Mayflower (49 page)

Edward Winslow writes of New England being a place “where religion and profit jump together” in
GNNE,
p. 70. For an example of a modern economist who looks to Bradford’s decision to abandon a collective approach to farming as the beginning of the capitalist miracle that would become the United States, see Thomas DiLorenzo’s
How Capitalism Saved America: The Untold History of Our Country, from the Pilgrims to the Present,
pp. 57–62. Unfortunately in the case of the Pilgrims, their early experimentation with capitalism did not later translate into the financial success they had originally hoped for. For an account of the financial history of Plymouth Colony, see Ruth McIntyre’s
Debts Hopeful and Desperate,
especially pp. 47–67.

For transcriptions of the deeds associated with Massasoit’s sale of land to Plymouth Colony, see Jeremy Bangs’s
Indian Deeds: Land Transactions in Plymouth Colony,
1620–1691. pp. 260–324. Robert Cushman maintains that it is “lawful now to take a land which none useth” in “Reasons and Considerations touching the lawfulness of removing out of England into the parts of America” in
MR,
p. 92. Bangs makes a strong case for Roger Williams’s influence on Plymouth’s policy of purchasing Indian land in
Indian Deeds,
pp. 15–18, where he also speaks of the reason behind the insistence on court-approved sale of Indian lands, as does George Langdon in
Pilgrim Colony,
pp. 154–55. Kathleen Bragdon writes insightfully about the Indians’ relationship to the land in
Native People of Southern New England:
“In a sense, ‘land ownership’ was about identity…. Technically ‘controlled’ by the sachem and the corporate groups, access to land was in fact predicated on need and active engagement with it, usually within the context of the household. To make use of land was to be a member of the corporate community, to eat its products was to ‘own’ the land from which they were gathered,” pp. 138–39. Bangs cites the 1639 treaty between Massasoit and the colony in
Indian Deeds,
p. 62. David Bushnell refers to lands bought from the Indians in modern Freetown, Massachusetts, being subsequently sold at a 500 percent profit in “The Treatment of the Indians in Plymouth Colony,”
NEQ,
March 1953, pp. 196–97; Bushnell maintains, however, that the Pilgrims “were no more to blame than the Indians themselves for what was a natural consequence of economic laws. Lands effectively brought within the range of world-wide economic forces by the expansion of English settlement were obviously worth more than a native hunting reservation, and the profit was not necessarily speculative when lands were improved before being resold.” Soon after the outbreak of King Philip’s War in 1675, Josiah Winslow insisted that all the land in Plymouth “was fairly obtained by honest purchase of the Indian proprietors,” cited in Bangs’s
Indian Deeds,
p. 22. Dennis Connole, on the other hand, in
The Indians of the Nipmuck Country in Southern New England,
1630–1750. believes that the colonial laws curtailing individuals from purchasing Indian land “were placed on the books with only one purpose in mind: to suppress the fledgling real estate market in the colonies. If a free market had existed, the demand was such that the price of land would have skyrocketed,” p. 251.

In an April 12, 1632, entry, of his
Journal,
edited by Richard Dunn et al., John Winthrop describes the Narragansett attack on Massasoit, pp. 64–65; in an August 4, 1634, entry, Winthrop describes the trick the sachem played on Edward Winslow. Samuel Drake in his
Book of the Indians of North America
claims that Massasoit changed his name to Usamequin after the Narragansett attack at Sowams, p. 25.

In “Darlings of Heaven” in
Harvard Magazine,
November 1976, Peter Gomes deftly summarizes the relationship between the Pilgrims and Puritans: “[T]he Atlantic Ocean made them both (Boston and Plymouth) Separatists, and the hegemony of Boston made them both Puritans,” p. 33. For more on the distinction between Pilgrim and Puritan, see Gomes’s “Pilgrims and Puritans: Heroes and Villains in Creation of the American Past” in MHS
Proceedings,
vol. 45, 1983, pp. 1–16, and Richard Howland Maxwell’s “Pilgrim and Puritan: A Delicate Distinction” in
Pilgrim Society Notes,
series 2, March 2003. On the differences between Puritan and Pilgrim requirements for church membership, see George Langdon’s
Plymouth Colony,
pp. 126–31, as well as Edmund Morgan’s
Visible Saints;
according to Morgan, “[the New England Puritans’] only radical difference from the Separatist practice lay in the candidate’s demonstration of the work of grace in his soul,” p. 90. Langdon in
Plymouth Colony
provides a useful summary of the development of governance in Plymouth, pp. 79–99. William Hubbard speaks of Billington’s execution in
General History of New England,
p. 101. Thomas Morton describes how the Puritans burned his house in
New English Canaan,
pp. 171–72. On Bradford’s 1645 refusal to allow religious tolerance, and Plymouth and Massachusetts-Bay’s persecution of the Quakers, see George Langdon’s
Pilgrim Colony,
pp. 63–65, 71–78. Stratton in
Plymouth Colony
cites the quote from the Quaker sympathizer James Cudworth: “Now Plymouth-saddle is on the Bay horse,” p. 92; Stratton also speaks of the disenfranchisement of Isaac Robinson, p. 345.

