Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War

by Nathaniel Philbrick

HOW DID AMERICA BEGIN?

This simple question launches acclaimed author Nathaniel Philbrick on an extraordinary journey to understand the truth behind our most sacred national myth: the voyage of the Mayflower and the settlement of Plymouth Colony. As Philbrick reveals in this electrifying new book, the story of the Pilgrims does not end with the First Thanksgiving; instead, it is a fifty-five-year epic that is at once tragic and heroic, and still carries meaning for us today.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, American History, Historical, Audiobook, American, Book Club

461 pages, ebook

First published May 9, 2006

About the author

Philbrick was Brown’s first Intercollegiate All-American sailor in 1978; that year he won the Sunfish North Americans in Barrington, RI; today he and his wife Melissa sail their Beetle Cat Clio and their Tiffany Jane 34 Marie-J in the waters surrounding Nantucket Island.

After grad school, Philbrick worked for four years at Sailing World magazine; was a freelancer for a number of years, during which time he wrote/edited several sailing books, including Yaahting: A Parody (1984), for which he was the editor-in-chief; during this time he was also the primary caregiver for his two children. After moving to Nantucket in 1986, he became interested in the history of the island and wrote Away Off Shore: Nantucket Island and Its People. He was offered the opportunity to start the Egan Maritime Institute in 1995, and in 2000 he published In the Heart of the Sea, followed by Sea of Glory, in 2003, and Mayflower. He is presently at work on a book about the Battle of Little Big Horn.

Mayflower was a finalist for both the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in History and the Los Angeles Times Book Award and was winner of the Massachusetts Book Award for nonfiction. In the Heart of the Sea won the National Book Award for nonfiction; Revenge of the Whale won a Boston Globe-Horn Book Award; Sea of Glory won the Theodore and Franklin D. Roosevelt Naval History Prize and the Albion-Monroe Award from the National Maritime Historical Society. Philbrick has also received the Byrne Waterman Award from the Kendall Whaling Museum, the Samuel Eliot Morison Award for distinguished service from the USS Constitution Museum, the Nathaniel Bowditch Award from the American Merchant Marine Museum, the William Bradford Award from the Pilgrim Society, the Boston History Award from the Bostonian Society, and the New England Book Award from the New England Independent Booksellers Association.

from his website

Reviews

[Rick Riordan]

I didn't intentionally read this because it was "Thanksgiving" season, but I did find it a fascinating account of the Pilgrims and the early history of the Plymouth colony. I enjoyed Philbrick's other book on Bunker Hill, largely because it conveyed the humanity of its protagonists, quirks, warts and all, and made for a compelling narrative. This book does the same. In my opinion, Philbrick does a reasonably good job balancing between the perspectives of the Indigenous peoples and the English colonists, letting us see the complicated, messy clash between cultures, the horrifying effects of the European arrival on the native cultures, but also the very human interactions between individuals trying to understand each other, learn from each other, use each other, manipulate each other, and eventually eliminate each other. The arrival of the Pilgrims put a new piece of the political chessboard of the region, which had already been ravaged by diseases brought by earlier European contact, and the Native peoples were quick to realize the danger, but also the destabilizing opportunities the Pilgrims presented. My take away was that, for better but usually for worse, humans are gonna human. They are driven by fear, greed, and prejudice to seek short-term gain. They are tribal by nature, hard-wired to divide the world into "us" and "them." They have very short memories when it comes to honoring their debts and obligations. The section on King Philip's War was especially sad reading. I knew the broad strokes of the conflict, but Philbrick brought it to life through vignettes of the many characters involved. A poignant account of a critical phase in history, drawing heavily from the firsthand accounts of those involved, the book offers a readable, multi-faceted glimpse into the formation of what would come to be called "New England."

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

“For sixty-five days, the Mayflower had blundered her way through storms and headwinds, her bottom a shaggy pelt of seaweed and barnacles, her leaky decks spewing salt water onto her passengers’ devoted heads. There were 102 of them – 104 if you counted the two dogs…Most of their provisions and equipment were beneath them in the hold, the primary storage area of the vessel. The passengers were in the between…decks – a dank, airless space about seventy-five feet long and not even high five feet high that separated the hold from the upper deck…A series of thin-walled cabins had been built, creating a crowded warren of rooms that overflowed with people and their possessions: chest of clothing, casks of food, chairs, pillows, rugs, and omnipresent chamber pots. There was even a boat – cut into pieces for later assembly – doing temporary duty as a bed.”
- Nathaniel Philbrick, Mayflower

When it comes to American history, we have a tendency towards reduction. We cherish the myth over the reality; the bombastic over the subtle; the simple over the complex. In modern media terms, we prefer the soundbite to the whole speech.

On the Fourth of July, for example, we aren't thinking about competing mercantile interests, unpaid French-and-Indian War debts, or the Townsend Acts. Not at all. Instead, as we get hot dog-drunk and light off fireworks, we're probably imagining a guy with a wig and a tricorne hat saying something about freedom.

History is more comforting that way. It's easier. It leaves more time for drinking and nurturing feelings of superiority towards France.

Our earliest history, the first European settlements, can be boiled down to one image: the Pilgrim.

Picture the Pilgrims with me: grim, black coated men with stiff white collars and funny hats with buckles. They grip their blunderbusses while their doughy, sexless wives grip their elbows. In the brush, something is skulking. It might be a sly turkey. An Indian. A witch. A lost and disoriented Cotton Mather. It doesn't matter. The Pilgrim has that blunderbuss, and it's full of justice.

Nathaniel Philbrick's Mayflower is the story of how it really went down. Plymouth Rock and the Pilgrims and Thanksgiving. It's probably not the story you heard in grade school. (Though I give you credit for recognizing that the story you heard in grade school was a lot of mashed potatoes and gravy).

Like all works of revisionism, Philbrick's book is both enlightening and a little disappointing. I love history as much as anything, which is accompanied by a secret pleasure at puncturing historical myths. But even I have to admit it's sometimes nice to be left with our illusions. In this case, the illusion being that the interlopers from the Old World and the indigenous inhabitants of the New were able to come together in mutual cooperation. Even though untrue, it's a fine notion. A retroactive ideal to strive for going forward.

Philbrick, though, is focused on the reality, which is quite a bit harsher.

***

The story starts with the voyage of the titular ship:

The Mayflower was a typical merchant vessel of her day: square-rigged and beak bowed, with high, castlelike superstructures fore and aft that protected her cargo and crew in the worst weather, but made beating against the wind a painfully inefficient endeavor. Rated at 180 tons (meaning her hold was capable of accomodating 180 casks or tuns of wine), she was approximately three times the size of the Speedwell and about one hundred feet in length.

Philbrick, who wrote the splendid whaling book, In the Heart of the Sea, once again tells a fast-paced, informative story, filled with little interesting factoids that make you go, hmm. For the most part, he does the same here.

Unfortunately, he is hampered by a dearth of sources. The famous voyage of the Mayflower – which gives the book its title – is told in only a few pages. This is due to the fact that the inveterate diarist William Bradford himself only devoted a couple paragraphs to the subject. Without primary accounts to research, Philbrick has no choice but to move on. It's an instance of source-material driving the narrative.

Of course, the lack of primary sources is not Philbrick's fault. He has not – to my knowledge – ever started a fire that burned a library full of Pilgrim diaries. But nonetheless, it hampers any telling of this story. By necessity, he must rely on Bradford a great deal, which gives a one-sided view of what happened. Famous events such as the signing of the Mayflower Compact are told through his eyes, without the benefit of corroboration. We are left to hope that Bradford wasn't totally full of stuffing.

