Why the Pilgrims Were a Big Deal

Here's the story of the Pilgrim Fathers.

Music by Electric Needle Room.

All images found in the public domain.

Once upon a time, 102 people on a merchant ship called the Mayflower sailed out across the Atlantic Ocean. Leaving Plymouth, in southwestern England, on September 16th, 1620, the ship included 35 members of a Puritan group known as the English Separatist Church. These Puritans were trying to find a place where they could peacefully practice their radical religion, which was not accepted in their old home of England. On board was William Bradford, a leader of these Puritans, who would later write about this trip so that we would know about it today.

The ship experienced smooth sailing at first, but when they were more than halfway across the ocean, they ran into a huge storm with really strong winds. One passenger, John Howland, was carried off the ship by water, but fortunately caught a rope trailing the ship in the water and was able to pull himself back on board. The storm also caused one of the main beams to crack on the ship, but they were able to repair it, and after the storm kept on sailing west.

While on board, a group of 41 men signed what would later be known as the Mayflower Compact, which became the first governing document of the new colony they would create.

Along the way, two people died, one crew member and one passenger. But one baby was born, named Oceanus Hopkins. Because of the rough seas and storms, the Mayflower ended up much further north than it the Pilgrims had originally planned. Finally, land was spotted. On November 21st, 66 days after they left England, the Mayflower landed on the shores of modern day Cape Cod. They called it Plymouth Harbor. About a month later, they found an area on the mainland suitable for settlement, and called it New Plymouth since that’s what John Smith called the area when he mapped it a few years prior- the town of Plymouth still exists today. The area used to be the home of Native Americans, or Indians, who all died from a smallpox epidemic brought from European traders and explorers.

During the next few months, the settlers lived mostly on the Mayflower still, and took a small boat back and forth from the shore to build New Plymouth. The Pilgrims had the misfortune of landing at the beginning of winter. During that horrible first winter, more than half of the English settlers died from diseases like scurvy, the cold, and starvation.

In March, 1621, the Pilgrims made their first formal contact with the Indians, who were very friendly. The Indians near the Plymouth Colony were all members of different tribes of the Wampanoag people, who had been there for around 10,000 years before Europeans arrived. The Wampanoag chief, Massasoit, along with a Pawtuxet tribe member known as Squanto, were a little uneasy about the Pilgrims. After all, Massasoit had seen members of his tribe killed by previous English sailors, and Squanto was actually kidnapped by John Smith’s men a few years prior but managed to escape to England. Squanto later returned to his native land to find out that most of his tribe had died of the same smallpox epidemic I mentioned before- you know, the one that wiped out the area the Pilgrims were now living in.

However, Massasoit and Squanto decided to make peace with the Pilgrims. After exchanging gifts, Massasoit and John Carver, Plymouth’s first governor, established a formal treaty of peace, promising to never harm each other and to be friends.

In April 1621, the Mayflower returned to England, and now the Pilgrims officially were on their own. It would be a rough first year. Shortly after the Mayflower left, Carver died, and the popular William Bradford was elected unanimously to take over. He would serve as Plymouth’s governor off and on for the next 30 years. Though Bradford was a strong leader, the Pilgrims still struggled to survive. Fortunately for them, Squanto stuck around to help them out quite a bit.