My account of the economic development of New England in the 1630s is based, in large part, on Bernard Bailyn’s
The New England Merchants in the Seventeenth Century,
pp. 16–44. Adam Hirsch discusses how the attack on the Pequot fort changed the attitude toward war in “The Collision of Military Cultures in Seventeenth-Century New England” in the
Journal of American History,
vol. 74, pp. 1187–1212. William Cronon in
Changes in the Land
looks to Miantonomi’s speech to the Montauks as an exemplary analysis of the ecological impact the Europeans had on New England, pp. 162–64. Miantonomi’s death at the hands of the Mohegans is discussed in John Sainsbury’s “Miantonomo’s Death and New England Politics, 1630–1645” in
Rhode Island History,
vol. 30, no. 4, pp. 111–23, and Paul Robinson’s “Lost Opportunities: Miantonomi and the English in Seventeenth-Century Narragansett Country” in
Northeastern Indian Lives,
1632–1816. edited by Robert Grumet, pp. 13–28. Edward Johnson describes Miantonomi’s unfortunate use of an English corselet in
Wonder-Working Providence,
1628–1651. pp. 220–21. Jeremy Bangs discusses the possible Dutch influences on the formation of the United Colonies of New England in
Pilgrim Edward Winslow;
he also cites John Quincy Adams’s remarks concerning the confederation, pp. 207–12.

CHAPTER ELEVEN-
The Ancient Mother

On Edward Winslow’s diplomatic career, see Jeremy Bangs’s
Pilgrim Edward Winslow,
pp. 315–400. Samuel Maverick describes Winslow as “a smooth tongued cunning fellow” in his “Brief Description of New England,” written about 1660, MHS
Proceedings,
vol. 1, 2nd ser., p. 240. In his introduction to
OPP,
Samuel Eliot Morison tells of how Bradford might have become “the sole lord and proprietor of Plymouth Colony,” p. xxv. John Demos in “Notes on Plymouth Colony” in
WMQ,
3rd ser., vol. 22, no. 2, writes of the extraordinary mobility of the Pilgrims and their children and grandchildren, particularly compared to Massachusetts-Bay: “The whole process of expansion had as one of its chief effects the scattering of families, to an extent probably inconceivable in the Old World communities from which the colonists had come,” p. 266. For an excellent look at those leading the development of towns in Plymouth, including John Brown and Thomas Willett, see John Frederick Martin’s
Profits in the Wilderness,
pp. 79–87. Martin also discusses Bradford’s fears about the evil influences of growth in the colony, p. 111. For information about John Brown, Thomas Prence, and Thomas Willett, see the biographies in Robert Anderson’s
The Pilgrim Migration,
pp. 81, 374–81, 497–503. Roger Williams’s reference to “God Land” is in his
Complete Writings,
vol. 6, p. 319. John Canup in
Out of the Wilderness: The Emergence of an American Identity in Colonial New England
cites the reference to Joseph Ramsden’s living “remotely in the woods” in the Plymouth records, p. 51. George Langdon provides a good summary of what was involved in purchasing a lot and building a house in a typical Plymouth town in
Pilgrim Colony,
pp. 146–47. On the amount of wood required to build a house in the seventeenth century, see Oliver Rackham’s “Grundle House: On the Quantities of Timber in Certain East Anglian Buildings in Relation to Local Supplies,” p. 3; on the wood consumption of an average seventeenth-century New England home and town, see Robert Tarule’s
The Artisan of Ipswich: Craftsmanship and Community in Colonial New England,
p. 36. My thanks to Pret Woodburn and Rick McKee of Plimoth Plantation for bringing these two resources to my attention.