***

Once the Mayflower has dropped anchor and the Pilgrims gone to shore, the story picks up steam, helped by a widening circle of characters. For instance, we get to meet Benjamin Church, who later became a famous chronicler of King Philip's War. We are also introduced to the irascible Myles Standish, one of the livelier actors of this drama:

Myles Standish was officially designated their captain. A small man with a broad, powerful physique and reddish hair, Standish also had something of a chip on his shoulder. He seems to have been born on the Isle of Man off the west coast of England, and even though he was descended from "the house of Standish of Standish," his rightful claim to ancestral lands had been, according to his own account, "surreptitiously detained from me," forcing him to seek his fortune as a mercenary in Holland. Well educated and well read (he owned a copy of Homer's The Iliad and Caesar's Commentaries), he appears to have conducted himself with a haughty impulsiveness that did not endear him to some of the settlers, one of whom later claimed that the Plymouth captain "looks like a silly boy, as is in utter contempt."

Eventually, we reach “the first Thanksgiving,” which is where most ideas about the Pilgrims begins and ends.

***

Once upon a time, Thanksgiving was a creation of Abraham Lincoln, building on a proclamation by George Washington, who sought a bright side during the Civil War. Today, Thanksgiving is a time of football, overeating, and letting your extended family know how much they have let you down. The original seedling for Thanksgiving was a celebration of the Pilgrims being rescued from the brink with the help of the Wampanoag Indians Massasoit and Squanto.

Countless Victorian-era engravings notwithstanding, the Pilgrims did not spend the day sitting around a long table draped with a white linen cloth, clasping each other's hands in prayer as a few curious Indians looked on. Instead of an English affair, the First Thanksgiving soon became an overwhelmingly Native celebration...Most of the celebrants stood, squatted, or sat on the ground as they clustered around outdoor fires, where the deer and birds turned on wooden spits and where pottages - stews into which varieties of meats and vegetables were thrown - simmered invitingly.

This thanksgiving was the culmination of a great deal of sacrifice, risk, luck, and shrewdness. We often view Massasoit as having saved the Pilgrims from starvation; what we don't often dwell upon is the fact that the Pilgrims chose Massasoit as an ally, and in doing so, became a power player in the region.

The First Thanksgiving occurs just over a hundred pages into Mayflower. There are well over two hundred pages left. After the turkeys are eaten, the wine is drunk, and the drunk uncles are pushed out of the crudely-built log cabins, Philbrick takes the burnished image of interracial cooperation/gluttony and tears it to pieces.

***

What follows is treachery and war. Anyone buying this book to read in preparation of the holiday should know that Philbrick is not interested in holidays. (On the other hand, if you - like me – enjoy horrifying your relatives with cruel historical fact, then get your wallets ready). The Mayflower/Pilgrims/Thanksgiving angle is quickly left behind. The final two thirds of the book are devoted to Pilgrim/Indian politics and King Philip's War.

This is certainly interesting stuff. King Philip's War was an incredibly brutal, under-acknowledged affair. Proportionally, it remains one of the bloodiest conflicts on American soil (1 out of 65 English and 1 out of 20 Indians were slain). Four of Massasoit's children died in the war (Massasoit himself was already dead). In the end, King Philip was shot, drawn-and-quartered, and beheaded. His head was displayed in Plymouth for 20 years.

Happy Thanksgiving! Pass the drumsticks.

***

Philbrick is an extremely talented historian and storyteller. He has become one of those guys whose books I always read, but – for whatever reason – have never entirely loved. Here, as hard as he tries to breathe life into this story, there's a coldness and distance to it.

This is a function of the material, more so than the author. So much of the Pilgrim tale is supposition: what might have happened. With a lack of primary accounts, a historian is left with the skeleton of an event. Moreover, even where they exist, contemporary accounts are often of limited value. They are not visceral and immediate; they don't allow us to feel the history. Rather, they often had a dual purpose, with informativeness a secondary concern.

***

For all its qualities, Mayflower is a bummer. Illusions are a necessary part of life, and Thanksgiving is a nice one. I like to imagine together to help each other, to see cultural divides bridged with food and drink and merriment. The reality is that the mythological Thanksgiving proved a brief interlude in a grim tale of death and dismemberment. Thus, when your family starts tearing itself apart over politics this Thanksgiving, you can find a quiet corner, drink a bottle of wine, and rest assured that it is closer to historical reality than is comfortable.

[Candi · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have to admit, I am one of those naïve Americans that has walked around in a bit of a fantasy land when it comes to the history of Plymouth and the Pilgrims. From grade school, I knew they desired freedom to worship their religion without persecution. In order to do so, they faced a difficult journey aboard the Mayflower prior to landing on the shores of New England. There’s a giant rock on which they must have set foot after disembarking from the ship. I know the Pilgrims struggled to survive and the Native Americans came to their rescue. They celebrated the First Thanksgiving with the Native Americans, a holiday which we now sit down to every November in order to indulge and give thanks. Well, that’s it in a nutshell, right? Or so I believed! Nathaniel Philbrick, however, has set me straight and enlightened me way more than I could ever have imagined!

Mayflower is extremely well researched and undeniably well-written. However, it is quite dense with very detailed information regarding much more than the voyage of the Mayflower and the original settlement of Plymouth colony. Philbrick takes us beyond those years through the next couple of generations and presents a factual account of the violent and bloody wars fought between the New Englanders and the Native Americans. The first Thanksgiving most certainly did not end in a ‘happily ever after’ situation. There were numerous conflicts, various alliances between the New Englanders and Native Americans, and treachery. I was often quite shocked to learn of the behavior exhibited by some of the Pilgrims’ descendants. It wasn’t very pretty and not something I feel proud to claim as part of my American heritage. Speaking of heritage, Philbrick tells us that "In 2002 it was estimated that there were approximately 35 million descendants of the Mayflower passengers in the United States, which represents roughly 10 percent of the total U.S. population." Philbrick, however, does tell us the good with the bad and we also learn of some of the more upstanding descendants. Little tidbits of facts like this were what I enjoyed most about the book. It helped me slog through some of the more textbook-like sections when I knew I might find a little nugget of information I could perhaps share with the family at our Thanksgiving gathering in a couple of weeks from now. This may change the tone at the table a bit in the wrong direction, however - "Fifty-six years after the sailing of the Mayflower, the Pilgrims’ children had not only defeated the Pokanokets in a devastating war, they had taken conscious, methodical measures to purge the land of its people." Perhaps we will have to seriously indulge a bit before smashing the myth all to bits! My favorite little chronicle was one which involved Captain Benjamin Church, principal aide to Plymouth’s governor, Josiah Winslow. During one of the final skirmishes of King Philip’s War, several Native Americans were taken as captives. When Church asked one of the older captives his name, he was answered with ‘Conscience’. Philbrick tells us that Church replied, "Conscience, then the war is over, for that was what they were searching for, it being much wanting." Indeed!

I found this to be a worthwhile read, although a bit dry throughout the middle to last sections of the book. Last year I read Philbrick’s In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex and found it to be immensely entertaining and quite effortless. It read much like fiction, and so I expected much of the same with Mayflower. However, in my opinion, this was more like the sort of non-fiction book from which I previously steered away – one which presents copious facts and dates to the extent that I feel like I am back in school. Some readers that enjoy a myriad of detail will quite enjoy this. History buffs should have no complaints since Philbrick has done his job well here. Since I did enjoy parts of this book and am grateful to be considerably more educated on the topic of the Pilgrims and King Philip’s War, I have rated Mayflower 3.5 stars.

