In September 1620, during the reign of King James I, a group of around 100 English men and women—many of them members of the English Separatist Church later known to history as the Pilgrims—set sail for the New World aboard the Mayflower. Two months later, the three-masted merchant ship landed on the shores of Cape Cod, in present-day Massachusetts.
In late December, the Mayflower anchored at Plymouth Rock, where the pilgrims formed the first permanent settlement of Europeans in New England. Though more than half of the original settlers died during that grueling first winter, the survivors were able to secure peace treaties with neighboring Native American tribes and build a largely self-sufficient economy within five years. Plymouth was the first colonial settlement in New England.
Journey to the New World
Mayflower
The Mayflower in Plymouth Harbor.
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Among the group traveling on the Mayflower in 1620 were close to 40 members of a radical Puritan faction known as the English Separatist Church. Feeling that the Church of England had not sufficiently completed the necessary work of the Protestant Reformation, the group had chosen to break with the church altogether. The Separatists had sought religious freedom before, fleeing England in 1607 and 1608 to settle in the Netherlands, first in Amsterdam and later in the town of Leiden, where they remained for the next decade. Wanting to secure their English language and heritage, and seeking more economic opportunity, the group–later known as the Pilgrims–laid plans for a voyage to the New World aboard the Mayflower.
Did you know? Three more ships traveled to Plymouth soon after the Mayflower, including the Fortune (1621), the Anne and the Little James (both 1623). Passengers on these first four ships were called the "Old Comers" of Plymouth Colony, and were given special treatment in later colonial affairs.
The Pilgrims had originally signed a contract with the Virginia Company to settle near the Hudson River, but rough seas and storms prevented the ship from reaching its initial destination. After 66 days, it reached the shores of Cape Cod, anchoring at the site of Provincetown on November 21. The Pilgrims sent an exploratory party ashore, and on December 18 docked at Plymouth Rock, on the western side of Cape Cod Bay. The explorer John Smith had named the area Plymouth after leaving Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in the New World. The settlers decided the name was appropriate, as the Mayflower had set sail from the port of Plymouth in England.
Surviving the First Year in Plymouth Colony
For the next few months, many of the settlers stayed on the Mayflower while ferrying back and forth to shore to build their new settlement. In March, they began moving ashore permanently. More than half the settlers fell ill and died that first winter, victims of an epidemic of disease that swept the new colony.
Soon after they moved ashore, the Pilgrims were introduced to a Native American man named Tisquantum, or Squanto, who would become a member of the colony. A member of the Pawtuxet tribe (from present-day Massachusetts and Rhode Island) who had been kidnapped by the explorer John Smith and taken to England, only to escape back to his native land, Squanto acted as an interpreter and mediator between Plymouth’s leaders and local Native Americans, including Chief Massasoit of the Pokanoket tribe.
The First Thanksgiving
The First Thanksgiving
The first Thanksgiving.
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In the Fall of 1621, the Pilgrims famously shared a harvest feast with the Pokanokets; the meal is now considered the basis for the Thanksgiving holiday. It took place over three days between late September and mid-November and included feasting as well as games and military exercises.
Most of the attendees at the first Thanksgiving were men; 78 percent of the women who traveled on the Mayflower perished over the preceding winter. Of the 50 colonists who celebrated the harvest (and their survival), 22 were men, four were married women, and 25 were children and teenagers.
The Pilgrims were outnumbered more than two to one by Native Americans, according to Edward Winslow, a participant who attended with his wife and recorded what he saw in a letter, writing: “many of the Indians coming amongst us, and amongst the rest their greatest king Massasoit, with some ninety men.”
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