After long living in Dutch cities, the Pilgrims had few agrarian skills, little hunting acumen and nary a fishhook to ply the Atlantic waters. These geography-challenged self-exiles whose intended destination was south of the Hudson River, not Cape Cod would likely have gone the route of the near-disastrous Jamestown, Virginia, experiment had it not been for the good graces of the English-speaking Indian Squanto who, along with local with Wampanoags , taught them to fish and live off the land.
Unlike later arrivals, the Pilgrims were not intent on conquering the inhabitants. Suspicious tribes marked their movements for months and vastly outnumbered the English, who had no desire for confrontation. They resembled a reclusive religious cult, and we can almost hear the echo of Greta Garbo murmuring, "I want to be alone. They were friendly but withdrawn, leery of others. Thanksgiving was a wary exchange of food and friendship. But regardless of the gestures of gratitude on behalf of Pilgrim leader William Bradford and tacit acceptance by the Wampanoag sachem Massasoit, that feast turned out to be the high point in their relations.
Sharing could not be sustained after it became clear that the English were there to stay, posing a threat to Native American autonomy. Peaceful coexistence was illusive. Conflict became frequent. The spirit of amity of the first Thanksgiving evaporated.
Over ensuing years, Bay Colony fear, xenophobia and self-righteousness replaced Plymouth's curiosity, conversation and Christian goodwill. Cultural differences may have been too difficult to bridge, particularly since so few English bothered to learn the Algonquin languages. Sachems Massasoit of the Wampanoags and Canonicus of the Narragansetts reluctantly welcomed early settlers but were overwhelmed by the magnitude of the steady stream of Europeans.
The equation was skewed and, by the s, their world had been turned inside out. Resentment among sons and daughters who had seen their fathers humiliated, threatened and robbed of their heritage could not be contained. As the younger generation watched its options dwindling, the resulting calamity became inevitable. Hostilities ensued, and how they commenced deepened the tragedy. No one at the Thanksgiving feast in would have dared imagine that Massasoit , whose benevolence had saved the Pilgrims from extinction, would be the agent of the destruction of Indian authority in New England.
But—Shakespearean in its savage irony—the seeds of destruction had been sown within the sachem's own family. On Massasoit's death, his son Metacomet also named Philip became leader of the powerful Wampanoags. A half century of broken promises spurred Metacomet's violent retribution. They have the same outlook. They follow the same principles. In , about a hundred separatist Puritans fled to the Netherlands, where they hoped to be able to practice their faith freely.
They spent 10 years living in the city of Leiden, but hard work and poor living conditions began to take a toll on their health. They also worried that Dutch youth were corrupting their children. So in , a fraction of the congregation — about 37 Separatists — decided to sail to America to form a new religious colony. They sailed to Southampton, England, and on September 6, with backing from a London merchant and a patent to settle in the Virginia Colony, they set sail on the Mayflower, headed for the mouth of the Hudson River, which at that time was part of the Virginia Colony.
After a rough crossing, the Mayflower arrived at the tip of Cape Cod on November Dangerous sandbars and rough waters prevented them from reaching the Hudson River, so the Pilgrim leaders decided they should remain on the Cape. Refer to Religion in the Colonies. Was a Pilgrim a Puritan? Good Question!
The Pilgrim and Puritan were extremely similar in most practices and beliefs. A pilgrim was a distinct type of Puritan. A Pilgrim adhered to more extreme views than a Puritan. The Pilgrim and the Puritan were both strongly opposed to the Catholic Church. Both the Pilgrim and the Puritan colonists believed that the Church of England, the Anglican church, should make more reforms to get rid of all traces of the Roman Catholic Church.
But but the Pilgrim was a member of a distinct group of puritans who were not only against the Anglican church but also called for total separation from the church, a dangerous religious belief in England.
Blurring the line between those groups is often part of the American mythologizing of that period. The Pilgrims separated from the Church of England and fled to the Netherlands because of religious persecution in England.
They boarded the Mayflower, not because of continuing religious troubles in the Netherlands, but because of the economic hardships they faced there. The Puritans, however, came to the Americas a decade later, in greater numbers, and with far more institutional resources at their disposal. Whereas Pilgrims came over on the Mayflower, 1, Puritans came to Boston. Unlike the Pilgrims, the Puritans had an official charter from the King of England to establish a colony and had not separated from the Church of England.
The political and religious diversity of these early English settlers is reflected in the kinds of literature they produced.
Both Pilgrims and Puritans wrote poetry, sermons, diaries, and autobiographies. Many of them were literate, including women.
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