The Granger execution is detailed by Bradford in
OPP,
pp. 320–21. Langdon in
Pilgrim Colony
discusses Bradford’s 1655 ultimatum, p. 67. Bradford’s mournful note about the congregation’s “most strict and sacred bond” begins, “O sacred bond, whilst inviolably preserved! How sweet and precious were the fruits that flowed from the same! But when this fidelity decayed, then their ruin approached,”
OPP,
p. 33, n. 6. Bradford Smith in
Bradford of Plymouth
describes Bradford’s extended family and the difficulty his son John had being assimilated, pp. 210–12, as does John Navin in
Plymouth Plantation,
pp. 584–86. Bradford writes of the speed with which the Indians took to hunting with muskets in
OPP,
p. 207. In
The Skulking Way of War,
Patrick Malone discusses the “excellent judgment” the Indians possessed when it came to their preference for flintlocks over matchlocks, pp. 31–33; Malone also chronicles colonial attitudes toward selling guns to the Indians, pp. 42–51. Bradford writes of the danger of armed Indians in the poem “In This Wilderness,” which can be found in the extremely useful collection
The Complete Works of the
Mayflower
Pilgrims,
edited by Caleb Johnson, pp. 486–95. Isidore Meyer in “The Hebrew Preface to Bradford’s History of the Plymouth Plantation” in American Jewish Historical Society
Publications,
no. 38, part 4, cites Bradford’s own words about learning Hebrew, p. 291. Cotton Mather writes of Bradford’s last days in the
Magnalia,
book 2, pp. 207–8.

My account of the Indian burials at Burr’s Hill is based on
Burr’s Hill: A Seventeenth-Century Wampanoag Burial Ground in Warren, Rhode Island,
edited by Susan Gibson, especially pp. 13–14. Eric Schultz and Michael Tougias in
King Philip’s War: The History and Legacy of America’s Forgotten Conflict
refer to the existence of “a copper necklace thought to have been presented by Edward Winslow to Massasoit,” p. 238. Constance Crosby in “From Myth to History, or Why King Philip’s Ghost Walks Abroad” in
The Recovery of Meaning,
edited by Mark Leone and Parker Potter, cites William Wood’s reference to the Indians’ initial amazement over the “strange inventions” of the English, pp. 194–95; Crosby also cites Roger Williams’s discussion of “manitoo” and speaks of the meaning of “manit,” pp. 192–94, 198. Virginia DeJohn Anderson writes of “intercultural borrowing” in “King Philip’s Herds: Indians, Colonists, and the Problem of Livestock in Early New England” in
WMQ,
3rd ser., vol. 51, p. 613. On the symbolic importance of Western goods to the Indians, see Elise Brenner’s “Sociopolitical Implications of Mortuary Ritual Remains in Seventeenth-Century Native Southern New England” in
The Recovery of Meaning,
edited by Mark Leone and Parker Potter, pp. 173–74.

I have written about the Indians’ relationship with Christianity in
Abram’s Eyes,
where I cite Zaccheus Macy’s account of an Indian church meeting on Nantucket, pp. 123–24. See also David Silverman’s “The Church in New England Indian Community Life: A View from the Islands and Cape Cod,” in
Reinterpreting New England Indians and the Colonial Experience,
edited by Colin Calloway and Neal Salisbury, pp. 264–98. John Eliot’s account of Massasoit’s remarks concerning Christianity are in
The Glorious Progress of the Gospel amongst the Indians in New England,
MHS Collections, 3rd ser., vol. 4, p. 117. William Hubbard in
The History of the Indian Wars in New England
recounts Massasoit’s attempt to include a proscription against missionary activities in the sale of some lands in Swansea, pp. 46–47.

On English attitudes toward the wilderness, see John Canup’s
Out of the Wilderness,
pp. 46–51. Peter Thomas in “Contrastive Subsistence Strategies and Land Use as Factors for Understanding Indian-White Relations in New England” cites Merrill Bennett’s estimates concerning the amount of corn an Indian consumed each year in
Ethnohistory,
Winter 1976, p. 12. On the manner in which the English adapted Native foods, see Keith Stavely and Kathleen Fitzgerald’s
America’s Founding Food: The Story of New England Cooking,
pp. 4-48. On the use of wampum, see Howard Russell’s
Indian New England before the Mayfower,
p. 185, and Walter McDougall’s
Freedom Just Around the Corner,
p. 63. On the concept of the frontier in New England prior to King Philip’s War, see Frederick Turner’s “The First Official Frontier of the Massachusetts-Bay” in
Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts,
vol. 17, pp. 250–71. Darrett Rutman in
Husbandmen of Plymouth: Farms and Villages in the Old Colony,
1620–1692 tells of how “the towns straggled” in Plymouth, p. 24. On the word “netop” and the use of language in seventeenth-century New England, see Ives Goddard’s “The Use of Pidgins and Jargons on the East Coast of North America” in
The Language Encounter in the Americas,
1492–1800. edited by Edward Gray and Norman Fiering, pp. 72–73. Francis Baylies writes revealingly of the intimacy that typified the Indians and English in Plymouth Colony in
Historical Memoir of…New-Plymouth,
edited by Samuel Drake: “The English and the Indians were so intermixed that they all had personal knowledge of each other. The hospitalities of each race were constantly and cordially reciprocated. Although their dwellings were apart, yet they were near, and the roving habits of the Indians, and frequent visits had familiarized them as much with the houses of the English as with their own wigwams,” vol. 2, p. 17.