political or social reasons, and multiple wives were a symbol of wealth. Women were the producers and distributors of corn and other food products. Marriage and conjugal unions were not as important as ties of clan and kinship.

Title page of the first Bible printed in the United States, translated in the Massachusett language by John Eliot

The Wampanoag originally spoke Wôpanâak, a dialect of the Massachusett language, which belongs to the Algonquian languages family. The first Bible published in America was a 1663 translation into Wampanoag by missionary John Eliot. He created an orthography which he taught to the Wampanoag. Many became literate, using Wampanoag for letters, deeds, and historic documents.

The rapid decline of Wampanoag speakers began after the American Revolution. Neal Salisbury and Colin G. Calloway suggest that New England Indian communities suffered from gender imbalances at this time due to premature male deaths, especially due to warfare and their work in the hazardous trades of whaling and shipping. They posit that many Wampanoag women married outside their linguistic groups, making it difficult for them to maintain the various Wampanoag dialects.

Jessie Little Doe Baird, a member of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, founded the Wôpanâak Language Reclamation Project in 1993. They have taught some children, who have become the first speakers of Wôpanâak in more than a century. The project is training teachers to reach more children and to develop a curriculum for a Wôpanâak-based school. Baird has developed a 10,000-word Wôpanâak-English dictionary by consulting archival Wôpanâak documents and using linguistic methods to reconstruct unattested words. She has also produced a grammar, collections of stories, and other books. Mashpee High School began a course in 2018 teaching the language.

Tisquantum helped the Plymouth colonists learn to cultivate corn.

Early contacts between the Wampanoag and colonists date from the 16th century when European merchant vessels and fishing boats traveled along the coast of New England. Captain Thomas Hunt captured several Wampanoag in 1614 and sold them in Spain as slaves. A Patuxet named Tisquantum (or Squanto) was bought by Spanish monks who attempted to convert him before setting him free. He accompanied an expedition to Newfoundland as an interpreter, then made his way back to his homeland in 1619-only to discover that the entire Patuxet tribe had died in an epidemic.

In 1620, the Pilgrims arrived in Plymouth, and Tisquantum and other Wampanoag taught them how to cultivate the varieties of corn, squash, and beans (the Three Sisters) that flourished in New England, as well as how to catch and process fish and collect seafood. They enabled the Pilgrims to survive their first winters, and Squanto lived with them and acted as a middleman between them and , the Wampanoag sachem.

The Wampanoag suffered from an epidemic between 1616 and 1619, long thought to be smallpox introduced by contact with Europeans. However, researchers published a study in 2010 suggesting that the epidemic was leptospirosis, or 7-day fever. The groups most devastated by the illness were those who had traded heavily with the French, leading to speculation that the disease was a virgin soil epidemic. Alfred Crosby has speculated that the population losses were as high as 90 percent among the Massachusett and mainland Pokanoket.

Since the late 20th century, the event celebrated as the first Thanksgiving has been debated in the United States. Many American Indians and historians argue against the romanticized story of the Wampanoag celebrating together with the colonists. Some say that there is no documentation of such an event. There appears to be one primary account of the 1621 event written by a person who was present.

Massasoit became gravely ill in the winter of 1623, but he was nursed back to health by the colonists. In 1632, the Narragansetts attacked Massasoit's village in , but the colonists helped the Wampanoag to drive them back.

Seal of Plymouth Colony

After 1632, the members of Plymouth Colony became outnumbered by the growing number of Puritans settling around Boston. The colonists expanded westward into the Connecticut River Valley. In 1638, they destroyed the powerful Pequot Confederation. In 1643, the Mohegans defeated the Narragansetts in a war with support from the colonists, and they became the dominant tribe in southern New England.

After 1650, John Eliot and other Puritan missionaries sought to convert local tribes to Christianity, and those that converted settled in 14 "Praying towns". Eliot and his colleagues hoped that the Indians would adopt practices such as monogamous marriage, agriculture, and jurisprudence. The high levels of epidemics among the Indians may have motivated some conversions. Salisbury suggests that the survivors suffered a type of spiritual crisis because their medical and religious leaders had been unable to prevent the epidemic losses.