[Chelsea · Rating 4 out of 5]

Spoiler Alert: The Mayflower lands in Plymouth! Rocks fall, all the Native Americans die.

(One of the most interesting things about Mayflower is how little of it actually dealt with the ship itself. The Pilgrims are settled (well, “settled”), and the Mayflower headed back to England to fall into disrepair and be sold for scrap by page 80. More than half the book is spent on King Philip’s War and the events that lead to it, which actually concerns the two generations after the Mayflower’s passengers.)

Philbrick won a ton of awards with this one (like, say, the National Book Award), all deserved. He takes an excellent look at a period in time frequently overlooked – American history tends to cover 1620, and then make its way to 1770 and the Revolutionary War in the next chapter (with a slight layover in 1692 for the Witch Trials).

It’s incredibly well written, with an excellent balance between the big picture and individual narratives. He’s liberal with anecdotes, which keeps the book from ever getting dry or boring. He quotes contemporary and first person accounts, but not excessively – this is a book to be read for pleasure, not to be used as a resource. I laughed out loud a couple times, and physically shuddered as well. He reached that all-important goal of bringing his subjects to life.

Philbrick also does a good job of presenting a balanced version of events. (Especially considering that most contemporary sources were, at best, biased, because history, as we all know, is written by the victors.) He’s quick to point out the mistakes on both sides – the rash, racially motivated attacks made by the white settlers, and the never ending litany of missteps made by the Pokanokets, especially “King” Philip.

A few quick observations:

I would very much like to slap Increase Mather across the face. (Preferably so hard that Cotton feels it, too.) What an enormous tool.

These people were crap at naming their children. Everyone was John, Mary, William, or FEAR. Or Cotton. No wonder they were all a little wacked.

I love the irony of having a huge, gluttonous holiday celebration in honor of the Pilgrims, who regularly arrested and punished people for having big holiday celebrations. They would put us all in the stocks.

Is there any worse story than Thomas Granger’s? He will always (and I mean always – it’s already been 350+ years) be known for being convicted of bestiality – and executed for it. That’s embarrassing.

And, finally: How pissed is Miles Standish right now, what with how many times he was called short in this book?

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was enthralled with this popular history of the first 60 years of Plymouth Colony starting with the Mayflower landing in 1620. With a focus on the actions and decisions of a limited set of key individuals, Philbrick’s account brings to life the initial desperate events of the colony (half of the initial 102 died the first year) and the early years of dependence on the support of the Pokenoket tribe. I was enlightened to learn how decimation of Indian villages by disease and the competitive balance between tribes contributed to the ability of the Pilgrims to gain a foothold. In many ways, the sachem (chief) Massasoit was calling the shots in using the alliance with the Pilgrims to enhance his position with respect to rival tribes, and in turn Squanto’s support of the colony as mediator/translator was motivated by his own Machiavellian schemes. Due to past cases of treacherous attacks and kidnapping for slavery on the part of English and French visitors, other tribes to the north and south would not tolerate colonists. Thus, the Indians were not just passive dupes to exploitation and domination by European invades.

Though the Pilgrims goal of religious freedom was not very tolerant of other belief systems (as the Quakers learned and individuals executed for bestiality and other personal crimes), they were not empire builders and there was quite a lot of respect for the Indians at first. Philbrick does well to dwell on the factors that contributed to the surprisingly peaceful subsequent period of colonial growth and expansion for nearly 50 years and then to spend half the book on the causes and details of its breach in King Philip’s war of 1675, which decimated the Europeans and nearly extinguished several of the tribes in southern New England. Philbrick’s coverage of compassionate voices for peace and arrogant stupidity on both sides begs the question of whether the war was inevitable. He points out how a sense of a Greek tragedy pervades the progression from a local conflict to an expanded war between several tribes and colonies throughout New England.

As evident in two other books of his I enjoyed (his survival saga of the whaling ship Essex and his history of the Battle of the Little Bighorn), Philbrick is a master of balancing the use of primary sources and interpretive reflection in a compelling narrative that rivals that of skilled fiction writers. Philbrick clearly did a lot of research to write this book, but I have no way of telling how much of his synthesis is innovative vs. derivative. What I can say is that the book provided me a good foundation to negotiate the myths and divergent interpretations of European colonialism in the New World and to understand patterns that played out disastrously throughout the westward expansion over the subsequent 200 years.

[Maureen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another review that seems to have disappeared into the ether!

[Diane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pilgrims! Indians! War!

This is an in-depth look at the first years of the colonists in New England, and also the terrible war with the Indians that the next generation faced. Philbrick's book is called Mayflower, but only the first section of it focuses on the sea voyage and the Mayflower Compact. I was especially interested in learning what the colonists did in the early days of their settlement, how they adapted to the land and worked on their homes. However, a majority of the book is about King Philip's War, which was the conflict between the Pilgrims and native Americans (although the Pilgrims did have some Indian allies). It's complicated.

I had previously read Philbrick's book In the Heart of the Sea, which I really enjoyed, but I struggled to finish Mayflower. I did learn some interesting details, including that before coming to the New World, the English Puritans first went to live in Holland because it was known for being religiously tolerant. But they felt they couldn't stay there.

"Their chief worry involved their children. Gradually and inevitably, they were becoming Dutch. The congregation had rejected the Church of England, but the vast majority of its members were still proudly, even defiantly, English. By sailing to the New World, they hoped to re-create the English village life they so dearly missed while remaining beyond the meddlesome reach of King James and his bishops."

I appreciated this look at early American history, and I'm glad I read it, even though it was rather dense in the later chapters about the conflict. I would still recommend it to those interested in reading more about the Pilgrims or the First Indian War.

Opening Passage

We all want to know how it was in the beginning. From the Big Bang to the Garden of Eden to the circumstances of our own births, we yearn to travel back to that distant time when everything was new and full of promise. Perhaps then, we tell ourselves, we can start to make sense of the convoluted mess we are in today.

But beginnings are rarely as clear-cut as we would like them to be. Take, for example, the event that most Americans associate with the start of the United States: the voyage of the Mayflower.

We've all heard at least some version of the story: how in 1620 the Pilgrims sailed to the New World in search of religious freedom; how after drawing up the Mayflower Compact, they landed at Plymouth Rock and befriended the local Wampanoags, who taught them how to plant corn and whose leader or sachem, Massasoit, helped them celebrate the First Thanksgiving. From this inspiring inception came the United States.

Like many Americans, I grew up taking this myth of national origins with a grain of salt. In their wide-brimmed hats and buckled shoes, the Pilgrims were the stuff of holiday parades and bad Victorian poetry. Nothing could be more removed from the ambiguities of modern-day America, I thought, than the Pilgrims and the Mayflower.

But, as I have since discovered, the story of the Pilgrims does not end with the First Thanksgiving. When we look to how the Pilgrims and the Wampanoags maintained more than fifty years of peace and how that peace suddenly erupted into one of the deadliest wars ever fought on American soil, the history of Plymouth Colony becomes something altogether new, rich, troubling, and complex. Instead of the story we already know, it becomes the story we need to know.

[Paul Haspel · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Mayflower sails on, more than 400 years after the little ship’s historic voyage from England to Massachusetts. And millions of Americans recall that voyage with particular affection when the Thanksgiving season comes around each November. Yet the Pilgrims’ journey to Plymouth was only a small part of a much longer and more complex history, as Nathaniel Philbrick makes clear in his 2006 book Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War.

