Plymouth Plantation Dbq

The colonization of New England started with a king who chose his enemies unwisely. Succeeder of Elizabeth I in 1603, James I vowed to purge all radical Protestant reformers, especially the Puritans whom were made up of Presbyterians and Congregationalists. So in an attempt to flee from persecution, they set off for a new land to build their utopia. In November 1620 some 88 “Pilgrims” set anchor at a place they called Plymouth (on today’s coast of southeastern Massachusetts). They were shaken by shipboard mutiny, sick with scurvy, and weak from mal nutrition. Few foreseen founding the first permanent European settlement in New England. Many did not live long enough to enjoy the distinction. They arrived too late to plant crops due to weather and only brought enough food to last a month. By the spring of 1621, half of the Pilgrims laid dead. Plymouth might also ended up a tragedy like their Jamestown counterparts except they received better treatment from the native Indians. The Wampanoag’s controlled the land around Plymouth, and was eager to obtain trade goods and assistance against their native enemies. Their chief agreed to help the starving colonists. In the beginning they communicated through a Wampanoag named Squanto. Squanto had been captured by English sailors and taken to England where he learned English. The Pilgrims openly accepted the help and hospitality from the natives, and after their first successful

Leaders of Plymouth and Jamestown are both compare because they both came from England, Native Americans aided the newly incorporated groups by supplying them for food, and both empires resulted in the starvation and death. However, in Jamestown, John Smith set a goal to make money and get rich, developed the idea of everyone for themselves, men were the dominant gender, and Smith abandoned the colony and never decided to return. As for Plymouth, William Bradford 's’ goal was to have religious freedom, the group helped one another, families were unity of the empire, and Bradford was more caring and considerate of his people and remained this way for the rest of his life.

William Brewster and Separatist Pilgrims’ Immigration to America “Elder William Brewster, of the Mayflower, was appointed ruling elder of the Pilgrims in Holland. He was a man of erudition and acted in the capacity of elder till 1629” (Savery 168). In a genealogy book written by my paternal great-grandmother, Henrietta Savery and through my interview with my paternal grandmother (Joyce Bradley), I learned that my ancestor, William Brewster immigrated to America on the Mayflower. Elder William Brewster was a great leader and the only person who had attended a university on the Mayflower (Gragg 64).

Bradford’s style is very different from Edwards’. Bradford conveyed his message by describing the pilgrims’ voyage to America. His text is written as diary entries that include stories from their travels. In paragraph two, Bradford describes an event where a man was thrown over the boat. His vivid descriptions of the “fierce winds” allow the reader to picture this story. His use of imagery helps readers imagine and understand what the pilgrims faced while on their voyage and even after the reached their destination.

Most people think they know the true story of the Pilgrims arriving in the United States; however, students tend to not know all of the facts. When Dr. James Loewen discovered this problem, he wrote “The Truth about the First Thanksgiving”. In his article, he wrote about what his students didn’t know about the Pilgrims because of the lack of information they learned from textbooks. He explained the plague before the Pilgrims came, the possible reasons why the Pilgrims chose Massachusetts, and the story of the Pilgrims settling in America.

William Bradford’s “Of Plymouth Plantation” opened my eyes about Plymouth and Thanksgiving. First of all, there was a part in Bradford’s background that caught my eye: Thanksgiving. I am sure that many of us at some point visualized Thanksgiving as a large feast. However, I found it shocking that his narrative does not emphasize a feast, but rather a document of what it was like in Plymouth and the interactions with the Native Americans. Either way, I still found it interesting how Thanksgiving came to be. It would be nice to read another person’s viewpoint of Thanksgiving and to see if there really was a feast or not.