"Old Indian Meeting House" built in 1684 in Mashpee, Massachusetts, the oldest Indian church building in the United States

Individual towns and regions had differing expectations for Indian conversions. In most of Eliot's mainland "praying towns", religious converts were also expected to follow colonial laws and manners, and to adopt the material trappings of colonial life. Eliot and other ministers relied on praise and rewards for those who conformed, rather than punishing those who did not. The Christian Indian settlements of Martha's Vineyard were noted for a great deal of sharing and mixing between Wampanoag and colonial ways of life. Wampanoag converts often continued their traditional practices in dress, hairstyle, and governance. The Martha's Vineyard converts were not required to attend church and they often maintained traditional cultural practices, such as mourning rituals.

The Wampanoag women were more likely to convert to Christianity than the men. Experience Mayhew said that "it seems to be a Truth with respect to our Indians, so far as my knowledge of them extend, that there have been, and are a greater number of their Women appearing pious than of the men among them" in his text "Indian Converts". The frequency of female conversion created a problem for missionaries, who wanted to establish patriarchal family and societal structures among them. Women had control of property, and inheritance and descent passed through their line, including hereditary leadership for men. Wampanoag women on Martha's Vineyard were the spiritual leaders of their households. In general, English ministers agreed that it was preferable for women to subvert the patriarchal model and assume a dominant spiritual role than it was for their husbands to remain unconverted. Experience Mayhew asked, "How can those Wives answer it unto God who do not Use their utmost Endeavors to Perswade and oblige their husbands to maintain Prayer in their families?" In some cases, Wampanoag women converts accepted changed gender roles under colonial custom, while others practiced their traditional roles of shared power as Christians.

Philip, King of Mount Hope, 1772, by Paul Revere

Massasoit was among those Indians who adopted colonial customs. He asked the legislators in Plymouth near the end of his life to give both of his sons English names. The older son Wamsutta was given the name Alexander, and his younger brother Metacom was named Philip. After his father's death, Alexander became the sachem of the Wampanoag. The colonists invited him to Plymouth to talk, but Wamsutta became seriously ill on the way home and died shortly after. The Wampanoag were told that he died of fever, but many Indians thought that he had been poisoned. The following year, his brother Philip (Metacom) became sachem of the Wampanoag.[unreliable source? ]

Under Philip's leadership, the relationship changed dramatically between the Wampanoag and the colonists. Philip believed that the ever-increasing colonists would eventually take over everything-not only land, but also their culture, their way of life, and their religion, and he decided to limit the further expansion of colonial settlements. The Wampanoag numbered only 1,000, and Philip began to visit other tribes to build alliances among those who also wanted to push out the colonists. At that time, the number of colonists in southern New England already numbered more than double that of the Indians-35,000 vs. 15,000. In 1671, Philip was called to Taunton, Massachusetts, where he listened to the accusations of the colonists and signed an agreement that required the Wampanoag to give up their firearms. To be on the safe side, he did not take part in the subsequent dinner. His men never delivered their weapons.[unreliable source? ]

Philip gradually gained the Nipmuck, Pocomtuc, and Narragansett as allies, and the beginning of the uprising was first planned for the spring of 1676. In March 1675, however, John Sassamon was murdered. Sassamon was a Christian Indian raised in Natick, one of the "praying towns". He was educated at Harvard College and had served as a scribe, interpreter, and counselor to Philip and the Wampanoag. But, a week before his death, Sassamon reported to Plymouth governor Josiah Winslow that Philip was planning a war against the colonists.

Sassamon was found dead under the ice of Assawompsett Pond a week later; three Wampanoag warriors were accused of his murder by a Christian Indian and taken captive by the colonists; they were hanged in June 1675 after a trial by a jury of 12 colonists and six Christian Indians. This execution was a catalyst for war, combined with rumors that the colonists wanted to capture Philip. Philip called a council of war on Mount Hope; most Wampanoag wanted to follow him, with the exception of the Nauset on Cape Cod and the small groups on the offshore islands. Allies included the Nipmuck, Pocomtuc, and some Pennacook and eastern Abenaki from farther north. The Narragansett remained neutral at the beginning of the war.

