The pilgrim myth and the ideological construction of American origins

“ The imagination irresistibly and rapidly draws around us the principal features and the leading characters in the original scene. We cast our eyes abroad on the ocean, and we see where the little bark, with the interesting group upon its deck, made its slow progress to the shore. We look around us, and behold the hills and promontories where the anxious eyes of our fathers first saw the places of habitation and of rest. We feel the cold which benumbed, and listen to the winds which pierced them. Beneath us is the Rock on which New England received the feet of the Pilgrims. ”

“ All hearts turn first to the Fathers of the Republic. Their venerable forms rise before us, in the procession of successive generations. They come from the frozen rock of Plymouth, from the wasted bands of Raleigh, from the heavenly companionship of Penn, from the anxious councils of the Revolution,—from all those fields of sacrifice, where, in obedience to the spirit of their age, they sealed their devotion to duty with their blood. ”

“ As civilization has step by step pushed forward its boundaries from the Atlantic to the Pacific, the same principles of religion and patriotism have inspired the succeeding generations until the American Republic represents the full fruition of the tree of liberty planted so firmly on Plymouth Rock by the Pilgrims. ”

“ Two thousand miles westward from the rock where their fathers landed, may now be found the sons of the Pilgrims, cultivating smiling fields, rearing towns and villages, and 31 cherishing, we trust, the patrimonial blessings of wise institutions, of liberty, and religion. The world has seen nothing like this. Regions large enough to be empires, and which, half a century ago, were known only as remote and unexplored wildernesses, are now teeming with population, and prosperous in all the great concerns of life; in good governments, the means of subsistence, and social happiness. ”

“ At the moment of their landing, therefore, they possessed institutions of government and institutions of religion; and friends and families, and social and religious institutions, framed by consent, founded on choice and preference, how nearly do these fill up our whole idea of country! The morning that beamed on the first night of their repose saw the Pilgrims already at home in their country. There were political institutions, and civil liberty, and religious worship. Poetry has fancied nothing, in the wanderings of heroes, so distinct and characteristic. ”

“ Every American knows all about the Puritan Pilgrim Fathers, and the Mayflower, and Plymouth Rock, and all the facts and fictions concerning the settlement of New England. Most Americans devoutly believe, upon the authority of New England orators and historians, that the Pilgrim Fathers aforesaid were the founders of the civil and religious liberty now organized in this great republic, mistaking a strife for sectarian ascendency and domination for a contest for the great principles of religious liberty. ”

“ There will be no likeness, in any mirror of the past, to the American civilization that is to be. New manners, customs, thinkings, literature, art, and life, will mark our progress and attest the mission of the nation. We are fast outgrowing the ideas and influences of that brave company of Puritans out of whose loins our beginning proceeded; and already each man goes alone, insular, self-reliant, and self-sustained. We owe the Puritans a large debt, but it is altogether a pretty fiction to call them the founders of American civilization. ”

“ O civilized humanity, world-wide, and especially to the descendants of the Pilgrims who, in 1620, laid on New England shores the foundations of that civil and religious freedom upon which has been built a refuge for the oppressed of every land, the story of the Pilgrim “Exodus” has an ever-increasing value and zest. The little we know of the inception, development, and vicissitudes of their bold scheme of colonization in the American wilderness only serves to sharpen the appetite for more. ”

“ Last year I went with my father to Plymouth, and he took me to the famous rock where the Mayflower pilgrims landed, and afterward he gave me a lovely book called 'The Olden Time,' by Edmund Sears, that told me all about the pilgrims,—who they were, and why they came over, and everything, and I remember it said in this book that the Plymouth pilgrims were constantly confounded—those were the very words—with the Puritans who came over nine years later to Massachusetts. ”

“ In weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and cold they laid the foundations of a State wherein every man, through countless ages, should have liberty to worship God in his own way. May their example inspire thee to do thy part in perpetuating and spreading throughout the World the lofty Ideals of our Republic.”
We must admire the Pilgrims for their courage and piety, for their attachment to civil rights and religious liberty in exile, under unhappy conditions. ”

“ Religious freedom is a cornerstone of our Republic, a core principle of our Constitution, and a fundamental human right. Many of those who first settled in America, such as Pilgrims, came for the freedom of worship and belief that this new land promised. ”