Philbrick has become one of the pre-eminent maritime historians of contemporary times; his 2000 book In the Heart of the Sea, a chronicle of the ill-fated whaling expedition that inspired Herman Melville’s composition of Moby Dick, was a National Book Award winner. And like that earlier book, Philbrick’s Mayflower delves into all that is difficult, messy, and painful about a historical episode that others might want to mythologize.

The early chapters of Mayflower do indeed capture the challenges that the Pilgrims experienced as they sailed to New England, arrived at exactly the wrong time of year, and endured a “starving winter” of 1620-21 that left many of their number dead. By the autumn of 1621, when they celebrated that first Thanksgiving, the Pilgrims were indeed thankful to be alive, and understandably so.

Philbrick dutifully sets forth what the Pilgrims and their Native American guests ate at that first Thanksgiving table – deer, ducks, turkey, and possibly fish, with freshly brewed beer to wash it all down. Philbrick feels obliged to remind us that “Alas, the Pilgrims were without pumpkin pies or cranberry sauce”, and that “The Pilgrims are with their fingers and their knives” (p. 118). While the term “thanksgiving” had specifically religious overtones, “there was also much about the gathering that was similar to a traditional English harvest festival” from medieval times (p. 117).

Yet there is much more for Philbrick to reveal about the Pilgrims and their descendants in colonial Massachusetts – a grim scenario that takes the reader a long way from “Countless Victorian-era engravings” in which “the Pilgrims…spend the day sitting around a long table draped with a white linen cloth, clasping each other’s hands in prayer as a few curious Indians looked on” (p. 117). Indeed, by the time the first Thanksgiving meal is finished, there are more than 200 pages still left in the book, and the tale that Philbrick recounts is largely a grim one.

The Pilgrims experienced cultural and religious tensions as more numerous Puritans – fellow Englishmen who wished to reform the Church of England rather than separate from it in the Pilgrim manner – established the nearby Massachusetts Bay colony that eventually absorbed and incorporated the Plymouth Colony. And, as in other parts of colonial America, questions of land deals caused tension between English and Indigenous inhabitants.

The Wampanoag leader Massasoit was, famously, a friend to the Pilgrims; his generous behavior toward the hapless Plymouth colonists helped many of them survive that harsh winter of 1620-21, and may have saved the entire colony from destruction. But Massasoit’s generosity did not help his sons in their dealings with the Pilgrims.

The eldest son of Massasoit, Wamsutta of Pokanoket, took the Christian name “Alexander” as a demonstration of his willingness to adapt to English ways; but when it was reported in 1662 that Alexander had been selling land to settlers from the rival colony of Rhode Island, Major Josiah Winslow – the son of Edward Winslow, the man who had set down that famous description of the first Thanksgiving – was sent out to arrest Alexander. The Pokanoket leader died on the journey back to Plymouth; there were rumors that he had been cruelly treated on the way; and “Alexander’s younger brother Philip…became convinced that Winslow had poisoned the sachem” (p. 204). While no one, either English or Indigenous, might have known it at the time, the stage was being set for a singularly bloody and cruel war.

Alexander’s bereaved younger brother, Philip, originally had the name Metacomet, but he became known to history as King Philip. As Philip succeeded Alexander as sachem (elected chief) of the Wampanoag, his feelings that the English had to be expelled from Wampanoag land remained consistent, and the war effort that he led against the English, beginning in 1675, came to be known as King Philip’s War.

It was a singularly cruel and bloody conflict, with abundant atrocities being committed on both sides; and there were times when it looked as though “the Indians might do as they had once threatened and drive the English to the very edge of the sea” (p. 302) – particularly at a time when the English faced not only determined Indigenous opposition but also a severe outbreak of influenza across New England.

But King Philip, for all the seeming fearsomeness of his name, had his limitations as a war leader; and the capture and execution of the Narragansett sachem Canonchet, who “had earned the reputation for charismatic leadership that had so far eluded the more famous Philip” (p. 302), was representative of how the war turned in favor of the English.

Also playing an important role in the resolution of the war was Mary Rowlandson, a 38-year-old Englishwoman who spent almost three months as a captive of the Indigenous forces. Six years before writing her account of her experiences, Captivity and Restoration (1682), Rowlandson met with King Philip and served as a sort of unofficial diplomatic negotiator, making good use of her knowledge of both English and Indigenous culture.

Rowlandson, fortunately, made it back to English land, at a site in Princeton, Massachusetts, that is now called “Redemption Rock.” But her experience was far from typical. Casualties on both sides in the 1675-78 war were severe; the economies of colonies that would one day be six American states were wrecked; and Indigenous nations of New England, nations that had thrived in the region for thousands of years, were virtually wiped out. Among the dead was King Philip, shot in a swamp in Rhode Island; his wife and son were sold into slavery in Bermuda.

An epilogue titled “Conscience” describes how the Thanksgiving commemoration evolved into a cultural celebration of which Americans are singularly proud. And yet, as Philbrick points out, “no matter how desperately our nation’s mythologizers might wish it had never happened, King Philip’s War will not go away” (p. 355). The intensity of the contrast between, on the one hand, the high ideals symbolized by the traditional Thanksgiving tableau of 1621 – a peaceful, multicultural celebration of the bounty of the American landscape – and, on the other hand, the brutal and violent reality of King Philip’s War 50 years later, is characteristic of Philbrick’s approach to history, and is at the heart of his book Mayflower.

[Mahlon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nathaniel Philbrick's book "Mayflower" appears at first glance to be merely a recounting of the Pilgrims journey to the New World and their miraculous survival that first winter culminating in the first Thanksgiving, that's all here, but takes up only about 80 pages of the 450+ page book. In reality, Philbrick offers the reader a complete history of Plymouth Colony from 1620-1691 (when it was merged into Massachusets Bay colony) The bulk of the narrative focuses on King Phillip's War (1675-76) for my money one of the most fascinating and under-reported armed conflicts in American History. Philbrick chronicles the main engagements of the war, in a very evenhanded way, praising the colonists bravery when warranted, while at the same time not being afraid to call them the savage butchers that they clearly were. He also does a great job of guiding the reader through understand the complex maze of ever-changing alliances between the colonists and the various native tribes of the region, and analysing how the conflict's long-term consequences helped shape America today.

An appropriate book to read this time of year.

[Quirkyreader · Rating 4 out of 5]

A little bit of a backstory on this, one of my ancestors came over on the Mayflower so I have a personal interest in the people who made the journey.

This book featured the well written information I have come to expect by Nathaniel Philbrick. I enjoyed reading this piece of history.

Possible spoilers......

I didn’t give this book five stars, because I thought that one event was focused on too much, and not the actual people who made to journey and survived. I won’t say what the event it. You have to read the book and find out for yourself.

[Doug Bradshaw · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an experience similar to David McCullough's John Adams biography for me. It opened my eyes to a world I only had vague images about. And, I come away a little bit bitter and bothered by many different aspects of human behavior, the big one: man's intolerance of other people and their cultures and many times, their ability to blame their bad behavior on the teachings of the Bible or other beliefs in whatever God they worshipped. The Puritans wanted to get away from the religious rules and regs at the time so that they could practice their religion freely. And yet, it's so ironic that they had very little ability to allow others that same freedom. Disingenuous, proud, sure that God was calling every shot whether good for them or bad for them, they marched ahead with this plan, and it was only with the help of some of the Indians they were even able to survive early on. While they were humble, had low numbers of people, had the support of the Indians, they were peaceful. But as the next generations grew up, they became greedy, selfish and started pushing the Indians around like they were a nuisance, slaves, taking up space, etc.

