Plymouth Colony: Narratives of English Settlement and Native Resistance from the Mayflower to King Philip’s War

Lisa Brooks
4.54
13 ratings 3 reviews
For centuries the story of the Pilgrims and the Mayflower has been told and retold: the landing at Plymouth Rock, the harrowing first winter, the providential first Thanksgiving, and the decades that followed, as the colonists sought to build an enduring and righteous community in the New England wilderness. But the place where the Plymouth colonists settled was no wilderness: it was Patuxet, in the homelands of the Wampanoag people, a long-inhabited region of sustainable agriculture and food-gathering, well-traveled trade routes, and deep cultural memories and traditions. Edited by two leading scholars of the period, Plymouth Colony invites us to view transatlantic colonization from the perspective of the Wampanoag coast, reframing a once-familiar story for a new era. Here are fascinating firsthand narratives by English settlers: A Relation or Journall, the classic account of the colony’s first year; Edward Winslow’s Good News from New England, a vivid narrative of the intricate diplomacy and brutal violence that marked Plymouth’s early relations with Native peoples; Of Plimoth Plantation, Governor William Bradford’s moving chronicle of the colony’s first three decades; New English Canaan, Thomas Morton’s irreverent challenge to Puritanism; and The Sovereignty and Goodness of God, Mary Rowlandson’s landmark “captivity narrative.” Here too is a carefully chosen selection of documents—land deeds, legal testimony, letters, and speeches—that illuminate the changing nature of Anglo–Native encounters, the complex roles played by Native converts to Christianity, and the choices made by Ousamequin (Massasoit), Weetamoo, Metacom (King Philip), and other Wampanoag leaders facing colonial encroachments on their lands and sovereignty. The growing tensions between Plymouth and the Wampanoags culminate in the horrors of King Philip’s War, a chaotic outbreak of violence—described here in more than a dozen contemporary accounts—that killed thousands and devastated dozens of communities, both English and Native. While the war spelled the end of Plymouth’s existence as a separate colony, the Wampanoag people did not vanish from their homelands: impassioned orations by the nineteenth-century Pequot minister William Apess and the twentieth-century activist Wamsutta Frank James eloquently testify to their continuing struggle to reclaim their history and sovereignty. This deluxe edition includes editorial commentary, endnotes illuminating historical and textual details, a chronology of key events, and an index.
Genres: HistoryAmerican HistoryNonfiction
1100 Pages

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