In an article by Pleck (2011) it was claimed that the pilgrims did not have ruffled shirts, buckled shoes nor did they consume on turkey at the harvest feast that occurred in 1621. This may come as a shock to most because growing up we were taught to believe these along with other “facts” about the harvest feast that we come to know as the first thanksgiving. The pilgrims lost many of their people in the winter of 1620 due to lack of foraging knowledge. This led the colony to form a relationship with the Wampanoag tribe. They taught them how to fish as well as gather vegetables. This is thought to be common knowledge but as previously stated this may not be completely true after all. Pleck was not the only person to uncover the truth about the harvest feast of 1621. A director named Ellis (2010) made a documentary that confirms the feast

Throughout William Bradford’s “Of Plymouth Plantation”, his attachment to his religion was very strong and very verbally shown throughout his work. Bradford was between the age of twelve and thirteen when he had first heard his first sermon by a minister named Richard Clyfton and he later joined with Clyfton in the year 1606. Bradford begins with “…some godly and zealous preachers, and God’s blessings on their labors…” God is already being praised in the first few sentences of this work to bless the labor of their works and throughout the land. The goal of this paper is to bring into light three different sections throughout the work, where Bradford uses his religion to prove a point and to show how his religious faith is freely expressed by leaving England.

Have you ever read a very important document from the 1600s, probably not by yourself anyways. Well when you read them you realize that they are very interesting pieces of writing, if you can understand them. For example, “Of Plymouth Plantation” is a piece of writing that shows how people came to new land. The “Of Plymouth Plantation” is a very engaging piece of writing because it states what they believed, how they survived but, it is also very boring because poor word choice, and the runon-sentences.

William Bradford and William Byrd may share the same first name but that is the length of the similarities between these two colonial writers. Bradford, a puritan writer, valued religious freedom above all else, often making the connection back to God and religion in his writings. In his text, Of Plymouth Plantation, Bradford uses his personal experience to give an account of the first pilgrims and the hardships they faced in their journey to colonize America. On the other hand, Byrd takes a more satirical approach, using humor and wit to criticize those same early American settlers in his publication The History of the Dividing Line. Bradford and Byrd both wrote texts about early American life. However, the two authors have different purposes

When April arrived, the crew of the Mayflower raised its sails and set off for England, offering to take any Pilgrim who wished to return to England. Faced with the choice of the harsh New World, or the religious intolerance of the King, they all stayed.

William Bradford, in his own unique way, sees bad weather as a way for God to give things to his people, even though the circumstances are awful and destructive. Shortly after the Pilgrims arrived at Cape Cod they start looking for a place to settle, and they found Native American houses. In those houses, they found corn, although all of the people had fled from the new settlers. (They paid the corn back to the Native Americans in six months) “And it is to noted as a special providence of God, and a great mercy to this poor people, that they thus got seed to plant corn the next year, or they might have starved… for the ground was soon all covered with snow and frozen hard.” These people were sick, weak, and starving living in a cold, snow-covered land they were unfamiliar with and God provided them with food so they would not starve in the coming years. Out of depravity and sickness God provided and gave these weary travelers a means to support themselves.

We all tend to have a certain way of doing things that when it comes to everyone else, we start to believe it’s a divergent way of doing things. In other words it’s an act of ethnocentrism. A perfect and extreme example of ethnocentrism would be Hitler and the Nazis against the Jews. Hitler believed that the Jews were subordinate to his ethnicity and his believes so they didn’t deserve to live. This connects with Bradford and Smith’s in the way of first impression. They both saw the native americans in an unfriendly way and very different from them due to their choice of style and that’s exactly where ethnocentrism plays a role. Bradford and Smith had their own opinions on the native americans once they touched land and saw them.

John Smith mentions little of the Native Americans. And if he briefly does he says that they are good people and that they helped them when they arrived. Whereas Bradford mentions that the Native Americans greeted them with arrows. The biggest difference between Bradford and Smith is when they write about food. Just as Smith talks about fishing with only a stick and a hook and you will catch excellent fish; also that if you planted crops you could get as much as 50 shillings yearly, use this money for meat and beer, and still afford to become rich. In contrast, Bradford writes about the hunger that in the fist 3 months the crew suffered. He did not mention about the difficulties of planting in a frozen floor, or fishing on a frozen lake. Also that half of the people died in January and February due to the hard winter and harsh conditions. Similarly, England banned all trade with the New World and the pilgrims did not have all the supplies they needed for an average living.

In a way pilgrims had to endure many hardships,but they chose this path because they were persecuted for their religous beliefs. Also to not be forgoten they travel one time in a certain group over a great ocean this was a journey no fugittive would take.Most importan to recognize the trsuggle the had to endure when they landed in the americas now were left to fend for themselves.Luckly in this new piece of land there are natives who have useful resoures.Also very distincive to a fugitive would be the fact that pilgrims brang tools to this new coutry