And so, certain of the Indians banded together and started a holy war against their better equipped, better organized and unforgiving Englishmen/Puritan and Pilgrims. It seems like once blood started flowing, no one could think straight and many looked at the Indians as filthy dirty devils. Certainly there was a tremendous case to be made from the Indian perspective that certain of the English were the exact same thing: lying, killing, sanctimonious bastards who never lived up to promises they had made.

It has been easy for past historians to whitewash all of the things that happened. This author pointed out that there were good and bad people on both sides of the fence. Really good people.

But the end result for me is that the Indians were screwed, got a raw deal, lived in a whole different world that was virtually destroyed, and I feel sick about it. Thanks for guiding me to this book, Michael.

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I’m about to start a history book and see that there are about 100 pages of Notes and Bibliography, I know I’m in for a comprehensive overview. When an author can combine that thoroughness with a great storytelling ability, then you may just have a classic in your hands. Nathaniel Philbrick came pretty close to that with this book, assuring it a snug spot in my top ten history books.

I can see why a few reviewers docked a star or two from their ratings. The title ‘Mayflower’ may be a bit misleading. If you’re looking for a nice story of the first Thanksgiving, the Pilgrims and the landing at Plymouth Rock, you’re in for a rude awakening. While those events are covered in just a few pages, what you get instead is the full fifty-six year story of how “New England” was conquered by the English… in all its gory details.

Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Vermont, Maine and New Hampshire were territories taken from the native inhabitants via unscrupulous land purchases and outright force. Philbrick notes how, instead of being the story we all think we already know, this is the story we all need to know. And once you know it, I find it hard to believe anyone can still have a romanticized image of America’s founding.

I’ve been reading about the plains tribes of North America (Lakota, Cheyenne, Osages, Navajo, Apaches, etc...) and their various wars against the expanding colonies. But I wanted to know about the original peoples of the territories comprising those 13 colonies. Was there one single indigenous power in the region now known as ‘New England’? How many tribes were there initially? What was their political structure? Has that information been lost? This book answers all of that, with its focus being mainly on southern New England (Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island).

After reading this book, I was struck with the realization of how fast everything radically changed for the indigenous nations of the eastern coast of present-day United Sates. I’m in my mid-30s and my mom is in her mid-60s, so together we’ve lived 100 years. I don’t view that as very long at all.

So let’s do a little mental exercise and go through ‘New England’ history in one-hundred year increments.

In 1576, ‘New England’ native tribes were fully living according to their own way of life (a seasonal settlement pattern -> mix of subsistence agriculture, including large corn plantations with slash and burn techniques and countless seasonal rituals which kept them on the move, along with more traditional hunting and gathering). By 1575, the native tribes were well aware of white explorers, seeing their first Italian explorer in 1524.

…one hundred years later…
In 1676, the ‘New England’ native tribes were engaged in an all-out war for survival against the colonists.

…one hundred years later…
In 1776, most of ‘New England’ was already fully conquered by the English. I’m simultaneously reading ‘1776’ by David McCullough, and it’s striking to see that only 100 years after the events of ‘Mayflower’ (the conclusion of Metacom’s War in 1676), how Boston and New England were at the heart of events in the first year of the American Revolution (Bunker Hill, Boston Tea Party, Siege at Boston). McCullough notes how the British soldiers arriving in New England were surprised at the prosperity of those early colonists. Far from the crowded European countries, the American colonies were spacious and flourishing.

…one hundred years later…
In 1876, ‘New England’ was the main driving force of America’s dominance during the 19th Century Industrial Revolution, with the highest literacy rates in the world, the best education and the most industrial innovations (I’m also reading ‘The Battle Cry of Freedom’ which drives this point home). New England was thriving like almost no other place on earth at the time.

It really hits home that these successes came not in spite of, but because of this initial violence. It could have not happened without the domination and genocide of the natives tribes as described in this book.

There are some great notes on indigenous warfare being more about bravery and honor rather than body count. During the Pequot war, the Narragansetts were surprised at the level of brutality of the English, when hundreds of Pequot men, women and children were slaughtered in one of the first true genocidal acts of the colonists.

Philbrick notes how in native wars, only a handful of warriors would be killed at each major battle. In this event, the Narraganstett warriors (although at the time allied with the English) angrily protested the slaughter, claiming “it is too furious, and slays too many men”. The Narragansetts had attempted to get assurances that no women and children would be killed before the battle. But none of those assurances were upheld.

But far from being solely the victims of colonialism, I learned that the various tribes put up a strong fight, with hundreds of colonists losing their lives in the wars. Even a full year after the beginning of Metacom’s war, it looked like the native tribes might win. If it wasn’t for some key alliances that could not be made, the natives would have won. But unfortunately some native tribes aligned with the British (because they were further away from the British encroaching on their lands), like the powerful Mohawks of upstate New York. They had a long standing dislike of many New England tribes. If the Mohawks had agreed to join Metacom with his existing alliance against the English, the colonists would have lost. History would have been changed forever. The other determining factor was the European’s ability to get constant re-supplies of ammo and food from Britain to sustain the war effort. While the Pokanokets were struggling to amass enough food for the coming winter after the English burned down one thousand acres of native grown corn… a corn field as far as the eye could see.

I sometimes hear the justification that whites won the war fairly, and therefore are entitled to the spoils of war (the land). But as I’ve learned over and over again, Europeans didn’t have a strong sense of honor in warfare. For example, on Page 252, Philbrick writes how in 1675, Winslow assures any native who surrenders would be granted amnesty. Several hundred natives then surrendered in Plymouth, but Winslow reneged. He sends ALL of them to Spain as slaves. All throughout the war, hundreds of native men who could be potentially warriors, were shipped off as slaves in the Caribbean. Massasoit’s son, the Chief of the Pokanokets, was beheaded and his wife and son were sent to the Caribbean as slaves.

We learn how after that first winter in the Plymouth colony, half of the pilgrims and mercenaries (and their families) were dead, mostly due to starvation and sickness. Without the agricultural assistance provided by Squanto, a Patuxet man, the early colony would not have survived at all. It was only many decades later, after pilgrim survival no longer depended upon friendship with the natives, the grown children of the original pilgrims started to view the indigenous population as an impediment to their future prosperity. Their focus soon became about stealing or taking the natives’ land however possible.

I have only one slightly negative comment. While Nathanial Philbrick stays as neutral as possible, or even writes with contempt at times regarding the English’s actions, he did look for a hero in Benjamin Church, and in the last few pages of the book writes about Church being an exemplary American caught in an impossible situation. But given that Benjamin Church captured and sent hundreds of native warriors as slaves, I can’t be down with that conclusion. It left a slight sour taste in my mouth, but the book was so good that I can’t knock it too much. I suppose Europeans need at least one good character when looking back at the formative years of the U.S. I’m sure there were many white colonists who wanted nothing to do with the war… we’ll likely never hear their stories. They may have joined native tribes and lived their lives that way. Or just returned to England. Certainly Roger Williams of Rhode Island tried to separate himself from all the bloodshed. But even he wanted more and more indigenous lands as the years went on.

The other slight scruple I have is with the discussion whereby Philbrick and other scholars note that there were 56 years of peace between natives and pilgrims, before the all-out, genocidal race war that ensued (Metacom’s War in 1675). He mentions that in those 56 years, there were real examples of a possible alternate future of peaceful coexistence.

