The Pilgrims' Journey

Our Thanksgiving holiday has its origin in the
Puritan Thanksgivings of Colonial New England

There are only two references to the fall or harvest celebration that we know today as the First Thanksgiving.  It is not known exactly when the event occurred but it was between September 21, when a group of Plymouth men returned from Massachusetts Bay, and November 9, 1621, when the ship Fortune arrived with additional settlers. 

What people call the "First Thanksgiving" wasn't a thanksgiving to the Pilgrims.  A Thanksgiving, to the Pilgrims, was a formal religious service.  In the writings of the first year in Plymouth, no such service was mentioned.  But they do mention a three-day feast and historians believe it was a Harvest Home celebration, such as those held in England to celebrate the gathering of the crops.

"Pilgrims" is a collective name for the first group of permanent European settlers in New England.  In their own eyes, they were a group divided between Saints, those with religious reasons for leaving home, and Strangers, those with economic motives. 

The story began in the English village of Scrooby.  A congregation of Separatists (or Puritans), in 1609 emigrated from there to Leiden, Holland, in pursuit of religious freedom.  After a few years, they began to desire a land of their own where they could live as Englishmen and preserve their faith.  News about the thriving English colony in Jamestown, Virginia, led them to apply to the Virginia Company for a patent where they were granted rights to found a Particular Plantation, to be located somewhere near the mouth of the Hudson River.

The Separatists, being unable to finance an expedition themselves, turned to a group of merchant capitalists, the Company of Adventurers, who agreed to provide necessary finances in return for most of the profits earned by the colony in the first seven years of operation.  These merchants chartered the Mayflower for the voyage to America.  The Leiden group bought a much smaller ship, the Speedwell, and 35 of the congregation sailed on it from the Netherlands to Southampton, England.

At Southampton they met the rest of the future colonists, who were non-Separatists enlisted by the company to provide enough people for a working colony.  These were referred to as Strangers.  The Separatists called themselves Saints. 

With an approximate number of 120, with 90 aboard the Mayflower, the Pilgrims set sail on August 15.  After a few days of sailing, the Speedwell was found to have leaks.  The two captains turned back into Dartmouth for repairs.  After almost two weeks, they set out once again.  But the Speedwell proved to be unseaworthy and turned into Plymouth where it was decided to abandon the ship.  Some 20 travelers were abandoned also, as the Mayflower could not hold all of them.

On September 6, the Mayflower set out alone.  Because of the delays caused by the Speedwell, the crossing of the Atlantic was later than planned and became a difficult voyage for the Mayflower and its people. 

There were 102 passengers aboard the Mayflower, the majority of them being Anglicans, mostly from southeastern England or London itself.  About one-third of the passengers were children, with most of the adults being in their twenties and thirties, the oldest being William Brewster, who was under the age of 55.  The three passengers we know so well, with much of their fame provided by the poet, Longfellow, are Captain Myles Standish, Priscilla Mullins and John Alden.  About half of all who survived that first year were under 16 years of age.

Meeting with severe storms, conditions on board the Mayflower were harsh.  Because of the furious storms, the people were confined below deck for long periods of time, many becoming ill.  The long trip was damp and cold and with there being danger of fire on the wooden ship, the food had to be eaten cold.  With so many passengers becoming sick, one died by the time land was sighted.

Being blown off course by these storms, land was eventually sighted, with the Mayflower coming to rest, 66 days later, on November 11, 1620, at Cape Cod, far north and east of the Hudson River.

Realizing that the terms of their agreement applied to Virginia, not New England, the leaders of the two groups, the Saints and the Strangers, drafted the Mayflower Compact.

In this historic document, signed November 11, 1620, on board the ship within sight of land, they stated their intentions to remain united and to make laws for the general good of the new colony.  The Compact established the basic form of government for the colony which guaranteed equality and unified the two groups, setting the precedent for other colonies as they set up governments. 

~ Plymouth Plantation ~

Since Cape Cod was unsuitable for settlement, several men set out in a smaller boat to search for a place to build. 

It was mid-December before they decided on the sheltered harbor and well-cleared land that became Plymouth, which had been named by Captain John Smith in 1614.  They later discovered that this was the site of a Putuxet Indian village whose inhabitants had died of disease.  The Pilgrims soon began building their settlement on the slope of a hill overlooking the harbor.
 

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During that first winter, as they struggled to build shelter, exceptionally heavy snow and sleet interfered with the workers as they constructed their settlement, with illness sweeping throughout the community.

In Governor William Bradford's words:

     "...In two or three months' time half of their company died, especially in January and February, being the depth of winter, and wanting houses and other comforts; being infected with the scurvy and other diseases which this long voyaage...had brought them.  So as there died as many as two or three of a day in the foresaid time, that of a 100 and odd persons, scarce 50 remained."

March brought warmer weather and the health of the Pilgrims improved but of the 50 people who survived that first terrible winter, over half were children and there were only four adult women left.

On March 16, 1621 an Abnaki Indian brave by the name of Samoset walked into the Plymouth settlement.  He had learned English from the captains of fishing boats that sailed off the coast.  After spending the night, he left the next day, soon returning with another Indian named Squanto.  He told the Pilgrims of his voyages across the ocean and visits to Spain and England, where he'd learned English.

It has been said that without Squanto's help, the Pilgrims would not have survived.  He taught them how to tap the maple trees for sap and which plants were poisonous and which had medicinal powers.  He taught them how to plant the Indian corn by heaping the earth into low mounds with several seeds and fish in each mound, with the decaying fish fertilizing the corn; and he also taught them to plant other crops with the corn.

The harvest in October was very successful and the Pilgrims found themselves with enough food to put away for the winter.  There was corn, fruits and vegetables, along with fish which was packed in salt, and meat that was smoke cured over fires.

The Pilgrims had much to celebrate...they had built homes in the wilderness and had raised enough crops to keep them alive during the long coming winter.  They were at peace with their Indian neighbors.