• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 2021 0

be sent men to rob his traps. Billington caught on. He lay in wait and discovered a thief in the act. The thief shot at him. My ancestor, a much better shot, returned fire, with predictably lethal consequences. This story is unlikely but not impossible. The Billingtons were among the few families to survive the first winter intact, suggesting that John may indeed have been a fine hunter. And the Pilgrims’ contemporary reputation for ridding themselves of religiously unsympathetic people was so widespread that in 1664 the poet Samuel Butler mocked the practice in his popular satire Hudibras: “Our brethren of NEW ENGLAND use / Choice malefactors to excuse, / And hang the guiltless in their stead, / Of whom the Churches have less need” (Canto II, lines 409–12).

Actual first executions: During the catastrophic “starving time” (winter 1609–10) in Jamestown, according to colony governor George Percy, “one of our Colline murdered his [pregnant] wyfe Ripped the childe outt of her woambe and threw itt into the River and after chopped the Mother in pieces and salted her for his foode.” Percy had the man tortured and executed (Percy 1922:267). In March 1623 a man at Wessagusset, a rival Massachusetts colony, was hanged for stealing maize from an Indian family (Morton 1632:108–10; Bradford 1981:129). Bradford calls Billington’s execution “the first” in Plymouth (259), so my family can claim that our ancestor was the first person of European descent hanged in the Cape Cod area. I am arbitrarily not including the French and Spaniards in Florida who executed each other by the score in the 1560s.

No idea where they were heading: According to Bradford, their intended destination was “some place about Hudson’s River” (Bradford 1981:68), an assertion backed up by the diplomat John Cory, who surveyed Plymouth in 1622 on behalf of British investors (James ed. 1963:5–6). But they had earlier tried to obtain permission to settle in what is now New England, so some historians have argued that it is possible that they were going there. One theory is that the Dutch, who then had possession of the Hudson, bribed the Mayflower’s captain to steer them away (Morton 1669:11–12). In any case, they gave little evidence of knowing where they were going (Rutman 1960). Smith’s claims, which seem to be true, are reported in Arber and Bradley eds. 1910 (vol. 2):891–92.

Pilgrim incompetence: Most of this catalog of error is lifted from Bates 1940:112–13.

Half the Pilgrims died: Accompanied by about 30 crew members, 102 people set sail. One died en route, but a child was born before landfall, the wonderfully named Oceanus Hopkins, making the party 102 again. Of these, 44 died before spring. Among them was Bradford’s wife, Dorothy, thought to have drowned herself by leaping off the Mayflower rather than face the unknown continent (Deetz and Deetz 2000:39, 59–60).

Robbing Indian graves and houses: Bradford 1981:73–75; Winslow 1963b:19–29 (“providence,” 26). Later the Pilgrims did try to compensate the Indians for the theft (Winslow 1963c:61–62).

English vs. continental financing for colonies, British colonists’ flakiness and helplessness: Kuppermann 2000:3–4, 11–15, 148 (“utterly,” 13); Cell 1965.

Inability to understand climate: The confusion is especially surprising given that a number of British visitors had kept careful track of the weather (e.g., Anon. 1979).

Time of drought: Stahle et al. 1998.

Thoreau’s disdain: Thoreau 1906 (vol. 4):295–300 (“A party,” 300).

Tisquantum’s travels in New England: Baxter 1890:103–10 (“appears to,” 106); Gorges 1890a:212–25; 1890b:26–30; Dermer 1619 (“void,” 131). The line from The Tempest is in act 2, scene 2.

“Indians themselves”: Panzer 1995:118–19 (text of Sublimis Deus, Paul III).

Slany: Cell 1965:615.

Epidemic: Morton 1637:22–24 (“died,” 23; “Golgotha,” 23); Hubbard 1848:54–55 (French sailor’s curse); Spiess and Spiess 1987; Snow 1980:31–42; Snow and Lanphear 1988. Salisbury (1982:103–05) suggests that the disease was the plague, but Snow and Lanphear point