Not what I was hoping for | Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War

Harsh times (3.75 *s) | Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War | Nathaniel Philbrick

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	• Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War Nathaniel Philbrick Penguin (Non-Classics), 2007 - 480 pages average customer review:based on 278 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

More than Thanksgiving dinner

Turkey and dressing shared by Pilgrims and Indians is the basic tale that school kids get out of the Mayflower story. But fifty-five years of trial and tribulation on the part of both Puritans and native peoples is the dramatic reality detailed in this epic by Nathaniel Philbrick.

An engrossing story, both herioc and tragic, Mayflower is a great companion read with Savage Kingdom by Benjamin Woolley which narrates the establishment of the Jamestown settlement that predates The Mayflower landing by three years.

Not what I was hoping for

I couldn't get into this book because it was very different from what I thought it would be. I expected "Mayflower" to be a detailed account of why the pilgrims decided to journey to America, and also a vivid description of what life aboard the Mayflower was actually like. The book did cover those things, but only for a few short pages. Most of the book is devoted to the history of Plymouth Colony and King Philip's War. Author Nataniel Philbrick does an excellent job of shooting down the myths many people believe about what the pilgrim settlement was actually like, but I was much more interested in reading about the actual Mayflower journey and was disappointed that so little information about that event was included in this 400+ page book. "Mayflower" should be called "King Philip's War" so readers know what they're getting into.

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Harsh times (3.75 *s)

This book is a fairly fast-paced tale of the coming of the Pilgrims, or Puritan-Separatists, to Plymouth, Mass in 1620, their early struggle for mere survival, and most significantly their relationship with the Indians of the New England area over the next fifty-six years which took a tragic turn into the brutal and bloody King Philip's War nearly decimating the Indians. The book reads almost like historical fiction focusing on key personalities such as William Bradford and Benjamin Church and their imagined conversations with other characters including Indians. Students of history interested in the details of political, social, economic, and religious structures and practice will be disappointed in this book, as such details are only minimally sprinkled into the narrative.

The book begins in Holland where the Pilgrims had to take refuge from James I for their Separatist views, that is, their rejection of the formalities of the Anglican Church. But they came to the realization that a fresh start in an untainted land as America appeared to them was necessary for attaining their religious principles. As the author describes those first few months after leaving Holland, it is almost inconceivable that the Pilgrims survived an Atlantic crossing in November and a winter in makeshift housing with an extreme shortage of food. Actually half succumbed in that first winter. It was fortuitous for the Pilgrims that the Indian population had been drastically reduced in previous years due to the introduction of European diseases in that an incentive was provided for cooperation rather than eliminating the invaders.

A massive migration to New England began with the ascension of Charles I to the throne of England, which after several decades had a significant impact on the environment in New England in terms of deforestation and the huge reduction in wildlife. The impact of these developments fell mostly on the Indians because of their dependence on wildlife for survival and trade with the English. The Indians were forced to sell their lands, which simply exacerbated the problem. Eventually a resolution of that situation was inevitable. While King Philip, an Indian chieftain, gets much of the blame for starting the war, in actuality neither the English nor the Indians were equipped to address the situation and matters simply escalated. Fully one-third of the book is devoted to King Philip's War, detailing mostly movements, battles, and man's inhumanity to man.

Provided maps do help in following the war, yet the proliferation of names of locales, Indians, and Englishmen starts to become a bit much. Maybe a timeline would have helped. Some have called the book myth-busting. One rather suspects that most of the material is simply unknown by most, so despite any shortcomings of the book, it is both interesting and educational. It is also evenhanded. However, the author does not attempt to minimize the cruelty of those times.

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Mayflower

The history presented by Nathaniel Philbrick is very interesting and gives a person a more personable view of the Mayflower families and times (as well as of the Indians in New England). I found his information to be quite complete and filled in a lot of history that has not been published before that I know of.

Unraveling a Myth

" Wherever they first set foot on the American continent, it wasn't Plymouth, and it certainly wasn't Plymouth Rock. The first Thanksgiving (in 1621) was indeed attended by Indians as well as Pilgrims, but they didn't sit at the tidy table depicted in Victorian popular art; they "stood, squatted, or sat on the ground as they clustered around outdoor fires, where the deer and birds turned on wooden spits and where pottages -- stews into which varieties of meats and vegetables were thrown -- simmered invitingly."

- Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick

How many of us grew up with myths about the Pilgrims and about the first Thanksgiving? We all believed that the Pilgrims and the Indians sat at a beautiful table laden with turkey, cranberries and all of the fixings. Not only was that not the case, they certainly didn't set foot on Plymouth Rock.

Philbrick puts these myths to rest. And he tells us about the beginning of our new country and what was the basis for its foundation. Our myths contained stories about Massasoit and Squanto, Bradford and Winslow and, of course, Miles Standish.

One of the major accounts in the book was that of the King Philip's War. We learned that it really did not have to be. Both sides could have developed solutions which respected the goodness in each other as well as the differences.

We learned about how the Indians were shipped off to foreign places during this war and were separated from all of their families and tribes....never to be heard from again (having been made slaves). Only a few ever made it back like Squanto, for example.

Philbrick discusses why the war occurred after so many years of peace and why the descendants of Massasoit and of Bradford and Winslow came to see things differently than their fathers; losing sight of the faith and the respect for the individual that their forefathers had long revered. They also blocked out the memory of how they all needed one another to survive.

The Mayflower Compact, we learn, is one document that laid the foundations for the country that America was to become. Yet, our forefathers had to live through a nightmare of a war (of their own making) where both sides suffered tremendously. It took many years after the war ended to ever recoup even a portion of what was lost.

Philbrick's book is a story of courage, community and war on both sides as well as a story of how our forefathers lost sight of what the Indians had done for their ancestors and their fathers and what was owed to these people. In doing so, they also lost sight of the need for diplomacy and how to work together to come up with solutions that would be good for both the settlers as well as the Indians.

MAYFLOWER has won many awards and the book deserves all of them. What I have come away with deals first with the myth. This was unraveled for me so that I could understand and gain knowledge of the facts of these early settlements. I learned what worked, what didn't work and why the peaceful compact fell apart. I also learned that we can gain a lot from understanding our past and that we do not have to make the same mistakes over again.

Nathaniel Philbrick has given us hope that our future does not always have to resemble our past. He wrote, "When violence and fear grip a society, there is an almost overpowering temptation to demonize the enemy. But some on both sides refused to succumb. They were the ones whose rambunctious and intrinsically rebellious faith in humanity finally brought the war to an end, and they are the heroes of this story."

During the times that we face now, our heroes can continue to be those leaders and citizens who strive to focus on their faith in humanity; and celebrate our differences as well as our similarities in order to find solutions rather than reasons to turn away from each other.

Four Stars: B+ (Recommend Highly)

Bentley/2007
Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War

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