The real reason pilgrims survived

In the autumn of 1621, a group of English pilgrims who had crossed the Atlantic Ocean and created a colony called New Plymouth celebrated their first harvest.

They hosted a group of about 90 Wampanoags, their Algonquian-speaking neighbors. Together, migrants and natives enjoyed three days of corn, venison and poultry.

In their abundant harvest, the pilgrims have probably seen a divine hand act.

As William Bradford wrote in 1623, "Instead of famine, God gave them much, and the face of things was changed, so that the hearts of many would rejoice and for which they blessed God."

But my recent research on how Europeans have understood the Western Hemisphere shows that, despite the pilgrims' version of events, their survival was largely based on two independent developments: an epidemic that swept the region and a repository advice from former explorers.

A "desolate desert" or "paradise of all parties"?

Bradford 's "Of Plymouth Plantation," which he began writing in 1630 and completed two decades later, traces the history of pilgrims from the persecution that they suffered in England up to the present day. to their new homeland, along the shores of modern Boston Harbor.

Bradford and the other pilgrims believed in predestination. Each event of their life marked a stage in the development of a divine plan, which often echoed the experiences of the ancient Israelites.

In his story, Bradford looked for signs in the scriptures. He wrote that the Puritans arrived "in a hideous and desolate wilderness, full of wild beasts and wild men". They were surrounded by forests "full of woods and groves" and did not have the kind of view that Moses had on Mount Pisgah, after successfully leading the Israelites to Canaan.

In an inspiring chapter 26 of the book of Deuteronomy, Bradford declared that the English were "ready to perish in this wilderness," but God had heard their cries and helped them. Bradford paraphrased from Psalm 107 when he wrote that the settlers had to "praise the Lord" who "delivered them from the hand of the oppressor".

If you read the Bradford version of the events, you might think that the survival of the pilgrim colonies was often in danger. But the situation on the ground was not as bad as Bradford said.

Previous European visitors described pleasant shorelines and successful Aboriginal communities. In 1605, the French explorer Samuel de Champlain passed by the site that the pilgrims would colonize later and noticed that there were "a large number of cabins and gardens". He even provided a drawing of the area, which represents small indigenous towns surrounded by fields.

About a decade later, Captain John Smith, who coined the term "New England," wrote that Massachusetts, a close native group, inhabited what he described as "the paradise of all these parts." ".

"A wonderful plague"

Champlain and Smith understood that all Europeans wishing to settle in this region should either compete with the natives or find ways to extract resources with their support.

But after the visit of Champlain and Smith, a terrible disease spread in the area. Modern researchers have argued that indigenous communities were devastated by leptospirosis, a disease caused by an Old World bacterium that had probably reached New England through rat excrement on European ships.

The absence of accurate statistics prevents us from knowing the final balance, but perhaps up to 90% of the regional population perished between 1617 and 1619.

For the English, the divine intervention had opened the way.

"The visit of God reigned over a wonderful plague," noted King James' patent for the region in 1620, "which led to the total destruction, devastation, and depopulation of all of this territory."

The epidemic benefited the pilgrims, who arrived shortly after: the best land had fewer residents and less competition for local resources, while the surviving natives were eager trading partners.

The wisdom of those who came before

It is equally important that pilgrims know what to do with the land.

By the time these English planned their communities, knowledge of the Atlantic coast of North America was widely available.

Those hoping to create new settlements had read stories of ancient European migrants who had established European-style villages near the water, especially along the shores of Chesapeake Bay, where the English had founded Jamestown in 1607.

These early English migrants in Jamestown endured a terrible illness and arrived during a period of drought and colder than normal winters. The Roanoke migrants on the outer shores of Carolina, where the English had been in the 1580s, have disappeared. And a brief effort to settle on the Maine coast in 1607 and 1608 failed because of an unusually bitter winter.

Many of these migrants have died or abandoned. But none disappeared without trace, and their stories circulated in printed books in London. All British efforts prior to 1620 had produced useful accounts for future colonizers.

The most famous account, by the English mathematician Thomas Harriot, lists the products that the English could extract from the fields and forests of America in a report that he had first published in 1588.

Artist John White, who was on the same mission in modern Carolina, painted a watercolor depicting the wide range of marine life that can be harvested, another large fish on a grill and a third showing the fertility of fields from the city of Secotan. In the mid-1610s, commodities began to arrive in England as well, providing support to those who had claimed that North American colonies could be profitable. Tobacco, which many Europeans considered a miracle drug capable of curing a wide range of human diseases, was the most important of these imports.

These reports (and imports) have encouraged many English developers to develop settlement plans to increase their wealth. But those who thought to go to New England, especially the pilgrims who were souls related to Bradford, believed that there were greater rewards to reap.

Bradford and the other Puritans who arrived in Massachusetts have often described their experience through the purpose of suffering and salvation.

But the pilgrims were better equipped to survive than they let it be heard.

Peter C. Mancall, Social Studies Professor Andrew W. Mellon, University of Southern California – Dornsife College of Arts, Letters and Science

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.