Hello everyone, I'm John Turner, professor of religious studies at George Mason University.
I'm here to talk about They Knew They Were Pilgrims: Plymouth Colony and the Contest for American Liberty (Yale University Press). If you think you learned more than you needed to know about the Pilgrims and Plymouth Colony in elementary school, think again. This is a book that features the Mayflower passengers but also introduces a wide variety of Native communities and many different groups of English settlers.
Here's the overview:
In 1620, separatists from the Church of England set sail across the Atlantic aboard the Mayflower. Understanding themselves as spiritual pilgrims, they left to preserve their liberty to worship God in accordance with their understanding of the Bible.
There exists, however, an alternative, more dispiriting version of their story. In it, the Pilgrims are religious zealots who persecuted dissenters and decimated Native peoples through warfare and by stealing their land. The Pilgrims’ definition of liberty was, in practice, very narrow.
Drawing on original research using underutilized sources, John G. Turner moves beyond these familiar narratives in his sweeping and authoritative new history of Plymouth Colony. Instead of depicting the Pilgrims as otherworldly saints or extraordinary sinners, he tells how a variety of English settlers and Native peoples engaged in a contest for the meaning of American liberty.
I'll be here for the next few hours (from about 10:00 until about 1:00 Eastern) to talk all things Plymouth Colony, so please flood this thread with questions!
Hello and thank you for doing this. The blurb above says that your work "moves beyond these familiar narratives." When you move beyond the familiar narratives, what's the first thing you discover?
Morning! Thanks for doing this AMA! I had the chance to visit Plimoth Plantation last summer and crossed paths with a very zealous historical reenactor. It was very important to him that I understood he didn't get on the ship for religious reasons but because he wanted to own land. Something, he told me dramatically, that wasn't available to him in England. He implied that most of his fellow travels were similar - religion was secondary to land ownership.
Is that an accurate way to think about them or was that particular reenactor being a tad hyperbolic? Thanks!
In the description, you describe two narratives regarding the pilgrims, there's the saccharine view we all grew up with and acted out on thousands of elementary school stages, and there the more dispiriting version as well. How did the more negative view come to be and start to gain ground in public understanding?
More of a meta question - as a non-American, I always found the place of the Mayflower, pilgrims and so on to be incredibly (perhaps disproportionately) important in popular narratives of America's origins. Has this always been the case? Or has their prominence become more or less exaggerated over time?
How did establishment of other New England colonies shape Plymouth Colony? Did the differences between Puritans and Separatists effect how Native actors encountered these colonizers?
I have seen that you are working on a biography of Joseph Smith. Is that work just beginning? Can you give us any information on how you will be approaching that book? How will your biography differ from Bushman, the Signature Books volumes, Remini, Brodie, etc.? Thanks!
Is it anachronistic to talk about "American liberty" when describing events long-before the American revolution and the framing of the US Constitution?
How common was intermarriage between the pilgrims and natives and how was it viewed?
When and how did the settlers construct the first port?
Media often shows the early settlement as a small fort and struggling fields while they haul in supplies in small boats ferried from the large ships; so when/how did they build the port so ships could unload directly?
Did the establishment, or even news of such, of other colonies shift the perceptions of attitudes of the colonists at Plymouth?
How did the 'traditional' narrative about Plymouth - the intrepid colonists looking for religious freedom, the friendly natives, Thanksgiving - come to be such a central component of the national mythos? Was it always important, or did it develop later on in the history of the country?
Less serious question: how often do people tell you the "If April showers being May flowers, what do Mayflowers bring? Pilgrims!" joke every April?
Plymouth was settled 13 years after Jamestown; Did the colonists take any lessons to avoid the same pitfalls as Jtown?
I think I've heard that Plymouth colony was settled by mistake as they were meant to reenforce JTown; Is that true? And were they prepared to build their own fort and start from scratch?
Hi! Thanks for doing this. Some questions, if you have time:
Any relation to [John Turner the Mayflower passenger](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Turner_(Mayflower_passenger))?
The Pilgrims' journey was funded by private investors. What do we know about the investment side of this history? For example, did this particular investment end up being profitable? What was the structure of the investment (debt/equity/etc.)? And what sort of person was attracted to "invest" in religious emigration?
Did the enclosures play a role in the push of colonists out of Britain in this period?
Thank you for this AMA. I was raised to understand that my fathers family were direct descendants of John Billington. My grandmother was active in a historical society of some sort and traced our genealogy back in the 80s.
I’m going on old memories from my childhood but have always wanted to learn more about what happened to the Billingtons on the ship and once they’d arrived. Obviously there’s not a ton of information to work with but given their purported history, you can understand why I might like to learn more.
What would you suggest?
Is it true some of the pilgrims were “throwaways” (ie.: criminals) of English society and they were sent here to cleanse England of people they believed to be delinquents?
Hi! Thanks for coming here to answer our questions.
How did the Pilgrims overcome the language barrier when dealing with Native Americans?
IIRC, Charles C. Mann quoted Ben Franklin, in the late 18th century, lamenting the attraction to many colonists of the free Native American communities. Assuming I’m not just misremembering this altogether, was that a force, and a cause of consternation to settler leadership, from the earliest settlements?
