The Real Plymouth Colony

A good video of the passage of the Mayflower to Plymouth Rock in Massachusets exists on www.history.com. Go to Popular Topics to Themes to Thanksgiving. I also posted the video on South End Stories.

Here are a few pictures of what the settlement and its people really looked like along with some more commentary from Terri Andrews. (Please read "A National Day of Mourning?" before you read this companion story.)

This is the Plymouth Colony compound as it appeared after later negotiations with

 Chief Massasoit and the Wampanoags.

Andrews adds: "The Pilgrims of New England who came to this country in 1620, were not simple refugees from England fighting against oppression and religious discrimination. They were political revolutionaries and part of the Puritan movement, which was considered objectionable and unorthodox by the King of the Church of England (King James). They were outcasts to their own country, plotting to take over the government, causing some of the settlers to become fugitives in their own country."

This picture glorifies the righteousness and "sacrifice" of the founding

 Puritan fathers, who leave Holland in 1620, 

where they were refugees, for the new country.

This clip art depicts what we normally think of as a Pilgrim couple.

 Notice the husband carries a Bible along with his rifle.

Although these people are actors, they more closely depict what the Pilgrim settlers looked like. They would have been dirtier and showing the effects of starvation and the many diseases they brought with them like cholera, small pox, chicken pox, measles, and many strains of the flu, All of these diseases are preventable and treatable today. The Native Americans suffered from the same diseases and died in great numbers.

This is a sketch of a Pilgrim house. The first winter was spent aboard the Mayflower because they arrived in December and couldn't build till the spring.

What the scene for the "first" Thanksgiving might have looked like.

The Plymouth colonists as they fend off Native Americans

 or "instruments of the Devil" as they called them.

A scene depicting the Puritan men as they escort their women and children over the land supposedly to the Indian compound in the distance for the "first" Thanksgiving. It looks very bleak and foreboding doesn't it.

We have alll come to look forward to Thanksgiving and being with our families for a big feast. We thank our founding fathers for their sacrifice in founding this great nation. We also give thanks to our Native Americans who came before us and who deserve equal praise. Have a wonderful holiday.