King Philip's War

On June 20, 1675, some Wampanoag attacked colonists in Swansea, Massachusetts, and laid siege to the town; they destroyed it completely five days later, leading ultimately to King Philip's War. The united tribes in southern New England attacked 52 of 90 colonial settlements, and partially burned them down.

At the outbreak of the war, many Indians offered to fight with the colonists against King Philip and his allies, serving as warriors, scouts, advisers, and spies. Mistrust and hostility eventually caused the colonists to discontinue Indian assistance, even though they were invaluable in the war. The Massachusetts government moved many Christian Indians to Deer Island in Boston Harbor, in part to protect the "praying Indians" from vigilantes, but also as a precautionary measure to prevent rebellion and sedition from them. Mary Rowlandson's The Sovereignty and Goodness of God is an account of her months of captivity by the Wampanoag during King Philip's War in which she expressed shock at the cruelties from Christian Indians.

From Massachusetts, the war spread to other parts of New England. The Kennebec, Pigwacket ( Pequawkets), and Arosaguntacook from Maine joined in the war against the colonists. The Narragansetts of Rhode Island gave up their neutrality after the colonists attacked one of their fortified villages. The Narragansetts lost more than 600 people and 20 sachems in the battle which became known as the " Great Swamp Massacre". Their leader Canonchet was able to flee and led a large group of Narragansett warriors west to join King Philip's warriors.

The war turned against Philip in the spring of 1676, following a winter of hunger and deprivation. The colonial troops set out after him, and Canonchet was taken captive and executed by a firing squad. Canonchet's corpse was quartered, and his head was sent to Hartford, Connecticut, to be put on public display.

During the summer months, Philip escaped from his pursuers and went to a hideout on Mount Hope in Rhode Island. Colonial forces attacked in August, killing and capturing 173 Wampanoags. Philip barely escaped capture, but his wife and their nine-year-old son were captured and put on a ship at Plymouth; they were then sold as slaves in the West Indies. On August 12, 1676, colonial troops surrounded Philip's camp, and soon shot and killed him.

With the death of Metacomet and most of their leaders, the Wampanoags were nearly exterminated; only about 400 survived the war. The Narragansetts and Nipmucks suffered similar rates of losses, and many small tribes in southern New England were finished. In addition, many Wampanoag were sold into slavery. Male captives were generally sold to slave traders and transported to the West Indies, Bermuda, Virginia, or the Iberian Peninsula. The colonists used the women and children as slaves or indentured servants in New England, depending on the colony. Massachusetts resettled the remaining Wampanoags in Natick, Wamesit, Punkapoag, and Hassanamesit, four of the original 14 praying towns. These were the only ones to be resettled after the war. Overall, approximately 5,000 Indians (40 percent of their population) and 2,500 colonists (5 percent) were killed in King Philip's War.

The exception to relocation was the coastal islands' Wampanoag groups, who had stayed neutral through the war. The colonists forced the Wampanoag of the mainland to resettle with the Saconnet (Sekonnet), or with the Nauset into the praying towns in Barnstable County. Mashpee is the largest Indian reservation set aside in Massachusetts, and is located on Cape Cod. In 1660, the colonists allotted the natives about 50 square miles (130 km ²) there, and beginning in 1665 they had self-government, adopting an English-style court of law and trials. The area was integrated into the district of Mashpee in 1763.

In 1788 after the American Revolutionary War, the state revoked the Wampanoag ability to self-govern, considering it a failure. It appointed a supervisory committee consisting of five European-American members, with no Wampanoag. In 1834, the state returned a certain degree of self-government to the First Nations People, and although the First Nations People were far from autonomous, they continued in this manner. To support assimilation, in 1842 the state violated the Nonintercourse Act when it illegally allocated plots from 2,000 acres (8.1 km ²) of their communal 13,000 acres (53 km ²), to be distributed in 60-acre (240,000 m ²) parcels to each household for subsistence farming, although New England communities were adopting other types of economies. The state passed laws to try to control white encroachment on the reservation; some stole wood from its forests. A large region, once rich in wood, fish and game, it was considered highly desirable by the whites. With competition between whites and the Wampanoag, conflicts were more frequent than for more isolated native settlements elsewhere in the state.