While I do believe there were many good examples of coexistence, I don’t think the ‘56-years of peace’ line really holds up, given Philbrick’s own account. This peace was only with Massasoit and his Pokanoket tribe (forebears of the modern day Wampanoag tribe). In fact, fighting and conflict happened almost right away with the Nausets getting in a shootout (arrow-fight / gun-fight) with the Pilgrims in the ‘First Encounter’. The Pilgrims and mercenaries proceed to rob massive amounts of corn they found hidden (an obvious storage spot used by the Nausets for the coming winter). Stealing and outright violence were the very first interactions and they would presage what was to come.

By 1623, just three years after landing, Miles Standish, the pilgrim’s military leader, invited two Massachusetts warriors (Pecksuot and Wituwamat) to lunch and while they were eating, brutally attacked them, stabbing them to death. Other innocent natives were ordered killed as a show of force near present-day Boston. The Massachusetts natives started calling the Pilgrims ‘wotawquenange’, or ‘cutthroats’ after that incident.

In 1637, the genocidal Pequot War occurred in present-day Connecticut, led by several veterans of Europe’s bloody Thirty Years War.

In 1676, the all-out race war ensued.

That doesn’t look like a 56-year peace to me. That looks more like constant warfare with the natives, and a 56-year tenuous peace between the Pokanokets and the Plymouth colony.

But overall this book is well researched so you learn tons of small but interesting details (like the native remedy for wounds; oak leaves over a gunshot wound...which an english captive confirmed works). There are great maps interspersed throughout with some pictures which adds some context to the story. Philbrick is fair to the native perspective and doesn’t sugar coat atrocities, like when speaking about Captain Samuel Mosley who, in official documentation to Boston officials, bragged about sending a captive Indian woman to be torn to pieces by dogs, on some real-life Ramsay Bolton ish. The natives hated him more than anyone in all of New England.

The book is filled with incredible characters and several indigenous leaders come to life, including Massasoit, Squanto, Metacom, and the Narragansett Chief Miantonomi. I think it's important to remember their struggles and their names.

What more can I say? Philbrick is showing em’ how it’s done. Tackling a large and sensitive topic, he did exhaustive research, basically reading everything ever written on the topic and then synthesizing it into a well paced, action packed, tragic story. All I can say is bravo. This is how to properly tackle native american history by a white writer. I’m looking forward to reading Philbrick’s book on the fight at the Greasy Grass.

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Instead of the story we already know, it becomes the story we need to know."

This story had very little to do with the voyage of the Mayflower or even the Mayflower Compact but is indeed an in depth "Story of Courage, Community, and War". Growing up I had learned the popular version of the story of the Pilgrims. They left Europe seeking religious freedom and after a difficult voyage on the Mayflower settled in New England where they struggled to survive and the Native Americans came to their aide. There was a celebration with the Pilgrims and Native Americans that we now recognize as Thanksgiving and celebrate every November.

Plymouth Colony consisted of more than just Pilgrims. They were joined on the Mayflower by others who were not part of their religious group. The "Strangers". Half of the colonists died the first year and another ship brought additional colonists to Plymouth who were not Pilgrims. Although the Pilgrims came to New England seeking religious freedom they were not very tolerant of others as the Quakers learned. Individuals were executed for crimes that were a violation of their beliefs.

I have heard stories of how Native Americans were decimated by disease brought over from Europe but didn't realize the scope or how soon this happened. I also did not know about the many different tribes that lived in New England. One of these was the Pokenokets whose sachem (chief) was named Massasoit who formed and allegiance with the Pilgrims in order to enhance his position with respect to rival tribes. Another Native American who appeared to be supportive of the Pilgrims was named Squanto and acted as a translator but he was motivated by his own Machiavellian schemes. Clearly the Native Americans were not just passive dupes to exploitation and domination by Europeans.

I had never heard of King Phillip's War. This was a 14 month conflict that nearly wiped out both the colonists and Native Americans. Phillip was the European name given to Massasoit's son and the reason he was called King Phillip was due to the fact that he apparently equated himself with King Charles. There was plenty of arrogance and stupidity on both sides and one has to wonder whether the war was inevitable.

If there is a hero in this story I think it would be Benjamin Church, principal aide to Plymouth’s governor, Josiah Winslow. Throughout the conflict he appears to have recognized that the Native Americans were humans and not savages. He was an advocate to use some of the tribes as allies. He was also against selling Native Americans into slavery.

This was an eye opening account of what life was really like in the earliest days of New England. It was brutal and we should be thankful that colonists and Native Americans did not totally wipe each other out due to their arrogance and stupidity.

[Jason Koivu · Rating 4 out of 5]

A must-read if you're from New England or interested in early colonial era history. Philbrick's Mayflower is written to capture your interest in a way you might not expect a book on the Pil--*YAWN!*--grims could. You'll find much more detail with way more truth in this book than anything you learned about those uptight prigs in elementary school!

[Julie Durnell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating narrative of the Pilgrim's and the Native Americans in the New England area beginning with the journey from England and Holland in 1620. Some information was new, some I had forgotten and some I had been misinformed from early school days. I so enjoy reading Philbrick's writing style!

[Anna · Rating 2 out of 5]

Big sigh of relief to have finally gotten through this.....Like a lot of other people, I imagined this book would be about the Mayflower and its passengers, and what they did when they reached America -- seeing how the title of the book is "Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community and War." That's the book Philbrick wrote for the first 100 pages or so, but evidently, he changed his mind and decided he was going to write something else after that. It's too bad he didn't change the title while he was at it.
The rest of the book, until the last 10 pages is a lengthy, dull, battle-by-battle account about King Phillip's War, which I'd never heard of, and I doubt many other readers have either. That's not to say it's unimportant. It is a crucial part of early American/United States history that set the tone for all the subsequent Indian wars in this country. Of that, there's no doubt.
Unfortunately, the history as Philbrick has written it is hard to follow, and his bias becomes painfully obvious as the narrative progresses. Even though Philip, an Indian sachem, started the war, which involved the brutal murder of unarmed English settlers multiple times, Philbrick seems to think the Indians were the only victims who unfairly lost their land and lives. In fact, if the English would have just packed up and gone back to England amidst all this carnage, all would be well with the world today, he seems assert.
The first part of the book does a decent job of giving us background about the Pilgrims and the social and political reasons they had for leaving Holland -- more background that most readers and Americans have no idea about.
I'd hoped the book would continue with that history and talk about how the rest of New England colonies were settled and why, but he glosses over the rest of the "English" history of the time period and veers off into a military play-by-play so full of arcane detail, I'm not sure many readers would be able to follow it. If you're not intimately familiar with the geography and topography of the Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island coastlines, as well as all the Indian tribes who were living there in the 1620s to 1640s, you're probably going to have a hard time with this book.

[Chris D. · Rating 5 out of 5]

An illuminating look at the Plymouth colony, starting with the story of the journey of the Mayflower and continuing through the end of the conflict known as King Phillip's War. There was so much I did not know about this story and Phillbrick really brings this era to life. My education in school, maybe like many others, did not give us many facts about the Pilgrims, and this book filled in many of the facts.

We learn not only about the white settlers, but also the Native Americans and how they lived in the 17th century. This is highly recommended for those interested in the early history of colonial life in 17th century North America.

