The Pilgrims aboard the Mayflower were not planning to go to Massachusetts.
The Pilgrims (a name coined for them after the fact) were similar to Puritans – except they had split with the Church of England and fled to the Netherlands to avoid religious persecution and considered themselves to be a separate group.
Spain and the Netherlands had a twelve year truce in place that was going to expire in 1621. The Separatists living in Holland were largely allowed to follow their religious beliefs and feared that when the truce expired, the Roman Catholics running Spain would again try to seize control of the Netherlands and end the religious tolerance they enjoyed under Dutch rule. Their fears were well-founded when Ferdinand of Styria resumed the 30 years war in 1621 in an attempt to crush Protestant areas of Europe and return Roman Catholic control. The war would continue until 1648.
So the Pilgrims arranged to have two boats take them first to England for supplies and then cross the Atlantic to New Netherlands, the Dutch area in the New World that extended from Delaware to SW Cape Cod. Henry Hudson had explored the region originally, and the area had a small number of settlers mostly engaged in the fur trading business. They were going to settle near an already established colony – some of the passengers on board were not religious refugees but were there because they were hired by investors to work on building a commercial outpost (which would become New Amsterdam in 1624). English (not Dutch) investors ultimately funded the journey with an expectation of profits from the colony once it was well established.
During the transit of the North Atlantic, the ship was blown off course and ran low on supplies – the other ship had returned to England because it was not sea worthy and the people from both ships were crowded onto the Mayflower. The ship landed in what is now Massachusetts as winter set in. The half of the group who survived the winter on the ship did so by digging up food that was discovered in Indian burial mounds. Prior contact with the English had killed most of the native tribe in the area due to introduced disease. Upon landing, the Pilgrims found an iron cooking pot (Native Americans did not have the ability to smelt iron ore) and several empty buildings of European design (built by English fishermen).
One of the reasons for the Mayflower Compact was that some of the passengers were not Pilgrims and did not expect to be living in a religious colony when they arrived at New Netherlands. When some of the passengers revolted against the imposition of rule by the religious majority, they were given the “choice” to join the majority and sign the compact or not be part of the colony (which likely meant certain death) or to hope to survive a return to England. The Mayflower Compact was an agreement (with no specifics) for the people getting off the boat to agree to live by the rules to be determined later by the Pilgrims majority. So the first act of the Pilgrims fleeing religious persecution was to impose their religious beliefs on others. That is what we celebrate and why this document is so important to America.
In April 1621, the Mayflower returned safely to Europe and is believed to have been scrapped for its lumber after the ship’s captain died.
Really Art? Can you please cite your last paragraph…I read William Bradford’s biography and not Howard Zinn’s retelling of the “People’s History”…You failed to mention the extortion of the Separatist’s from the outset by the very same men whom you claim they tried to “impose their beliefs” upon.
Excuse me, I need to correct myself, I have read both Bradford’s AUTObiography and Zinn’s “People’s History…”and have come away with a very different understanding of the events surrounding the Mayflower voyage and landing.
Well, an autobiography is much more likely to be an accurate portrayal of events than an account from a neutral third party.
Welcome to the blog.
Since you’re more familiar with the subject, was the diversion from New Netherlands to Massachusetts really due solely to bad weather or was it a decision to not head towards Manhattan – because the investors funding the venture were English and not Dutch? One account I read mentioned that the Mayflower departed without actually having the agreement in place of what land they were “given” and what the terms were.
Those weren’t burial mounds. They were food caches.
Also, the settlers were very anxious to have a rule of law and civilization in the colony. So many times outsiders seek to impose their lack of morals on a religious community and fail to respect what others consider sacred. When I visit places where a religious majority is evident, I go out of my way not to make fun of or show disrespect for their beliefs – even if I don’t personally live by them myself.
The Native Americans probably felt that way, too. But they didn’t have guns.
Too true. I was focusing on the compact and the people who didn’t want to sign it.
But as to the Native Americans — raiding the food caches and putting the native people in danger of starving during the winter was reprehensible. The commercial adventurers disrespected the Pilgrims, the Pilgrims disrespected the local natives. The local natives’ generosity to the settlers continued a lot longer than the settlers deserved.
The motivation for writing this was my own research maybe a month ago. I’m the product of the public school system from the 1960s/70s) and had been taught about the Mayflower Compact in abstract terms. My polls suggest that many people include the Mayflower Compact as an “important founding document” of the United States.
As a result, I looked around and read the history of the Compact and the actual text – and was surprised how little the document actually says. It doesn’t lay out any grand principles or structure. It merely says that the people in the colony will agree to live by the rules of the colony – which will be deteremined later. It doesn’t even lay out the process by which those rules will be created or any sort of legal structure.
It’s also interesting that people want to etrapolate that agreement by the passengers on one boat as “proof” that the United States itself was “founded as Christian Nation”.