Explore This Park. Info Alerts Maps Calendar Reserve. Alerts In Effect Dismiss. Dismiss View all alerts. Jamestown and Plymouth: Compare and Contrast. As Governor Bradford of Plymouth stated, "Thus out of small beginnings greater things have been produced by His hand that made all things of nothing, and gives being to all things that are; and as one small candle may light a thousand, so the light here kindled hath shown unto many, yea, in some sort, to our whole Nation. Bradford's History. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, Breen, T.
Puritans and Adventurers. New York: Oxford University Press, Hatch, Charles. The First 17 Years. Virginia th Anniversary Celebration Corporation, Last updated: February 26, In short, they wanted to return to worshipping in the way the early Christians had. They thought the new Church of England was beyond reform.
This opinion was very dangerous; in England in the s, it was illegal to be part of any church other than the Church of England. The Separatist church congregation that established Plymouth Colony in New England was originally centered around the town of Scrooby in Nottinghamshire, England. Members included the young William Bradford and William Brewster. When they felt they could no longer suffer these difficulties in England, they chose to flee to the Dutch Netherlands.
There, they could practice their own religion without fear of persecution from the English government or its church. Although they had religious freedom, life in the Netherlands was not easy. The Separatists had to leave their homeland and friends to live in a foreign country without a clear idea of how they would support themselves. The congregation stayed briefly in Amsterdam and then moved to the city of Leiden. There they remained for the next 11 or 12 years. Most found work in the cloth trades, while others were carpenters, tailors and printers.
Their lives required hard work. Even young children had to work. Some older children were tempted by the Dutch culture and left their families to become soldiers and sailors. Their parents feared that they would lose their identity as English people.
To make matters worse, the congregation worried that another war might break out between the Dutch and Spanish. They decided to move again. On April 5, , the Mayflower and her crew departed Plymouth and returned to England.
Around March 16, Bradford says that an Indian approached them and spoke to them in broken English, which amazed the pilgrims. The Indian identified himself as Samoset and told them much about the native people of the area and said there was another Indian named Squanto who had been to England and could speak better English them himself.
Interview of Samoset with the Pilgrims, illustration, circa Samoset arranged for the pilgrims to meet their leader, Massasoit, who arrived about four or five days later with Squanto and many others accompanying him. Squanto was the sole survivor of the Patuxet tribe and had only survived the disease epidemic that wiped out his tribe because he had been captured by an English sea captain a few years earlier in and had been taken to Europe as a slave.
He returned a few years later in with an English explorer to find his village wiped out. Squanto then came across Massasoit and the Pokanoket tribe, which, like the Patuxet, were one of many tribes that made up the Wampanoag Nation, and they made Squanto their slave.
Massasoit explained to the pilgrims that his tribe had been fighting with a powerful tribe nearby, the Narragansett, and needed their help. Massasoit proposed a peace treaty and an alliance with the pilgrims. Bradford stated that the terms of the treaty, which is now known as the Pilgrim-Wampanoag Peace Treaty, were:. That neither he nor any of his, should injure or do hurt to any of their people. That if any of his did any hurt to any of theirs, he should send the offender that they might punish him.
That if any thing were taken away from any of theirs, he should cause it to be restored; and they should do the like to his. That if any did unjustly war against him, they would aid him; and if any did war against them, he should aid them. That he should send to his neighbors confederates to certify them of this, that they might not wrong them, but might be likewise comprised in the conditions of peace. That when their men came to them, they should leave their bows and arrows behind them.
The pilgrims agreed to the peace treaty and Massassoit ordered Squanto to teach the colonists everything they needed to know to survive. Squanto taught the colonists three important skills: how to grow corn, how to catch fish and where to gather nuts and berries.
As a result, over the course of the spring and summer, the pilgrims were able to grow enough food to help them survive the coming winter. To celebrate their successful harvest and to thank the Wampanoag for their help, the pilgrims held a harvest celebration sometime in the fall of and invited 90 Wampanoag, including Squanto and Massasoit, to the celebration.
This event later came to be known as the first Thanksgiving. The feast took place over the span of three days, during which the pilgrims and the Wampanoag ate food, such as venison and fowl, and played games. The exact date of the celebration is not known and aside from venison and fowl, it is not known exactly what type of food was served at the celebration. Most historians assume that the colonists and Wampanoag ate whatever food was available at that time of year which would have been fish, lobster, mussels, fruit and wild game.
Harvest celebrations like these were common at the time among Europeans as well as among the Native-Americans. It took place over three days between late September and mid-November and included feasting as well as games and military exercises. Most of the attendees at the first Thanksgiving were men; 78 percent of the women who traveled on the Mayflower perished over the preceding winter. Of the 50 colonists who celebrated the harvest and their survival , 22 were men, four were married women and 25 were children and teenagers.
Winslow records eating venison from five deer killed by the Native Americans along with chestnuts, cranberries, garlic and artichokes—all native wild plants the English were learning to use.
Turkey was potentially served as well. By the late s, Thanksgiving had become an annual fall tradition. It was written after a near mutiny on board the Mayflower. The Mayflower Compact set down laws for all Mayflower passengers to follow. Born in England, he escaped with the Separatists to the Netherlands in when he was still a teenager to avoid persecution.
It is considered one of the most important firsthand accounts of early New England. With peace secured thanks to Squanto, the colonists in Plymouth were able to concentrate on building a viable settlement for themselves rather than spend their time and resources guarding themselves against attack. Squanto taught them how to plant corn, which became an important crop, as well as where to fish and hunt beaver. Though Plymouth would never develop as robust an economy as later settlements—such as Massachusetts Bay Colony—agriculture, fishing and trading made the colony self-sufficient within five years after it was founded.
By that time, the ideal of Plymouth Colony—conceived in the Mayflower Compact as a self-contained community governed by a common religious affiliation—had given way to the far less lofty influences of trade and commerce. The devout Pilgrims, meanwhile, had fragmented into smaller, more self-serving groups. Still, the original concept served as the foundation for many later settlements. Today, the original colony of Plymouth is a living museum, a recreation of the original seventeenth-century village.
Visitors can taste colonial food, see a restored Mayflower II and attend reenactments of the first Thanksgiving , when the Wampanaogs joined the settlers to celebrate the autumn harvest.
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