Do you think Plymouth should make Plymouth Rock a more interesting landmark than its current boring display?
Thank you so much for doing this! One thing that has always grabbed me is how little Plymouth did to save its charter following the collapse of the Dominion of New England. While I understand that they were far smaller than Massachusetts and lacked meaningful representation in England (Massachusetts had Increase Mather on the ground). Is there more in your mind that could have been done to save the colony from being absorbed by Massachusetts?
Thanks for the AMA! Did the pilgrims have any idea as to how they would be governed vis-à-vis the home country? Did they just basically say “we’re completely on our own and want nothing to do with Europe,” or did they know that sooner or later they’d have to interact with England and continent?
What was the relationship of the Pilgrims to the English Civil War? Did they think Oliver Cromwell was carrying out the kinds of reforms that they wanted, or did his actions cement their separatism?
As a descendant of John Billington, what was going on with the non-Pilgrims on the Mayflower? Did they all understand what they were signing up for?
Would one be correct in classifying the pilgrims of the Mayflower or any early religious inhabitants like in Jamestown as members of a cult? They seem to “fit the bill”.
Outside of your books, what other reads facinate you and continue to challenge your previous writings?
What are your thoughts on Native American politics before and after settlement? The more I read about sachems like Uncas, Miantonomi, and Robin Cassacinamon, the more fascinated I am by how complicated Anglo-Algonqian relations were in the early days, and how shrewd some of the leaders were with their tactics and alliances. It seems to me that even though conflicts like the Pequot War and Kieft's War ravaged entire populations, many native peoples didn't seem to view the Europeans as an existential threat until King Philip's War. Do you think the paradigm shifted for Native Americans as soon as the pilgrims made landfall, or was it a slow process? Do you think they saw the threat of mass displacement as clearly as we do looking back? And do you think the early pilgrims ever had an earnest intent to coexist, or was paramountcy always a part of their utopian vision?
Hello, and thank you for this fascinating AMA! I was wondering, how did the culture and traditions of the Pilgrims start to shift and change once they settled in the new world? Was there an attempt to keep them the same as they'd been in Europe, or did they fairly quickly start to adapt to new stuff?
Thanks for this fascinating thread. I'm not sure if I'm too late to the thread, but if not, I have a couple questions that pertain to the connection between the Puritans/separatists and their heirs today.
I feel so sorry for the poor ones who made it all the way across the ocean and then died at anchor in that first winter (by the end of the winter only 53 passengers of 102 were still alive...).
Wikipedia describes it as a mixture of "scurvy, pneumonia, and tuberculosis". Scurvy is of course due to poor nutrition. Pneumonia is a general term for a lung infection that can be caused by any number of things (bacteria, virus, fungus) and tuberculosis is of course a bacterial disease generally infecting the lungs.
Do you have your own theory of what they were suffering from? And would you think based on the timing to the extent that it was an infectious disease (and not just malnutrition) that is likely to be something they brought with them or picked up in the New World. To me the timing seems to suggest that it was something they picked up...
Contact tracing being all in the news these days who might they have picked it up from?
Howdy! Sounds like a very interesting book. I'm wondering if you have any info or know of any sources regarding the passenger known as Edward Doten / Dotey / Doty? I can't find much besides the fact that he signed the Compact and apparently traveled as an indentured servant. Thanks!
Can you dive a little deeper into the Pilgrim understanding of liberty, and the origin of slavery, both African and Native American, in Massachusetts?
Newell and Warren both wrote extensively about Massachusetts slavery, with Newell strongly supporting the belief that the legal precedents established in Massachusetts regarding slavery would influence later slave laws in other states, but Native American slavery in Massachusetts is a bit of an odd duck. I'm reading Morgan's American Slavery, American Freedom and found it extremely helpful for understanding what Virginians thought of the idea of liberty, and how that evolved over time.
What did the debate around freedom, liberty, and slavery look like from the beginning in Massachusetts? How did the doctrine of total war during the Pequot War and King Phillips War, which saw massive enslavement of non-combatants who were shipped to the Caribbean, influence perceptions of liberty, and freedom for Native Americans living in Massachusetts?
Professor Turner--this may be outside of your ambit, but being a professor of both British and Dutch imperial history (albeit via South African history myself), I have to ask about the Nederland connection of the 1620 group. When I was resident at Uni Leiden, I got to visit the hofje where they stayed. Given the Dutch attitudes towards ideas of liberty and piety, which also were somewhat paradoxical, how did they view the Pilgrim group? How did the Pilgrim group view them? Of course, Leiden celebrates the connection today--at least to American visitors--but I do imagine it was something more commented on in the early 17th century.
Hello! First off I would like to say thank you for taking the time to answer these questions. My question is ultimately What were the pilgrims intentions in settling in the new land besides persecution and freedom? I’m sure many left for many other reasons but I could be wrong. Thanks again -A
Just purchased your book for my father. I descend from John Howland on his side and John Bradford in my mother’s side so he is especially fascinated by this subject.