This episode follows the Separatists from secret meetings in northern England to exile in the Netherlands to the brutal winter at Plymouth in 1620. It covers the Mayflower Compact, the help of Squanto, and the harvest feast that became America's first Thanksgiving. Students will see how a small religious community established principles of self-governance that echoed through American history.

Key Takeaways

• The Pilgrims were Separatists who had broken entirely from the Church of England, which made their meetings illegal under King James I.

• Storms pushed the Mayflower north from its intended Virginia destination, landing the group at Cape Cod in November 1620.

• The Mayflower Compact, signed before anyone went ashore, was a landmark document of self-governance, establishing the idea that legitimate government rests on the consent of the governed.

• Squanto, a Patuxent native who had traveled to England and spoke English, taught the colonists to plant crops and helped them survive their first year.

• Half the colonists died in the first winter at Plymouth, making the community's eventual survival and growth all the more remarkable.

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FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions

Q1: Why are the Pilgrims called Separatists?

The Pilgrims belonged to a faction of English Puritans who had given up on reforming the Church of England from within and instead chose to separate from it entirely. This was a significant legal and social step. Under King James I, separating from the national church was considered a crime, which is why they first met in secret and eventually fled to the Netherlands.

Q2: What is the Mayflower Compact and why does it matter?

The Mayflower Compact was a brief agreement signed by the male passengers of the Mayflower on November 11, 1620, before anyone disembarked. It established that the colonists would govern themselves through laws made by their own chosen representatives. It's considered one of the earliest examples of self-government by consent in American history, a principle that later shaped colonial charters and the Declaration of Independence.

Q3: Who was Squanto and how did he help the Pilgrims?

Squanto was a Patuxent native who had previously been to England and spoke English. He encountered the Pilgrims in the spring of 1621 and served as a translator and agricultural guide. He taught the colonists how to plant corn using fish as fertilizer and helped them navigate their relationship with the Wampanoag. His help was critical to the colony's survival through its first full year.

Q4: How many Pilgrims survived the first winter at Plymouth?

Of the roughly 102 passengers who arrived on the Mayflower, about half died during the first winter from a combination of cold, starvation, and disease. The death toll was particularly severe in the months of January and February 1621. The survivors' persistence through that winter, and their subsequent harvest, is what the Thanksgiving tradition commemorates.

Q5: Why did the Pilgrims end up at Plymouth instead of Virginia?

The Mayflower departed England in September 1620 with a patent for land in Virginia. Storms in the Atlantic pushed the ship off course northward. By the time the passengers arrived at Cape Cod in November, the weather and the approaching winter made sailing south dangerous. They decided to land where they were, at a site they named Plymouth, even though it fell outside the territory covered by their original patent.

Separatists Flee England for the New World

From Virginia's incorporation in 1607, the Church of England was the official church of the colony. To the north, just beyond Virginia, a different story developed. Like all Puritans, the British pilgrims who landed at Plymouth in 1620 had once sought to reform the Church of England. What these Puritans wanted, however, was far more than what King James could tolerate. And so they left England, first for the Netherlands, and then on to the new world. They were Separatists. We know them today as the Pilgrims. 

The beginning of the 17th century was a remarkable time in British culture. Shakespeare was in full stride. Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, and Macbeth all written within the span of the first decade. The Tempest in 1611. That same year, the Church of England published the King James Version of the Bible. The Protestant Reformation had not begun in England as it had elsewhere, with theologians like Luther in Germany and Calvin working in Switzerland. Motivated by personal and political problems, it was King Henry VIII who had broken with the Catholic Church in 1534. Taking his country with him, he dissolved Catholic monasteries and executed those who opposed his Act of Supremacy, the first victims in a century-long line of Christian martyrs. 

The Puritans wanted more: an eradication of all vestiges of Catholic worship and practice. They hoped for a shift away from church rule by the king and his bishops. They wanted independent churches. The most zealous advocates for ecclesiastical independence were called Separatists. In 1606, having washed their hands of the Church of England, they set out to form an independent church, first at Scrooby in northern England, where the Separatists met in secret. Their leader was William Brewster, who would later sail to Plymouth with his fellow Pilgrims. Under King James, however, it was dangerous to separate from the national church and illegal to meet in secret. 