“ The third great characteristic of the Puritan idea is a pure republicanism. In the largest sense, I hold this also to be the effect of the one just mentioned; for, if tested, the whole spirit and tone of Christianity are republican. On New England soil, from the hour when the little band of pilgrim heroes first set foot on an inhospitable shore, by their footprints upon it making a barren rock a holy shrine for the world's love and veneration, has ever been a sure refuge, a very palladium of republican institutions, of human liberties. ”

“ It remains for us to vindicate the principles of political virtue. We have placed the sceptre in the hands of freedom; let us enthrone religion in still loftier state. American patriotism! be it such as the world has never yet seen. American statesmanship! be it such as mankind shall wonder at, till their admiration subsides into imitation. American character! be it such as Christian sires would rejoice to see worn by their posterity, and unborn generations shall receive as the most precious inheritance that could be transmitted to them. ”

“ While they were only a shivering few, we are now a strong and growing Nation of more than 300 million. And the desire for freedom that led the Pilgrims to the New World still guides our Nation today.
Americans believe that every person has the right to live, work, and worship in freedom. And we're thankful to the men and women of our Nation's armed forces who risk their lives to protect those rights. ”

“ It must be confessed that the Pilgrims possessed but few of the qualities of the modern pioneer. They were not the ancestors of the American backwoodsmen. They did not go at once into the woods with their axes. They were a family and church, and were more anxious to keep together, though it were on the sand, than to explore and colonize a New World. When the above-mentioned company removed to Eastham, the church at Plymouth was left, to use Bradford's expression, "like an ancient mother grown old, and forsaken of her children." ”

“ The government of the Pilgrims was frank and loyal to the Sovereign and people of England; the government of the Puritans was deceptive and disloyal to the Throne and Mother Country from the first, and sedulously sowed and cultivated the seeds of disaffection and hostility to the Royal government, until they grew and ripened into the harvest of the American revolution. ”

“ It was summer when the little village began to be built; and, before the land could be cleared and prepared for cultivation, the season was too far advanced to allow any hope of a corn-harvest. The new settlers had, therefore, to endure the same poverty and privation that had been the lot of the earlier planters in New England. They had no means of obtaining any of the comforts of civilized life, except from Boston or Plymouth: and as they possessed no vessel besides an Indian canoe, this was a service of toil and much hazard. ”

“ Uncle Sam stopped and looked around.
"There's nothing like being brave," he said slowly. "The Pilgrims would not even think of123 giving up, and that is why they held out against all dangers. You remember I told you that only half of them lived through that first winter. They were very careful not to let the savages know how many of them had died. They were even careful not to make mounds to mark the places where their friends were buried. They thought the Red Men might count the mounds. They would know by that how few of the settlers were left. ”

“ But the Pilgrims were well aware that they were daily in danger of an irruption of the whole vagabond gang to eat out their substance, and to fill their peaceful village with clamor and violence. They had far more to fear from these wretched colonists than from the savages. Policy therefore, as well as humanity, urged it upon them to do everything in their power to supply the wants of Weston’s men, and thus keep them at a distance.
202 Captain Standish, with a small crew, took command of the Swan for this trading expedition along the outer coast of Cape Cod. ”

“ In June, to the great annoyance of the Pilgrims, two vessels came into the harbor of Plymouth, bringing sixty wild and rude adventurers, who, neither fearing God nor regarding man, had come to the New World to seek their fortunes. They were an idle and dissolute set, greedy for gain, and ripe for any deeds of dishonesty or violence. ”

“ In various ways the new colony vexed and annoyed the men of Plymouth; but in no way more seriously than by their conduct towards the natives, which was so different to the just and upright dealings of the Pilgrims, that the Indians began to lose their confidence in the white men, and to suspect deceit and imposition where hitherto they had only found truth and justice. ”

“ The new settlers had always been on very friendly terms with the elder colony of Plymouth; and visits were frequently exchanged between the Governors and others of the inhabitants, which, though performed with much difficulty and even danger, were a source of mutual pleasure to the two bands of British emigrants. If the men of Plymouth regarded with some feeling of jealous anxiety the growing power and greatness of their rival, it was but natural. ”

