BLUNDERING TO PLYMOUTH
WHAT THE PILGRIMS SHOULD HAVE KNOWN BY JAMES RING ADAMS
F
ear and isolation seized the Pil- grims on the Mayflower when they lowered anchor off Cape Cod four centuries ago. William Bradford, one of their leaders, de-
scribed it eloquently in his “History of Plym- outh Colony”: “What could they see but a hideous and desolate wilderness, full of wild beasts and wild men? And what multitudes there might be of them, they knew not.” It is a memorable passage, but it bears witness to inexcusably poor preparation for the expedi- tion and willful refusal to gain advance in- formation about the “wild men” they would encounter. Captain John Smith, who offered to share his experience in the region with the Pilgrims and was disregarded, called it “their intruding ignorance.” The organizers of this new colony were
originally from England. Among the 100 or so passengers were “Separatists” who had
sought a religious purity they didn’t find in the state-sanctioned Church of England. They fled England in 1607 and 1608 and set- tled in the Netherlands, first in Amsterdam and later in the university city of Leiden, where they remained for the next decade. Fearing assimilation of the younger genera- tion and also a resumption of war between the Dutch and Spanish, they planned a set- tlement in North America. They arrived off Cape Cod on November 11, 1620. After inex- plicably wasting five weeks blundering along the cape, they finally located the harbor al- ready known to Captain Smith as Plymouth. There they founded what became the first permanent colony in New England under the name of New Plimoth. Before their arrival in Plimoth in mid-
December, however, the Pilgrims, unlike oth- er European would-be colonists, made no discernable effort to learn about the Native
The U.S. Postal Service issued this stamp depicting the Mayflower in Plymouth Harbor in 2020 to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the ship’s arrival. Greg Breeding designed and Greg Harlin illustrated the stamp.
SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION 25
COURTESY OF U. S. POSTAL SERVICE
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