The 1935 classic that just became a bestseller again
Kerri Miller's Must-Read
“Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community and War”by Nathaniel Philbrick
One of the questions I asked in my “What It Means to Be an American” interviews was how the mythology of America — our origin, our place in the world — influences the way we see ourselves today.
And that founding mythology is something that begins to take root from the time we’re kindergarteners, hearing about that first Thanksgiving when the Plymouth settlers shared their bounty with the friendly Indians and peace and harmony reigned...
Wrong, wrong and wrong. Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Nathaniel Philbrick tells us that the settlers were struggling and full of doubts. They were famished and diseased and anguishing over why the god they were serving so fervently wasn’t making life in the new settlement more hospitable.
Indeed, Philbrick reminds us that their religious values were tested almost from the moment they arrived, when they discovered a basket of seed corn that belonged to a Native American tribe they had yet to even meet. They debated: Take it knowing it wasn’t theirs? Or leave it and have little to plant for the season?
Philbrick told me: “Their first act in New England is one of robbery, thievery.”
So, now, back to that first Thanksgiving and what really happened. The feast, Philbrick says, was a Native American tradition, not something the settlers initiated.
There were many more Native Americans than there were English, and they brought most of the grub, including five deer that they’d slain for the festivities. They shared willingly and the English were grateful, until they began eyeing the land. And that’s the rest of the story.
-K.M.
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