Monday, May 18th, 2009

Mayflower

I recently finished reading Nathaniel Philbrick's award winning book Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War. It was a great read. My favorite part about it is that it seemed less to take the side of Puritan or Indian, and more to just tell who was who and what they did. I would have to have a lot of personal familiarity with the primary sources to know whether or not Philbrick was biased, but my sense is that he was fair.

My first exposure to the story was a little book I read in second grade called If You Sailed on the Mayflower in 1620, a children's book that is still in print. It was a well-written children's book, overall. There were a lot of facts and a lot of pictures. I have had some spotty exposure to some primary sources, and a little exposure to other fun facts in the times since, but nothing comprehensive. Philbrick's book filled in many things I had missed in my earlier exposure. For one thing, I did not know that the Puritan's pastor, John Robinson, stayed back in Leiden. This was helpful in clearing up the fact that one of the sermons I had read out of a collection of American sermons was poor in part because it was preached by a layman, and one with some ulterior motives in his preaching. Pastor Robinson sounded like a gem, however. I also did not know as a child that Squanto, an Indian that the Pilgrims met early on, had spent time in Spain before returning to the New World. But beyond that, Philbrick introduced me to Hobamock and Benjamin Church and many other interesting characters. Further, the portrait of Massasoit was more interesting than I would have imagined.

I set the book down feeling like I had a much better sense of many bit characters than I had had of the main characters before reading.

The other thing I liked was how Philbrick credited the first generation of Puritans and Indians with being relatively peaceful. It was when the land got scarce that some on both sides began to hope they could rid the land of the other party. The resulting war was won by the Pilgrims, but at a cost that left them poorer for decades to come.

I would suggest the book to anybody who was interested in the first fifty years of the history of the Pilgrims and the Indians. As he states in the Introduction, the story goes from the planning of the Mayflower voyage through King Philip's War fifty years later. The final chapter recounts how different generations have venerated or condemned different aspects of the history, an interesting story in itself.

4:52 pm Pacific Standard Time

[ posted by Rick Ritchie | 3 comments | Permalink ]