Mayflower

VIKING
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi–110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), Cnr Airborne and Rosedale Roads, Albany, Auckland 1310, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

    Penguin Books, Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

    First published in 2006 by Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

    Copyright © Nathaniel Philbrick, 2006
Maps copyright © Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2006
All rights reserved

    Maps by Jeffrey L. Ward
    Illustration credits appear at the end of this book.

    LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA
Philbrick, Nathaniel.
Mayflower: a story of courage, community, and war / Nathaniel Philbrick.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN: 978-1-1012-1883-9
1. Pilgrims (New-Plymouth Colony) 2. Massachusetts—History—
New-Plymouth, 1620–1691. 3. Bradford, William, 1590–1657.
4. Church, Benjamin, 1639–1718. I. Title.
F68.P44 2006
973.2'2—dc22 2005058470

    Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrightable materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

To Melissa

List of Maps
    Tracks of the Speedwell and the Mayflower, July–November 1620
    Track of the Mayflower off Cape Cod, November 9–11, 1620
    Tracks of the Three Exploring Expeditions, November 15–December 12, 1620
    Plymouth Harbor
    New England, 1625–1674
    Mount Hope Region, June–July 1675
    Southern New England and New York during King Philip’s War, 1675–1676

Preface: The Two Voyages
    W E ALL WANT TO KNOW how it was in the beginning. From the Big Bang to the Garden of Eden to the circumstances of our own births, we yearn to travel back to that distant time when everything was new and full of promise. Perhaps then, we tell ourselves, we can start to make sense of the convoluted mess we are in today.
    But beginnings are rarely as clear-cut as we would like them to be. Take, for example, the event that most Americans associate with the start of the United States: the voyage of the Mayflower.
    We’ve all heard at least some version of the story: how in 1620 the Pilgrims sailed to the New World in search of religious freedom; how after drawing up the Mayflower Compact, they landed at Plymouth Rock and befriended the local Wampanoags, who taught them how to plant corn and whose leader or sachem, Massasoit, helped them celebrate the First Thanksgiving. From this inspiring inception came the United States.
    Like many Americans, I grew up taking this myth of national origins with a grain of salt. In their wide-brimmed hats and buckled shoes, the Pilgrims were the stuff of holiday parades and bad Victorian poetry. Nothing could be more removed from the ambiguities of modern-day America, I thought, than the Pilgrims and the Mayflower.
    But, as I have since discovered, the story of the Pilgrims does not end with the First Thanksgiving. When we look to how the Pilgrims and their children maintained more than fifty years of peace with the Wampanoags and how that peace suddenly erupted into one of the deadliest wars ever fought on American soil, the history of Plymouth Colony becomes something altogether new, rich, troubling,