Wampanoag on Martha's Vineyard

On Martha's Vineyard in the 18th and 19th centuries, there were three reservations- Chappaquiddick, Christiantown and Gay Head. The Chappaquiddick Reservation was part of a small island of the same name and was located on the eastern point of that island. As the result of the sale of land in 1789, the natives lost valuable areas, and the remaining land was distributed among the Indian residents in 1810. In 1823 the laws were changed, in order to hinder those trying to get rid of the natives and to implement a visible beginning of a civic organization. Around 1849, they owned 692 acres (2.80 km ²) of infertile land, and many of the residents moved to nearby Edgartown, so that they could practice a trade and obtain some civil rights.

Christiantown was originally a "praying town" on the northwest side of Martha's Vineyard, northwest of Tisbury. In 1849 the reservation still consisted of 390 acres (1.6 km ²), of which all but 10 were distributed among the residents. The land, kept under community ownership, yielded very few crops and the tribe members left it to get paying jobs in the cities. Wampanoag oral history tells that Christiantown was wiped out in 1888 by a smallpox epidemic.

The third reservation on Martha's Vineyard was constructed in 1711 by the New England Company (founded in 1649) to Christianize the natives. They bought land for the Gay Head natives who had lived there since before 1642. There was considerable dispute about how the land should be cultivated, as the colony had leased the better sections to the whites at low interest. The original goal of creating an undisturbed center for missionary work was quickly forgotten. The state finally created a reservation on a peninsula on the western point of Martha's Vineyard and named it Gay Head. This region was connected to the main island by an isthmus; it enabled the isolation desired by the Wampanoag. In 1849 they had 2,400 acres (9.7 km ²) there, of which 500 acres were distributed among the tribe members. The rest was communal property. In contrast to the other reservation groups, the tribe had no guardian or headman. When they needed advice on legal questions, they asked the guardian of the Chappaquiddick Reservation, but other matters they handled themselves. The band used usufruct title, meaning that members had no legal claim to their land and allowed the tribal members free rein over their choice of land, as well as over cultivation and building, in order to make their ownership clear. They did not allow whites to settle on their land. They made strict laws regulating membership in the tribe. As a result, they were able to strengthen the groups' ties to each other, and they did not lose their tribal identity until long after other groups had lost theirs.

The Wampanoag on Nantucket Island were almost completely destroyed by an unknown plague in 1763; the last Nantucket Wampanoag died in 1855.

Wampanoag educator at Plimoth Patuxet

Slightly more than 2,000 Wampanoag are counted as enrolled members of the nation today (many have ancestry including other tribes and races), and many live near the reservation (Watuppa Wampanoag Reservation) on Martha's Vineyard, in Dukes County. It is located in the town of Aquinnah (formerly known as Gay Head), at the extreme western part of the island. It has a land area of 1.952 square kilometres (482 acres), and a 2000 census resident population of 91 persons.

Today, there are two federally recognized Wampanoag tribes and no state-recognized Wampanoag tribes. There are numerous organizations that self-identify as Native American tribes who identify as Wampanoag. The Massachusetts' Commission on Indian Affairs works with some of these organizations.

Some genealogy experts testified that some of the tribes did not demonstrate the required continuity since historic times. For instance, in his testimony to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the historian Francis Hutchins said that the Mashpee "were not an Indian tribe in the years 1666, 1680, 1763, 1790, 1834, 1870, and 1970, or at any time between 1666 and 1970."[better source needed ] In his opinion, an Indian tribe was "an entity composed of persons of American Indian descent, which entity possesses distinct political, legal, cultural attributes, which attributes have descended directly from aboriginal precursors." Without accounting for cultural change, adaptation, and the effects of non-Indian society, Hutchins argued the Mashpee were not an Indian tribe historically because they adopted Christianity and non-Indian forms of dress and appearance, and chose to remain in Massachusetts as "second-class" citizens rather than emigrating westward (note: to Indian Territory) to "resume tribal existence." Hutchins also noted that they intermarried with non-Indians to create a "non-white" or "colored" community.[better source needed ] Hutchins appeared to require unchanged culture, including maintenance of a traditional religion and essentially total social autonomy from non-Indian society."

The Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe consists of more than 1,400 enrolled members who must meet defined membership requirements including lineage, community involvement and reside within 20 miles of Mashpee. Since 1924 they have held an annual powwow at the beginning of July in Mashpee. The Mashpee Wampanoag Tribal Council was established in 1972 under the leadership of its first president, Russell "Fast Turtle" Peters. In 1974 the Council petitioned the Bureau of Indian Affairs for recognition. In 1976 the tribe sued the Town of Mashpee for the return of ancestral homelands. The case was lost but the tribe continued to pursue federal recognition for three decades.

In 2000 the Mashpee Wampanoag council was headed by chairman Glenn Marshall. Marshall led the group until 2007 when it was disclosed that he had a prior conviction for rape, had lied about having a military record and was under investigation associated for improprieties associated with the tribe's casino lobbying efforts. Marshall was succeeded by tribal council vice- chair Shawn Hendricks. He held the position until Marshall pleaded guilty in 2009 to federal charges of embezzling, wire fraud, mail fraud, tax evasion and election finance law violations. He steered tens of thousands of dollars in illegal campaign contributions to politicians through the tribe's hired lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who was convicted of numerous charges in a much larger scheme. Following the arrests of Abramoff and Marshall, the newly recognized Mashpee Tribe led by new chair Shawn Hendricks, continued to work with Abramoff lobbyist colleague Kevin A. Ring pursuing their Indian gaming-related interests. Ring was subsequently convicted on corruption charges linked to his work for the Mashpee band. Tribal elders who had sought access to the tribal council records detailing the council's involvement in this scandal via a complaint filed in Barnstable Municipal Court were shunned by the council and banned them from the tribe for seven years.

In 2009 the tribe elected council member Cedric Cromwell to the position of council chair and president. Cromwell ran a campaign based on reforms and distancing himself from the previous chairmen, even though he had served as a councilor for the prior six years during which the Marshall and Abramoff scandals took place - including voting for the shunning of tribe members who tried to investigate. A challenge to Cromwell's election by defeated candidates following allegations of tampering with voting and enrollment records was filed with the Tribal Court, and Cromwell's administration has been hampered by a series of protest by Elders over casino-related finances.

The Mashpee Wampanoag tribal offices are located in Mashpee on Cape Cod. After decades of legal disputes, the Mashpee Wampanoag obtained provisional recognition as an Indian tribe from the Bureau of Indian Affairs in April 2006, and official Federal recognition in February 2007. Tribal members own some land, as well as land held in common by Wampanoag descendants at both Chapaquddick and Christiantown. Descendants have also purchased land in Middleborough, Massachusetts, upon which the tribe under Glenn A. Marshall's leadership had lobbied to build a casino. The tribe has moved its plans to Taunton, Massachusetts, but their territorial rights have been challenged by the Pocasset Wampanoag.

But Indian gaming operations are regulated by the National Indian Gaming Commission established by the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act. It contains a general prohibition against gaming on lands acquired into trust after October 17, 1988. The tribe's attempts to gain approvals have been met with legal and government approval challenges.

The Wampanoag Tribe's plan as of 2011 had agreement for financing by the Malaysian Genting Group and has the political support of Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, and former Massachusetts Congressman Bill Delahunt, who is working as a lobbyist to represent the casino project. Both Kerry and Delahunt received campaign contributions from the Wampanoag Tribe in transactions authorized by Glenn Marshall as part of the Abramoff lobbying scandal.

In November 2011, the Massachusetts legislature passed a law to license up to three sites for gaming resort casinos and one for a slot machine parlor. The Wampanoag are given a "headstart" to develop plans for a casino in southeastern part of the state.

A December 2021 ruling from the United States Department of the Interior gives the Mashpee Wampanoag "substantial control" over 320 acres on Cape Cod. The Obama administration had put the land in federal trust, but the Trump administration reversed that decision. A federal judge blocked that action and the federal government appealed, but the Biden administration dropped the appeal.

Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah)

Amos Hoskins, an Aquinnah Wampanoag Whaling Captain

The Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) are headquartered in Aquinnah, Massachusetts. Aquinnah translates as "land under the hill".) They are the only Wampanoag tribe to have a formal land-in-trust reservation, which is located on Martha's Vineyard. Their reservation consists of 485 acres (1.96 km ²) and is located on the outermost southwest part of the island. In 1972, Aquinnah Wampanoag descendants formed the Wampanoag Tribal Council of Gay Head, Inc., to achieve self-determination and federal recognition. The Bureau of Indian Affairs recognized the tribe in 1987. The tribe has 1,121 enrolled citizens.

Gladys Widdiss, an Aquinnah Wampanoag tribal historian and potter, served as the President of the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head from 1978 to 1987. The Aquinnah Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head won federal recognition from the United States government during her tenure. Under Widdis, the Aquinnah Wampanoag also acquired the Herring Creek, the Gay Head Cliffs, and the cranberry bogs surrounding Gay Head (now called Aquinnah) during her presidency.

The Aquinnah Wampanoag are led by tribal council chair Cheryl Andrews-Maltais, who was elected to the post in November 2007. In 2010, Andrews-Maltais put forward plans for the development of an Aquinnah reservation casino, which was met with opposition by state and local officials.

There are no state recognized Wampanoag tribes in Massachusetts, as the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has only one state recognized tribe, the Hassanamisco Nipmuc Band. The Massachusetts Commission on Indian Affairs lists several Wampanoag heritage groups under "Native American Resource Information," but the Commission itself lacks the authority to formally recognize any group claiming to be Native American, as state recognition is beyond the scope of the Commission outlined in Executive Order 126 and Massachusetts General Laws. Despite this, several unrecognized heritage groups have been represented as state recognized in unofficial directories and publications.

Numerous other unrecognized groups identify as being Wampanoag. Some have submitted letters of intent to petition for federal acknowledgment, but none have actively petitioned for federal acknowledgment. Unrecognized groups in Massachusetts include:

1. Assawompsett-Nemasket Band of Wampanoags

2. Assonet Band of Wampanoags

3. Cape Sable Island Wampanoag

https://www.nswampanoag.org/

1. Pocasset Wampanoag Indian Tribe, Great Falls, MA. (Letter of Intent to Petition 1/23/1995)

2. Pocasset Wampanoag Tribe of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, Great Falls, MA

3. Pocasset Wampanoag Tribe of the Pokanoket Nation, Cranston, RI

4. Pokanoket Nation; Council of Seven; Royal House of Pokanoket; Pokanoket Tribe; formerly Pokanoket Tribe of the Wampanoag Nation, Millbury, MA, and Bristol, RI (Letter of Intent to Petition 10/05/1994)

5. Pokanoket-Wampanoag Federation: Wampanoag Nation/Pokanoket Tribe and Bands (Letter of Intent to Petition 1/5/1998)

6. Ponkapoag Tribal Council

7. Seaconke Wampanoag Tribe, Warwick, RI (Letter of Intent to Petition 10/29/1998)

8. Chappaquiddick Wampanoag Tribe (Letter of Intent to Petition 05/21/2007)

9. Herring Pond Wampanoag Tribe, Plymouth, MA

Note: Contemporary people are listed under their specific tribes.

Crispus Attucks, first person killed in Boston Massacre

Caleb Cheeshahteaumuck, the first American Indian to graduate from Harvard College

Corbitant, 17th-century sachem of the Pocasset

Massasoit, the sachem who befriended the Mayflower pilgrims

Metacom or Metacomet, Massasoit's second son, also called Philip, who initiated King Philip's War (1675-1676)

John Sassamon, early translator

Wamsutta, Massasoit's oldest son, also known as Alexander

Weetamoo of the Pocasset, a woman who supported Metacom and drowned crossing the Taunton River during King Philip's War; one of her husbands was Wamsutta, a brother to King Phillip (Metacom)

1. ^ "Massachusetts: 2010; Population and Housing Unit Counts" (PDF). US Census 2010. US Department of Commerce. August 2012.

