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To be a Pilgrim

Divine Providence

We call it a giant canoe.

They call it a ship.

Sailing with cloaks of white canvas,

That catch the wind,

To send it groaning through the ocean:

Another visitant from beyond the horizon.

Will they be the same as last time?

And seek to wound, enslave and kill us,

As that man Hunt did some seven summers ago.

………………………..

I have met with them.

I have listened to their discourse.

They mention their god in every sentence.

But also speak the language of merchants:

Patents, commodities, monopolies,

Trade, stock, investments, interest,

Pounds, debts, shares, purchases, per cents,

Purchases, property, profits, lots,

Wampum, business, commerce.

They mention their god in every sentence,

Yet have stolen our maize.

And desecrate our graves.

They mention their god in every sentence.

Yet have brought with them the weapons of war:

Guns, powder, muskets, shot, cannon, pistols.

They mention their god in every sentence.

Yet portray our lands as theirs:

‘fruitful and fit for habitation’.

While we who kept them alive?

‘Savages, who are cruel, barbarous,

And most treacherous, furious … merciless …

Not being content only to kill,

but delighting to torment …

in the most bloody manner.’

They talk of Divine Providence,

Yet forget how Squanto

‘directed how to set their corn, where to take fish,

and to procure of their commodities;

and was also their pilot to bring them

to unknown places for their profit,

and never left them until he died’.

Their gift to Squanto?

Their deathly disease.

They talked of cooperation.

Yet brought their kine across the waters

To trample upon our corn.

They talked of their hatred of deadly sin.

And yet I have witnessed constantly

Their gluttony, their greed, their sloth, their wrath,

Their envy and their pride.

I have witnessed, too, their drunkenness.

And how they delighted in the display

Of Wituwamat’s head, severed, darkening,

And placed high on a pole for all to witness.

They talk of Thanksgiving,

Yet thanked Squanto with death and disease,

And an endless train of multitudes.

They talk of Separatists and Strangers.

They are all strangers to me.

They emptied our lands of people

Yet termed that vacuity

Providential.

Providence.

Divine Providence.

‘Next to the fugitives whom Moses led out of Egypt, the little shipload of outcasts who landed at Plymouth … are destined to influence the future of the world … the work of Puritan thought and Puritan self-devotion.’

James Russell Lowell

‘… a noble colony of devout Christians, educated, firm men, valiant soldiers, and honourable women; a colony … beyond whose perilous path are hung the rainbow, and the western star of empire.’

Rufus Choate

‘In the name of God, Amen. We whose names are underwritten, the loyal subjects of our dread sovereign Lord, King James, by the grace of God, of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, King, defender of the faith, etc., having undertaken, for the glory of God, and advancement of the Christian faith, and honour of our king and country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the northern part of Virginia, do … combine ourselves together into one body politic, for our better ordering and preservation and furtherance of the ends aforesaid … for the general good of the Colony unto which we promise all due submission … Cape Cod, November 11 … 1620.’

This then is a sufficient reason to prove our going thither to live lawful: their land is spacious and void, and there are few and do but run over the grass, as also do the foxes and the wild beasts. They are not industrious, neither have art, science, skill, or faculty to use either the land or the commodities of it, but all spoils, rots, and is marred for want of manuring, gathering, ordering, etc. As the ancient patriarchs therefore removed from straiter places into more roomy, where the land lay idle and waste, and none used it, though there dwelt inhabitants by them, (as Gen. 13 :6, 11, 12, and 34 :2, and 41 :20), so it is lawful now to take a land which none useth, and make use of it …

It being then, first, a vast and empty chaos … Yea, and as the enterprise is weighty, so the honour is more worthy, to plant a rude wilderness, to enlarge the honour and fame of our dread sovereign, but chiefly to display the efficacy and power of the Gospel, both in zealous preaching, professing, and wise walking under it, before the faces of those poor blind infidels.’

‘They took the first ship they saw for a walking island, the mast to be a tree, the sail white clouds, and the discharging of ordnance for lightning and thunder, which did much trouble them, but this thunder being over, and this moving-island steadied with an anchor, they manned out their canoes to go and pick strawberries there. But being saluted by the way with a broadside …’

William Wood

‘I have seen a poor house left alone in the wild woods, all being fled, the living not able to bury the dead. So terrible is the apprehension of an infectious disease, that not only persons, but the houses and the whole town take flight.’

Roger Williams

‘Skulls and bones were found in many places lying still above the ground … a very sad spectacle to behold.’

William Bradford

‘Oh, how happy a thing had it been if you had converted some before you had killed any! Besides, where blood is once begun to be shed, it is seldom staunched of a long time after. You say they deserved it. I grant it; but upon what provocations and invitements … It is … a thing more glorious, in men’s eyes, than pleasing in God’s or convenient for Christians, to be a terror to poor barbarous people. And indeed I am afraid lest, by these occasions, others should be drawn to affect a kind of ruffling course in the world.’

Pastor John Robinson

‘It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fire and the streams of blood quenching the same, and horrible was the stink and scent thereof; but the victory seemed a sweet sacrifice, and they gave praise thereof to God.’

William Bradford

‘You know our fathers had plenty of deer and skins, our plains were full of deer, as also our woods, and of turkeys, and our coves full of fish and fowl. But these English having gotten our land, they with scythes cut down the grass, and with axes fell the trees; their cows and horses eat the grass, and their hogs spoil our clam banks, and we shall all be starved.’

Miantonomi

Stroud Scarlet?

King Philip’s War, June 1675-August 1676

The death of ‘King Philip’ of the Pokanokets – when he was killed, his precious belongings included belts, ‘two glazed powder horns and a rich red blanket. These, Annawon explained, were what Philip “was wont to adorn himself with when he sat in state.”

Mayflower Nathaniel Philbrick

Bibliography:

Of Plymouth Plantation William Bradford

Making Haste from Babylon Nick Bunker

Mourt’s Relation: A Journal of the Pilgrims at Plymouth

Telling the Mayflower Story Thanksgiving or Land Grabbing, Massacres & Slavery Danny Reilly and Steve Cushion

Mayflower Nathaniel Philbrick




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