With the fuss we make over Thanksgiving, I’d bet most
Americans believe the Pilgrims were the first nonnative American settlers in North America.
Put aside the putative Norse landfall, and the certainty of
the Spaniards in
Florida and on the
Pacific Coast; it’s the Anglo-American narrative
that captains a big part of early American history.
And that narrative didn’t begin at Plymouth Rock.
The first permanent English settlement was in Virginia, not Massachusetts,
in Jamestown, not Plymouth – in 1607, not in 1620.
So how did the Pilgrims, and not the folk of Jamestown, manage
to get top billing, even though they showed up 13 years late to the party that
became the United States of America (and about 35 years after the short-lived
Roanoke Colony)?
Maybe it was demographics. The Pilgrims came with women and
children (and some nonbelievers); women didn’t come to the Jamestown colony until the year after it was
settled.
Maybe it was class structure. The Pilgrims arrived with
indentured laborers, as did the Jamestown
company. But the Jamestown
group seemed more class-stratified, being, at least by Captain John Smith’s
account, excessively burdened with ‘’gentlemen’’ averse to labor.
Maybe it was because, at the outset anyway, the Pilgrims evidently got on
better with the native Americans than the Virginia colonists did (save for the
renowned story of Pocahontas saving the life of Captain John Smith, for what
that’s worth).
Maybe it was the motive for coming here in the first place,
at least motive through the lens of history. Plymouth
and Jamestown
both had feet in a couple of joint English stock companies. One of its
excursions actually set up housekeeping in Maine
in the same year that Jamestown
was settled, but it was soon abandoned.
In
Jamestown,
profit was the driving force, and the Pilgrims' voyage was financed at least in part by Puritan businessmen bent on proselytizing and profit. But profit didn't cast as glorious a glow in the historical imagination as the
Puritans’ ‘’religious freedom’’ motive did -- plucky, God-fearing folk
seeking freedom of
worship, a freedom they turned around and denied to others.
Anyway, that’s my thinking. What’s yours? How did Bay State turkey
trump Virginia ham, and the Pilgrims trump the Virginians in history and imagination?
-- Patt Morrison
The reason is simple. The Pilgrims (and the Puritans which followed in far greater numbers) were an entire society transplanted in the New World. Virginia was essentially a business affair, sponsered by Lords, populated by adventurous men (aka ne'er-do-wells). Virginia built a colony, Bay colony built a nation.
Posted by: berkley palmer | November 24, 2009 at 11:07 AM
Thanksgiving is an Anglo holiday. To Native Americans across this nation Thanksgiving is a "Day of Mourning".
Posted by: A-F | November 24, 2009 at 03:42 PM
Was it?
St. Augustine Fl 1st French, then Spaniards
Jamestown Va English
Plymouth Rock area English
But the Norse were in North America 400 years before that !(this may explain the large number of blue-eyed "INDIANS"
Posted by: tucanofulano | November 25, 2009 at 05:16 PM
The answer is simple. Folks in New England wrote the first history books. Who writes history is more important than who lives it. Even today in history books the Middle Passage is taught in the section on New England, but the horror and evils of slavery are not taught until two chapters later, The Southern Colonies.
By the way, Plymouth Rock? Based on the recollection of a 90+ year old man and that took place well over 100 years after the landing. He was recalling what the "first comers" told him.
First Pilgrim landing? Provincetown on Cape Cod, a site now memorialized by a small obelisk (about waist high) and a marker in the parking lot of a motel.
First act in the New World? Rob Native American graves of corn.
Why was Squanto available to help the Pilgrims? His tribe was wiped out by either the plague or smallpox (historians differ).
Where were the Pilgrims granted a charter to land? Virginia
Looking for religious freedom? They had that in Holland,(where they had been living before coming to the New World) but were afraid that their children would take up with other religions. What they wanted was religious freedom for them, AND NO ONE ELSE.
Do not confuse the Pilgrims with the Puritans. Pilgrims were separatists who wanted to leave the Church of England. The Puritans thought they could purify the Church of its "Popeist" tendencies. About the only thing they agreed upon was "Lets kill the natives and take their land."
Posted by: Bill Morris | November 26, 2009 at 07:07 AM
Simple. The Pilgrims won the Civil War. (Massachusetts, not Virginia.) Winners define history. I'm not saying it's right, just saying it's true.
Posted by: Heather | November 26, 2009 at 10:08 AM
It's the religous aspect. Unlike all other English settlers, the Pilgrims came here because they believed in something, and were ready to risk everything for their faith. That is why they have struck a deeper chord in history.
Posted by: Schigolch | November 26, 2009 at 04:00 PM
the number,religious overtone and relatively more humble origin of pilgrims naturally triumphed over wealthy colonialists in the quest for nation's idealistic psyche. Native Americans paid the price at the end anyway!!!!!
Posted by: amit ghosh | November 26, 2009 at 06:46 PM
The Norse, of course, landed in the New World 400 years before any other Europeans. They reached at least as far inland as what is now Minnesota. Apparently their bloodlines were assimilated into the bloodlines of "native american". Perhaps that explained why so many blue-eyed 'native americans" were here to greet the French, then Spanish, then Dutch, then English "settlers" when they arrived.
Posted by: Tucano Fulano | November 27, 2009 at 05:52 PM
I still find it so amusing that the myth of Pilgrims = religious freedom continues to exist in this country.
It is true that the Pilgrims left England in search of religious freedom. They went to the Netherlands. They found religious freedom. The story of the search for religious freedom ends right there.
They found that they could not maintain absolute control of their children, who had the freedom to turn to a different religion in the Netherlands. To prevent their young people from having the freedom of religious conscience, they subsequently moved to Massachusetts where their young were not exposed to alternative ideas.
So, to prevent religious freedom, they set up their religious intolerance experiment in the New World. And remember the freedom witches had to practice their faith (if in fact there were any witches at all? Very doubtful there were any witches in Salem.)
Posted by: ColleenHarper | November 28, 2009 at 12:23 AM