[Joy D · Rating 4 out of 5]

Non-fiction about the Pilgrims, including their journey to form a religious colony in New England, the first Thanksgiving, the early years of the Plymouth settlement and how they survived, and their relationships with the Indians, which were friendly at first, but deteriorated into war in subsequent generations. The first half of the book focuses on the arrival at Plymouth, the strong personalities of the inhabitants, and establishment of the colony, and the second half follows the next generations into King Philip’s War (1675-1677), an episode not often covered in our history classes, which set a sad precedent for how race relations between the settlers and the native population would proceed well into the nineteenth century.

This book clears up numerous myths, which unfortunately continue to be perpetuated in elementary schools around America. We often skip from the Jamestown and Plymouth settlements to the American Revolution but miss a good bit of history in between. This book attempts to fill part of this gap. I thought the first half of the book flowed easily, while the second half gets extremely detailed in a blow-by-blow account of the King Philip’s war. I felt Philbrick did a good job of showing the motivations of the primary players, which I appreciated, especially considering the lengthy passage of time.

Philbrick provides depth to this period in history through thorough research, logical assumptions, and direct story-telling, albeit limited by the dearth of source material, particularly of the native people. The author illuminates the complexities of the period in an informative and enlightening manner that gave me a deeper appreciation of era. The book includes an extensive bibliography, notes on each chapter, and remarkable maps. Content warnings include descriptions of executions, ritual torture, and other war-related violence. Recommended to readers of early American history.

I can also recommend another of Philbrick's books: In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex (my review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...).

[Lisa (Harmonybites) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think were it not that I've been so spoiled by some amazing history books lately, I'd be rating this five stars. It's certainly the perfect book to read right before American Thanksgiving. The Mayflower, as every American schoolchild has been taught, is the name of the ship that brought the "Pilgrims," a group of religious dissenters, to America to establish one of the earliest English colonies. While still on board the male settlers signed the "Mayflower Compact" revered as a precursor to the American Declaration of Independence. There were 102 passengers who took that 65-day voyage--half of them wouldn't survive the winter--yet there are over 35 million of their descendents alive today--about ten percent of America's population. And the Pilgrims wouldn't have survived without the help of the surrounding Native population. We celebrate the harvest feast they held together with Thanksgiving every year--a holiday Philbrick writes "would have probably baffled and appalled the godly Pilgrims." After all, by Philbrick's account, these are people who cancelled Christmas--or at least tried.

This is about a lot more than what the title "Mayflower" might suggest though. It's not just about the voyage or the original settlers. It's more an account of Amerindian/English relations in the first half century or so of the New England Puritan colonies, stretching from the landing in 1620 to "King Philip's War" ending in 1676. Philbrick does as best he can to include the perspective of the Natives, despite the fact that just about every extant account we have was written by the English colonists. He used what "archeologists, anthropologists and folklorists" could contribute to enhance the documentary record. He says the beginnings of this book was inspired by a Nantucket Native American symposium he attended and counts himself in debt to those attending in helping with his research. And certainly such Indian figures such as Squanto, Massasoit--and his son "King" Philip of the Wampanoags--come across as, or even more, vividly as such figures among the Pilgrims as Miles Standish or William Bradford. Philbrick struck me as fair to both sides of the conflicts. As he put it:

My initial impression of the period was bounded by two conflicting preconceptions: the time-honored tradition of how the Pilgrims came to symbolize all that is good about America and the now equally familiar modern tale of how the evil Europeans annihilated the innocent Native Americans. I soon learned that the real-life Indians and English of the seventeenth century were too smart, too generous, too greedy, too brave--in short, too human--to behave so predictably.

It's a great story both in substance and style that flew by--a real page turner. At least for anyone interested in American History. As Philbrick himself complains, we Americans tend too quickly to fly past the territory between the Plymouth Landing and the American Revolution. There's plenty in that period of over 150 years that shaped what we are as a country to be so blithely ignored. Philbrick does Americans a service in bringing some of that history to light. It's well-written, well-researched and sourced, and accessible to the layman.

[Mike (the Paladin) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unabridged audio book.

I read ("listened to" in this case) this over Thanksgiving a while back. It's a pretty good attempt at an even handed treatment of the subject. I find that while earlier versions of the story tend to view the Pilgrims universally as heroic (not a bad thing for young students in my view) the more recent attempts have gone the other way. There seems to be a need to see them almost as villains. They were of course, human, a mixture of good and bad. Many of the things they did that have been painted as evil were simply the product of misunderstanding between cultures. There is at least an attempt to recognize that here.

The story follows the Europeans (Pilgrims) and the Indians (Native Americans) through meeting, working out a peace and the length of that peace until it's failure.

I believe that anytime two cultures meet there doesn't need to be "imperial intentions". the more advanced society tends to "swallow up" the not so advanced society (the Picts of Scotland might bear that out.) So it was with the native American Cultures. There was never any chance that they would be "walled off" and kept around as a sort of continent wide museum. The people who came here saw land not being used and didn't understand the Native American way of looking at it. I could go on, but you get the point. Constant self flagellation at this point is counter productive.

Also, there is a lesson here we might want to keep in mind if any life form ever does show up in an interplanetary ship or steps out of an interstellar gate.

Just a thought. :)

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book that I had my eye on for some time but could never pull the trigger on buying. I saw it at the library recently and decided to check it out. I think a better title would have been: Plymouth, The Pokanokets and King Philip’s War. The vast majority of the book is about the Pilgrims relations with the Indians of the region and the war that eventually broke out. I didn’t mind, really, as I have never really read anything at all about the early colonial days in New England. The book is well written and engaging. I found it to be an easy book to read. I will definitely be reading more of Philbrick’s works in the future.

[Elyse✨ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hollywood could make a great movie out of this story. Especially Benjamin Church who, during King Philip's War, became the first quintessential American frontiersman. Miles Standish was a bully and a bore. The whole venture would have been a death sentence without the intervention of the native people (who didn't just help out of the goodness of their hearts.) Highly enlightening.

[Alexw · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would have rated this book at 5 stars except for the fact that I kept comparing Philbrick's writing style to Shaara's whose book The Glorious Cause I had just finished just a month ago. Shaara's dialogue is so much better which makes history come alive.
That aside the Mayflower was very interesting with the Pilgrims enduring way too many hardships as they did not use maps when coming to the New World & if they had used maps would have settled in present day Boston which had much better weather & abundant wildlife.
Was also shocked at how many slaves (1,000) were sold by the Puritans to raise money for living expenses.

[Olga Kowalska (WielkiBuk) · Rating 5 out of 5]

„Mayflower. Opowieść o początkach Ameryki” stawia pytanie: jak zaczęła się Ameryka? I odpowiada na nie w sposób absolutnie fascynujący. Warto zaznaczyć, że tytułowy statek to jedynie początek, wskazówka, bo sama historia opisana przez Nathaniela Philbricka skupia się na procesie wykuwania nowego miasta, państwa i społeczeństwa na nowej nieznanej ziemi, w znoju i tych krótkich chwilach wywalczonego pokoju oraz krwawej, bezlitosnej wojny. Autor obala mity i ukazuje, jak pierwsi koloniści nazywani czasem religijnymi separatystami i ekstremistami, unikali jak ognia teokracji i dążyli w kierunku państwa, którym ostatecznie stały się Stany Zjednoczone. Bo ta podróż, tak historyczna jak i filozoficzna, nie zaczyna się wcale od Deklaracji Niepodległości i mów Franklina, Adamsa, Jeffersona i Waszyngtona. Nie. Ta podróż zaczyna się już w 1620 roku, właśnie tutaj, od marzenia, od przeprawy, od statku Mayflower, ale przede wszystkim od tych ludzi, którzy porzucili wszystko w imię wolności, by stworzyć dom po drugiej stronie oceanu – pielgrzymów Nowego Świata.

