Journal for Bradford

"It would be hard to imagine a historian better prepared to write the history of this colony." (Norton Anthology, p.104)

William Bradford's Of Plymouth Plantation is a fascinating document. The "pilgrims" are so familiar to us in their cardboard-cutout iconic form, with their big hats and shoe-buckles that we don't think about the reality behind the myth. We all know that the ship they sailed in was called the Mayflower,and that the Indians helped them survive the first winter, which they celebrated in the first Thanksgiving. We rarely think of them outside the context of turkey and pumpkin pie. But Bradford's history makes us realize how unimaginably hard that journey was, how bleak the prospect that greeted them when they finally reached land after the grueling two month journey across the north Atlantic. As he says "they had now no friends to welcome them, nor inns to entertain or refresh their weatherbeaten bodies, no houses or much less towns to repair to, to seek for succor." (Norton, p. 115). It is clear from Bradford's account that the Puritans themselves did have a grand sense of destiny, of manifesting God's will. Indeed it is hard to imagine them undertaking their dangerous journey into the unknown without such a sense.
Bradford's omissions are as interesting as his revelations. He does in the end acknowledge that the Indians were very instrumental in their survival, but that doesn't stop him from describing them as merciless savages bent on destroying them. Another thing I fond interesting was the treatment they got from the crew of the Mayflower, which hints at the contempt with which they were regarded in England. One of the sailors kept taunting them that they were going to perish on the voyage and that he looked forward to throwing them overboard. As fate would have it that sailor turns out to be the first to die and get thrown overboard. The Puritans, of course, see the hand of God: "Thus his curses landed on his own head; and it was an astonishment to all his fellows, for they noted it to be the just hand of God upon them." (p. 114). That is their belief system, but I think it reveals too the helpless rage of a people accustomed to persecution.