The most famous account, by the English mathematician Thomas Harriot, enumerated the commodities that the English could extract from America’s fields and forests in a report he first published in 1588. Every English effort before 1620 had produced accounts useful to would-be colonizers. But none disappeared without record, and their stories circulated in books printed in London. And a brief effort to settle the coast of Maine in 16 failed because of an unusually bitter winter. The migrants to Roanoke on the outer banks of Carolina, where the English had gone in the 1580s, disappeared. These first English migrants to Jamestown endured terrible disease and arrived during a period of drought and colder-than-normal winters. Those hoping to create new settlements had read accounts of earlier European migrants who had established European-style villages near the water, notably along the shores of Chesapeake Bay, where the English had founded Jamestown in 1607. Just as important, the Pilgrims understood what to do with the land.īy the time that these English planned their communities, knowledge of the Atlantic coast of North America was widely available. The epidemic benefited the Pilgrims, who arrived soon thereafter: The best land had fewer residents and there was less competition for local resources, while the Natives who had survived proved eager trading partners. “By God’s visitation, reigned a wonderful plague,” King James’ patent for the region noted in 1620, “that had led to the utter Destruction, Devastacion, and Depopulation of that whole territory.” To the English, divine intervention had paved the way. The absence of accurate statistics makes it impossible to know the ultimate toll, but perhaps up to 90 percent of the regional population perished between 1617 to 1619. Modern scholars have argued that indigenous communities were devastated by leptospirosis, a disease caused by Old World bacteria that had likely reached New England through the feces of rats that arrived on European ships. In 1605, the French explorer Samuel de Champlain sailed past the site the Pilgrims would later colonize and noted that there were “a great many cabins and gardens.” He even provided a drawing of the region, which depicted small Native towns surrounded by fields.Ībout a decade later Captain John Smith, who coined the term “New England,” wrote that the Massachusetts, a nearby indigenous group, inhabited what he described as “the Paradise of all those parts.” ‘A wonderful plague’Ĭhamplain and Smith understood that any Europeans who wanted to establish communities in this region would need either to compete with Natives or find ways to extract resources with their support.īut after Champlain and Smith visited, a terrible illness spread through the region. Source., Author providedĮarlier European visitors had described pleasant shorelines and prosperous indigenous communities. The French explorer Samuel de Champlain depicted Plymouth as a region that was eminently inhabitable. But the situation on the ground wasn’t as dire as Bradford claimed. If you were reading Bradford’s version of events, you might think that the survival of the Pilgrims’ settlements was often in danger. Bradford paraphrased from Psalm 107 when he wrote that the settlers should “praise the Lord” who had “delivered them from the hand of the oppressor.” He wrote that the Puritans arrived in “a hideous and desolate wilderness, full of wild beasts and wild men.” They were surrounded by forests “full of woods and thickets,” and they lacked the kind of view Moses had on Mount Pisgah, after successfully leading the Israelites to Canaan.ĭrawing on chapter 26 of the Book of Deuteronomy, Bradford declared that the English “were ready to perish in this wilderness,” but God had heard their cries and helped them. Throughout his account, Bradford probed Scripture for signs. Every event in their lives marked a stage in the unfolding of a divine plan, which often echoed the experiences of the ancient Israelites. William Bradford’s writings depicted a harrowing, desolate environment.īradford and other Pilgrims believed in predestination.
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