In September 1620, a small ship called the Mayflower set sail Plymouth, England, with 102 passengers: a mix of religious separatists looking for a new home where they can freely practice their faith and others drawn by the promise of prosperity and land ownership in the “new world”. They anchored near the tip of Cape Cod, far north of their intended destination at the mouth of the Hudson River, after a treacherous and uncomfortable 66-day voyage. A month later, the Mayflower sailed across Massachusetts Bay, where the Pilgrims, as they are now called, began building a village in Plymouth.
The majority of the colonists remained on the ship during the first, terrible winter, enduring exposure, scurvy, and outbreaks of infectious diseases. Only fifty percent of the original Mayflower passengers and crew saw their first New England spring. The last of the settlers arrived on shore in March, where they were greeted by a member of the Abenaki tribe who spoke to them in English.
A few days later he returned with Squanto, a Pawtuxet tribesman who had been captured by an English sea captain and sold into slavery before escaping to London and making an exploratory journey back to his homeland. Squanto instructed the Pilgrims, who were weak from disease and malnutrition, how to grow corn, gather maple sap, catch fish in the rivers, and stay away from poisonous plants. The Wampanoag, a local tribe, and the settlers also formed an alliance, which lasted more than 50 years and, tragically, remains one of the only instances of peace between European colonists and Native Americans.
After the Pilgrims’ first successful corn harvest in November 1621, Governor William Bradford organized a celebratory feast and invited a group of the fledgling colony’s Indian allies, including the Wampanoag chief Massasoit. The three-day festival is now remembered as America’s “first thanksgiving“, although the Pilgrims may not have used the term at the time.