When discovered, members of the congregation at Scrooby were fined or punished. In 1609, the Separatists fled to Leiden in the Netherlands. By the time the Mayflower set sail, England had already managed one foothold in North America, the story we tell in our episode on Jamestown and the birth of English America.

The Mayflower and the Compact

Increasingly, however, they feared they might lose their children to Dutch culture, and there were clouds of war looming overhead. In fact, one year after the Separatists left the Netherlands, the truce with Spain collapsed and the Eighty Years' War resumed. The band of congregants looked to the new world. In 1620, Brewster procured a patent to develop a settlement in Virginia. Two ships, the Speedwell and the Mayflower, were contracted to transport the settlers, but the Speedwell developed leaks and was judged unseaworthy. She and her passengers had to stay behind. 

With about 100 passengers plus crew members, the Mayflower set sail from Plymouth, England in September of that year. They had their eye on establishing a settlement near the Hudson River, which at the time lay just within the northern boundary of what was known as Virginia. Alas, a storm blew them off course north toward Cape Cod. After 66 days at sea, the Pilgrims had arrived. Where they landed lay beyond Virginia. Their patent thereby no longer held authority. Some passengers threatened to break out on their own. 

Before the Pilgrims disembarked, they wrote and signed an agreement. We know it today as the Mayflower Compact. "We solemnly and mutually in the presence of God and one of another covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic." The document is at once a declaration of Separatist belief and a watershed in the history of American self-government. John Smith had named the area Plymouth in his map of 1614. The settlers retained that name, partly in honor of where they had departed from in England. A larger Puritan migration would follow within a decade, the subject of our episode on Winthrop's city upon a hill.

The First Winter and the First Thanksgiving

As with Roanoke and Jamestown, the first year in Plymouth sorely tested the settlers. Only 52 of them survived. Among those who died was Rose Standish, wife to Captain Miles Standish. Three siblings, Elinor Moore, age eight; her brother Jasper, who was seven; and their four-year-old sister Mary, all succumbed to the brutal winter. Their brother Richard survived. The following spring, a Patuxent native named Squanto taught the surviving colonists how to grow corn. 

Years earlier, Squanto had learned English first from British explorers to New England, including John Smith. Then, having been captured by British captain Thomas Hunt and sold into Spanish slavery, he fled to England where he became more fluent in the language. At Plymouth, Governor William Bradford befriended the native, and he came to be known simply as Squanto. Sometime in the fall of 1621, likely in late September, the surviving settlers held a feast. 

About 90 Wampanoag natives joined them, not on invitation, but likely attracted by the noise created by the festivities. What is now considered to be the first Thanksgiving meal consisted of venison, wild fowl, fish, shellfish, and the corn that Squanto had taught the settlers to cultivate, served in the form of bread and porridge.

Thanksgiving Becomes a National Holiday

Starting in 1846, writer and activist Sarah J. Hale wrote a letter to every sitting American president asking him to declare a national day of thanksgiving. At the time, only New Englanders celebrated the day. No president acted on Hale's urging until 1863, when Abraham Lincoln set apart the last Thursday of November as a day of thanksgiving and praise to God. America was at war. 

Her bonds of unity had been broken. Lincoln called Americans to embrace the holiday soberly, "with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience," and to commend to God's tender care "all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged." In 1939, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt changed the designated day. Concerned that the holiday shopping season was not long enough to fuel the nation's recovering economy, he moved Thanksgiving to the second-to-last Thursday in November. Sixteen states opposed the change. For the following two years, Thanksgiving was celebrated on two different Thursdays. 

In 1941, Congress passed a law making the fourth Thursday in November America's Thanksgiving Day. Norman Rockwell, America's favorite illustrator, descended from Mayflower voyagers, the non-Separatists Steven and Elizabeth Hopkins. His beloved images captured the American spirit's gentler side. His painting titled Freedom from Want is a reminder of the meal that crowned the Pilgrims' first year in America. Another, Freedom of Worship, heralds the Pilgrims' hope and their enduring legacy in the American story. The Pilgrims were able to survive only with the help of native peoples whose ancestors had occupied this land for millennia, as we cover in our episode on the first Americans.