“ The colonial Thanksgiving at Plymouth in 1621, when the Pilgrims of the Old World mingled in fellowship and celebration with the American Indians of the New World, foreshadowed the challenge and opportunity that such diversity has always offered us: to live together in peace with respect and appreciation for our differences and to draw on one another's strengths in the work of building a great and unified Nation. ”

“ Sharing in God's blessings is at the heart of Thanksgiving and at the core of the American spirit. At Plymouth in 1621, the Pilgrims celebrated their first harvest in the New World thanks to the generosity of their Native American neighbors. In return, the Pilgrims invited these tribal members to share in their harvest festival. At Thanksgiving this year and every year, in worship services and family celebrations across our country, Americans carry on that tradition of giving, sharing not only with family and friends, but also with those in need throughout their communities. ”

“ King Philip hated the white people because, in the first place, he believed that they had murdered his brother; and next, because he saw that they were growing stronger in numbers every year, while the Indians were becoming weaker.
When the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, Massasoit, Philip's father, held all the country from Cape Cod back to the eastern shores of Narragansett Bay; that is, a strip about thirty miles wide. The white settlers bought a small piece of this land. ”

“ After the harvest they gathered their families together and joined in celebration and prayer with the native Americans who had taught them so much. Clearly our forefathers were thankful not only for the material well-being of their harvest but for this abundance of goodwill as well.
In this spirit, Thanksgiving has become a day when Americans extend a helping hand to the less fortunate. Long before there was a government welfare program, this spirit of voluntary giving was ingrained in the American character. Americans have always understood that, truly, one must give in order to receive. ”

“ Then in a brief and vigorous address Standish told the colonists why he had come, and repeated to them the assurance given him by Hobomok that the day but one after his arrival was the day fixed upon for the massacre, the boats needing but the one day's work to complete them. Furthermore, he assured them that he needed nor would accept any help from them in his punishment of the savages, the danger and the responsibility being no more than Plymouth could endure, and, as he significantly added, "The savages were not like to flee before men who had so often fled before them." ”

“ The head of Wattawamat was brought to New Plymouth, and the dreadful trophy was conspicuously placed over the entrance to the fortress, as a warning to the natives against any future conspiracies for the destruction of the white men. So great, indeed, was the terror inspired by the power and the severity of the settlers, that many of the natives—who were conscious of having been engaged in the conspiracy, though undiscovered—left their wigwams, and fled into the woods, or concealed themselves in reedy morasses, where a great number of them perished from hunger and disease. ”

“ If there be, within the extent of our knowledge or influence, any participation in this traffic, let us pledge ourselves here, upon the rock of Plymouth, to extirpate and destroy it. It is not fit that the land of the Pilgrims should bear the shame longer. I hear the sound of the hammer, I see the smoke of the furnaces where manacles and fetters are still forged for human limbs. I see the visages of those who by stealth and at midnight labor in this work of hell, foul and dark, as may become the artificers of such instruments of misery and torture. ”

“ So it is that, when twentieth-century Americans celebrate their Thanksgiving, they are continuing a tradition that is older than the nation itself. Many of the features of the modern version—feasting, the menu in part, and athletic contests—are in the spirit of America’s first Harvest Home. The religious component of Thanksgiving, and even the act of giving thanks, are later additions. In Plymouth the fall observance of harvest and the expressing of thanks to God for his blessing varied from year to year between secular feastings and sacred days of fast. ”

“ The land of America was a promised land to the pilgrim fathers, and an asylum for the oppressed of all nations. To this land people from all nations flocked, and the Lord inspired them to establish a free government preparatory to the establishment of his kingdom in the latter days. It was in this land he sought out and raised up his servants in their weakness to be the messengers of eternal life to the children of men, that it might go from this land to other nations. ”

“ But with Puritanism as the constant check upon American life, neither truth nor sincerity is possible. Nothing but gloom and mediocrity to dictate human conduct, curtail natural expression, and stifle our best impulses. Puritanism in this the twentieth century is as much the enemy of freedom and beauty as it was when it landed on Plymouth Rock. It repudiates, as something vile and sinful, our deepest feelings; but being absolutely ignorant as to the real functions of human emotions, Puritanism is itself the creator of the most unspeakable vices. ”