After the perilous crossing was over, after the initial exploration of a mysterious shore was begun, and the first winter survived, the self-styled Pilgrims still had to carve a new life out of a landscape they could have never imagined. With a lifetime of vast uncertainties ahead, these believers tried to make sense of their lives, community, and faith in this new, unknown, and at many times perilous, world. Nathaniel Philbrick's Mayflower looks at the story of this preeminent early American community - those who Americans would claim as their progenitors - and how they lived and died, made peace and war, settled and fought on this new continent.
Central to Philbrick's work is his claim that the story of the Mayflower doesn't simply end with the Pilgrim's settlement at Plymouth Rock. Without developing crucial relationships with native people, any hope of Pilgrim survival would have been little more than a dream. Though both Indians and settlers ran the gamut of emotions and positions concerning these foreign people, avenues of exchange were forged and each came to rely upon the other. However, as the years passed, and the English became more comfortable and assured in this new world, their younger generations could not but help take the Indians for granted. Often seeing these, so different, people as obstacles to more peaceable lives, and along with unfettered access to a land they coveted, it is little wonder that conflict would arise. Philbrick's work continues through the end of King Philip's War and argues that the conflict remade the American landscape and was central to securing this new English preeminence. Contrary to the American national mythos, Philbrick demonstrates the tenuous nature of English victory in the war - and the precarious advantages they were able to exploit. We are left believing that history could have been written very differently indeed - that the future of this new world balanced on a knife's edge. Yet, by the time sachem Philip was killed in battle, the Indian population had been decimated and their claims to land usurped. Their numbers were never to rebound - nor was their land to be reclaimed.
These early days preceding the United States ought to remind us all of the humble and uncertain beginnings. As we look at the uncertainty of days gone by, we cannot help but wonder how things could have been, and what opportunities were lost along the way.
Central to Philbrick's work is his claim that the story of the Mayflower doesn't simply end with the Pilgrim's settlement at Plymouth Rock. Without developing crucial relationships with native people, any hope of Pilgrim survival would have been little more than a dream. Though both Indians and settlers ran the gamut of emotions and positions concerning these foreign people, avenues of exchange were forged and each came to rely upon the other. However, as the years passed, and the English became more comfortable and assured in this new world, their younger generations could not but help take the Indians for granted. Often seeing these, so different, people as obstacles to more peaceable lives, and along with unfettered access to a land they coveted, it is little wonder that conflict would arise. Philbrick's work continues through the end of King Philip's War and argues that the conflict remade the American landscape and was central to securing this new English preeminence. Contrary to the American national mythos, Philbrick demonstrates the tenuous nature of English victory in the war - and the precarious advantages they were able to exploit. We are left believing that history could have been written very differently indeed - that the future of this new world balanced on a knife's edge. Yet, by the time sachem Philip was killed in battle, the Indian population had been decimated and their claims to land usurped. Their numbers were never to rebound - nor was their land to be reclaimed.
These early days preceding the United States ought to remind us all of the humble and uncertain beginnings. As we look at the uncertainty of days gone by, we cannot help but wonder how things could have been, and what opportunities were lost along the way.