2. ^ http://www.coquilletribe.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/BOC-11-07-19-9-ED-Att.-1C-Census-2020-AIAN-Count-Table-2010.pdf[bare URL PDF ]

3. Salwen, "Indians of Southern New England and Long Island," p. 171.

4. Bureau of Indian Affairs (January 28, 2022). "Indian Entities Recognized by and Eligible To Receive Services From the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs". Federal Register. 86 (FR 7554): 4636.

5. ^ Marr JS, Cathey JT. "New hypothesis for cause of an epidemic among Native Americans, New England, 1616-1619", Emerging Infectious Diseases, Centers for Disease Control, 2010 Feb doi:10.3201/edi1602.090276

6. ^ Douglas-Lithgow, Robert Alexander (1909). Dictionary of American-Indian Place and Proper Names in New England. Salem, MA: Salem Press. p. 198. ISBN 978-0780803923.

7. See Bragdon, Kathleen, "Gender as a Social Category in Native Southern New England," ^ Ethnohistory 43:4, 1996, p. 576, and Plane, Colonial Intimacies, p. 20.

8. Williams, Roger. ^ Narrangansett Women. (Originally published 1643, cited from Woloch, N., ed., Early American Women: A Documentary History, 1600-1900 (New York: McGraw-Hill), 1997, p. 8).

9. ^ Marr JS, Cathey JT (February 2010). "New hypothesis for cause of an epidemic among Native Americans, New England, 1616-1619". Emerging Infectious Diseases. 16 (2): 281-286. doi:10.3201/eid1602.090276. PMC . PMID 20113559. Archived from the original on 30 January 2010.

10. ^ Salisbury, Introduction to Mary Rowlandson, p. 23.

11. ^ See Mary Rowlandson, The Sovereignty and Goodness of God, pp. 75 and 98.

12. ^ Salisbury, Introduction to Mary Rowlandson, p. 37.

13. ^ Handbook of North American Indians. Chapter: Indians of Southern New England and Long Island, late period, pp. 178.

14. Day 36, 130-140.

15. ^ Carrillo, Jo (1998). Readings in American Indian Law: Recalling the Rhythm of Survival. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. p. 40. ISBN 978-1566395823.

16. ^ Hedgpeth, Danawork=Washington Post (December 31, 2021). "Wampanoag, who helped Pilgrims survive, win rights to tribal lands".

17. ^ "Wampanoag" Archived October 29, 2013, at the Wayback Machine Cradleboard Teaching Project. Retrieved: 14 August 2012.

18. Melville, H., ^ "Moby-Dick", chapter 27. The Folio Society 2009. A Limited Edition with 281 illustrations by Rockwell Kent.

Bragdon, Kathleen. "Gender as a Social Category in Native Southern New England". American Society for Ethnohistory, Ethnohistory 43:4. Autumn 1996. doi:10.2307/483246. JSTOR 483246.

Plane, Anne Marie. Colonial Intimacies: Indian Marriage in Early New England. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000.

Rowlandson, Mary White (1997). Salisbury, Neal (ed.). The Sovereignty and Goodness of God. Boston: Bedford Books.

Salisbury, Neal. Manitou and Providence. (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 1982.

Leach, Douglas Edward. Flintlock and Tomahawk. New York: W. W. Norton. ISBN 978-0-393-00340-6, 1958.

Ronda, James P. "Generations of Faith: The Christian Indians of Martha's Vineyard." William and Mary Quarterly 38, 1981. doi:10.2307/1921953. JSTOR 1921953.

Salisbury, Neal. Introduction to The Sovereignty and Goodness of God by Mary Rowlandson. Boston: Bedford Books, 1997.

Salisbury, Neal. Manitou and Providence. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982.

Salisbury, Neal, and Colin G. Calloway, eds. Reinterpreting New England Indians and the Colonial Experience. Vol. 71 of Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts. Boston: University of Virginia Press, 1993.