Wspaniała, wciągająca lektura nie tylko dla miłośników historii!

[Forrest · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first English settlers to establish a permanent a colony in New England beginning with Plymouth near Cape Cod.

This book covers primarily the relationship the English settlers (specifically those of the Mayflower and their descendants)  had with the Native American tribes of the region.

The book is loaded with detail including the names of the settlers, the names of the Native Americans when available, and the locations of the events mentioned in the book.  This makes for excellent quality historical narrative in my opinion.  The author also includes the modern day place names whenever possible which is very useful. 

[Brandon Dalo · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 rating

Like many Americans, I knew the basic story surrounding the story of the Pilgrims and their settlement at Plymouth. I was fascinated though, in reading this book, to find so much more in the details of the realities of what happened behind the mythic nature of many of those stories. It makes sense why the Pilgrims were at times mythologized, such as what really happened with the first Thanksgiving, especially much later during the outbreak of the Civil War, when there was a “public need for a restorative myth of national origins”. I really enjoyed this telling of what really happened.

It is interesting also that most people know about the Pilgrims, but it seems in the popular imagination, for many Americans, America began with them and then nothing of note happened for 150 years until the Revolution began. This book breaks that idea as we initially learn all about the first generation of Pilgrims who arrived here and all that they faced, but it is the subsequent generation that the latter half of the book is focused on as the conflict known as King Philip's War rears its head.

While the book does get off to a bit of a slow start, I loved hearing though about the initial encounters between the Pilgrims and Natives and all the little details like sharing food and the Natives hating mustard, or that the Natives would create these “memory holes” in places where something really important happened, they would dig a hole and it was everyone’s responsibility to keep the various holes cleaned so that stories could be passed down that way like historical markers.

During the initial major conflict between the two groups, I was shocked to learn of some of the brutality from the Pilgrims, or other things you wouldn’t expect like how they weren’t tolerant of other religions, or that the Pilgrims worshiped God with guns at their sides, or that later during King Philip’s War, they sold an estimated 1,000 Native Americans into slavery. It's a complex history but it's written so well as to show real human beings living under extraordinary circumstances and the lengths they'd go, although without excusing it unnecessarily, and the author doesn't shy away from at times criticizing their behavior like when they stole food from the Natives or dug up Native graves, etc.

King Philip’s War was the most fascinating section to learn about. I followed along with every detail on a map and loved it. Speaking of maps, the author provides some great maps throughout whenever we get to a new area. The writing was dramatic and intense, and there were so many stories that were just so cinematic in nature I can’t believe it hasn’t been made into a movie yet. The author has a great way of just putting you in the person’s shoes we’re talking about and bringing the time and place to life.

It is crazy to think about the reality of this small group of people going to a wild land, many of them dying in the first year, and then they managed to not only survive but also it is estimated that approximately 35 million descendants of the Mayflower passengers survive to this day, or about 10% of the total United States population. It is also crazy to think about the Native population who was living there prior to the arrival of the Pilgrims and how much their lives were uprooted and changed.

This history, although complicated, tragic, and complex, is great to learn for people who love American history for many ways, but also in the fact that one sees a direct link between it and the figures who later rose in this region like John Adams and Benjamin Franklin, in a similar way that reading about Jamestown creates a link between it and figures that came later in Virginia like Washington, Jefferson and Madison. It’s a great read and I’d recommend it!

[Joe · Rating 5 out of 5]

When most of us think of the Pilgrims we hearken back to our days in grammar school for their story - religious freedom, funny hats, an overseas trip on a very small ship, the first Thanksgiving, Squanto and Miles Standish - which in and of itself is all true. The complete Pilgrims' tale is of course much more complex and is told here in an excellent book.

The Pilgrims were a separatist group - their goal to return to religious basics - who believed that The Church of England was out of control. Reading the writing on the proverbial wall and understanding they were not welcome in their homeland; the Pilgrims packed their bags and bibles and made their way to Holland. When the option to settle in the New World became a reality, their religious leader, John Robinson, viewed this as an opportunity to begin with a religious clean slate; their sponsors saw a money making proposition and the British government saw an opportunity to compete with France and Spain for a foothold in North America. Such began the trials and adventures of the Pilgrims and where Philbrick picks up their story.

The Pilgrims were somewhat naïve and taken advantage of even before they boarded the Mayflower, money and valuable time lost before their trip was made. After 65 days on the Atlantic, battling the elements and the sea, they made landfall far north of their destination - Provincetown Bay instead of the mouth of the Hudson River. After nearly losing it all in an attempt to travel down the US coast and in sight of land, the Pilgrims decided Massachusetts wasn't such a bad place after all, the Mayflower Compact was signed and they made their way ashore on November 11th, 1620.

This just the beginning of the Pilgrims' story - the next 55+ years are chronicled here - and it's a hell of a read. Literally fighting for their survival, the Pilgrims built a colony from scratch, fighting disease, starvation and the weather. They encountered a political situation amongst the Native American tribes that rivals what they left behind in Europe. (For instance Squanto was not simply the altruistic savior we've come to believe and Massasoit, another sachem or Indian Chief, was much more instrumental in the survival of the Plymouth Colony.)

With their survival and subsequent success, the Pilgrims were soon followed by not only fellow religious freedom seekers but those looking to make a financial profit. The culmination of this initial influx of Europeans was the tragic and bloody 14 month clash now known as King Philip's War. (Philip being the son of Massasoit.) This war was not the simple "white man versus red man" conflict one may think and acquaints us with not just Philip, but men such as Benjamin Church - a courageous soldier who realized annihilating the native population was not the "solution".

This book doesn't so much as rewrite history as clarify it. Not all of it is pretty, but it is fascinating. Mayflower is highly recommended.

[Jeanette · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's good. Philbrick includes so much interesting information upon the physical world, beyond the historic events and people. Especially within ship voyages, as he does here with the Gulf Stream.

These people on the Mayflower were serious about their religion. And to have such faith in their God's protection! But it is nearly impossible to form the perceptions and conceptions of their reality to what they would find, IMHO. Because their entire worldview was so elementally different. Four of those kids on the voyage were parceled out by a unforgiving husband to people who had no blood relation. So many things were common that we would be appalled at in base cognition.

The conflicts. And the strange alliances.

He is very good at his description and explanation. But I did not enjoy this one as much as I did his Heart of the Sea. Perhaps because I knew so much more about the era previously.

[Diane S ☔ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thoughts soon.

[Eileen · Rating 2 out of 5]

On the positive side, I thought this book was well researched and clearly written. I also valued that this book brought to light a realistic view of how the Pilgrims approached the Native American people, land, and resources.

However, I found the book to be less about the voyage of the Mayflower and the overall life of the Pilgrims settling Plymouth Colony, and more of a factual recitation of the continuous conflict that ensued between the Pilgrims and the Native Americans. The book is less like typical narrative non-fiction with a handful of developed characters and engaging events, and more like a textbook with a chronological account that includes many individuals and a stream of activity.

I listened to the audio version of this book and, although I do like detailed non-fiction, I found myself increasing the audio speed in order to power through the many details of the military conflict in the last several chapters.

I think this book would appeal most to those with a strong interest in the specific details of the conflict between the arriving Pilgrims and the residing Native Americans.