Salwen, Bert (1978). "Indians of Southern New England and Long Island: Early Period". In Trigger, Bruce G. (ed.). Handbook of North American Indians: Northeast, Vol. 15. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution. pp. 160-176. ISBN 978-0-1600-4575-2.

Lepore, Jill. The Name of War. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf), 1998.

Mayhew, Experience. "Family Religion Excited and Assisted" (1714-1728).

Mayhew, Experience. "Indian Converts" (1727). (U. Mass. Press edition ISBN 1-55849-661-0), 2008. Indian Converts Collection

Silverman, David. Faith and Boundaries: Colonists, Christianity, and Community Among the Wampanoag Indians of Martha's Vineyard, 1600-1871. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007. ISBN 0-521-70695-5.

Waters, Kate, and Kendall, Russ. Tapenum's Day: A Wampanoag Indian Boy in Pilgrim Times. New York: Scholastic, 1996. ISBN 0-590-20237-5.

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The Wampanoag (), also rendered Wôpanâak, are a Native American people of the Northeastern Woodlands based in southeastern Massachusetts and historically parts of eastern Rhode Island. Their territory historically includes the islands of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket. Today, two Wampanoag tribes are federally recognized: The Wampanoag language is a dialect of Massachusett, a Southern New England Algonquian language.

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Imagine leaving your home and setting out for a new, largely unknown world. Imagine taking only a few clothes and tools - no toys, no books, and certainly no video games. Now imagine traveling in the belly of a small boat with 100 other people. There is no privacy and only a small pot to use as a toilet! You are seasick most of the voyage, but when you feel well enough to eat, you eat plain food, such as hard biscuits, dried fish, or unsweetened oatmeal. Welcome to life aboard the Mayflower!

In 1620, 102 Pilgrims sailed to the New World on the Mayflower. They were seeking a place to worship God as they wanted. Most of them paid dearly for their beliefs, not surviving the first winter.
Fun Facts

The Mayflower was a merchant ship, designed to transport goods. It wasn't really meant for passengers and was hardly comfortable. It was 90 feet long, large by the day's standards, but very crowded.

The Pilgrims didn't agree with the teachings of the Catholic Church or the Church of England. They wanted to follow the Bible's teachings more closely. They were called Separatists and were persecuted by political and religious leaders in England.

The Pilgrims originally planned to sail to Virginia but their ship was blown off course. They landed in Plymouth, Massachusetts. They decided to make their own laws, called the Mayflower Compact.

The Pilgrims landed in America on November 11, 1620. The trip had taken 66 days.

One passenger, William Butten, died on the voyage. One child, Oceanus Hopkins, was born.

The Pilgrims landed in Massachusetts in the winter. They were already weak and sick from the trip. Finding food and building homes was very difficult. Of the 102 passengers, only 51 survived the first winter.

Friendly Wampanoag Indians taught the Pilgrims how to grow corn, squash, beans, and pumpkins. Without their help, the Pilgrims probably wouldn't have succeeded in building their colony.

John Carver was the first governor of the colony. He died in 1621.

Vocabulary

1. Privacy: to be alone or undisturbed by other people

2. Merchant: someone in the business of trading or selling goods

3. Persecute: to cause emotional or physical harm to others because of their beliefs

Questions and Answers
Question: What did the Pilgrims do to entertain themselves on the Mayflower?

Answer: The Pilgrims sometimes walked above deck during calm weather, but they generally remained in the cramped quarters below. They were often sick from being tossed in the ocean's waves and were sometimes thrown against the walls in stormy weather. They probably talked quietly or played games. John Howland, a servant to John Carver, was thrown into the sea during a storm. He grabbed a rope trailing in the water and crew pulled him aboard. Lucky thing, since more than 2 million Americans are descended from him, including George Bush, George W. Bush, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Mormon leader, Joseph Smith.
Learn More
Visit Scholastic for an interactive tour of the Mayflower and life in New England.

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In 1620, 102 Pilgrims sailed to the New World on the Mayflower. They were seeking a place to worship God as they wanted. The trip had taken 66 days.

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A pilgrim is someone who travels to a foreign place, sometimes for religious reasons. In U.S. history, the group of people called the Pilgrims were the founders of Plymouth...