North Wind

AN ASTONISHING 35m Americans are reckoned to be descended from passengers on the Mayflower, the legendary ship that in 1620 ferried 102 people, including many persecuted English Pilgrims, to a new life in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Nathaniel Philbrick's well-researched account makes this number seem even more impressive—the odds were that the Pilgrims would have no descendants at all. Months after landing, half the colonists were dead. Disease, and the harsh New England winter, took its toll.

One qualification should be made up front. Readers expecting another gripping shipboard drama, along the lines of Mr Philbrick's bestselling “In the Heart of the Sea” (about an ill-fated whaling ship), will be disappointed. Despite its title, “Mayflower” only briefly touches on the arduous two-month voyage made by the resolute travellers. Instead, Mr Philbrick tackles the vast challenge of settling into a new land. Jamestown, founded in 1607, set an ominous example: 70 of the 108 settlers there had perished in the first year.

For the new arrivals, two issues immediately dominated their plans: food and Indians. The Pilgrims reached America in November—not exactly planting time. After raiding the Indians' corn supplies, they eventually learned to grow crops that worked in America, where barley, peas and other English delicacies had failed. Strict organisation helped: before going ashore, 41 men had signed the “Mayflower Compact”, agreeing to be bound by the laws of their own civil government. This short document is undoubtedly bold, though Mr Philbrick sounds overexcited when he claims that it “ranks with the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution as a seminal text”.

As highly vulnerable newcomers, the Pilgrims were careful to establish diplomatic relations with the local Indians. The natives' numbers were down: they were just recovering from a massive outbreak of disease, probably passed on by European traders. Mutual suspicion was held in check. The Pilgrims paid back the pilfered corn, and they also secured an invaluable interpreter, Squanto. In 1621, Indian guests outnumbered Pilgrims at the first Thanksgiving (which did not get its name until centuries later). They brought five newly killed deer to the feast which, if it had truly indulged the Pilgrims' tastes, should also have featured plenty of beer.

The deterioration of English-Indian relations in New England forms the core of Mr Philbrick's tale. This is a huge topic, and it takes him ever further from his original Mayflower subjects. It was the godly settlers that drew the first serious blood. Fearful of attack by some tribes further afield, Miles Standish, the Pilgrims' hot-blooded military leader, led a pre-emptive strike that terrorised the Indians.

Pressure on land was mounting. Tens of thousands of Puritans, who were religiously akin to the Pilgrims, reached America in the 1630s and 1640s, clustering in Massachusetts Bay and Connecticut. The Indians were squeezed into ever smaller spaces as the English convinced them to sell their land. Dartmouth, Mr Philbrick reports, went for “30 yards of cloth, eight moose skins, 15 axes, 15 hoes, 15 pairs of shoes, one iron pot, and ten shillings' worth of assorted goods”.

Tensions culminated in the bloody King Philip's War (1675-76). Though the conflict started in Plymouth, it swept up much of New England (Plymouth was in any case sliding towards insignificance because of its lack of a decent anchorage). Slaughter was rampant on both sides. Close to half of New England's towns were torched. Huge numbers of Indians died, from disease, starvation or war wounds. Often those captured in battle were drawn and quartered, including, at the end, King Philip, the leader of the Pokanoket tribe.

Particularly disgraceful, argues Mr Philbrick, was the treatment of friendly Indians (some of whom were called “Praying Indians”). These were often lumped in with the enemy. Some were among the estimated 1,000 Indians (half of them from Plymouth) who were shipped off to be slaves in the West Indies and Africa.

He suggests that the bloodiness of the war propelled the settlers to centuries of tension: “Without friendly Indians to buffer them from their enemies, those living in the frontier were left open to attack.” He lavishes praise on Benjamin Church, who fought the Indians but tried to understand them, and exercised mercy—a quality that became ever more elusive for America's often intolerant early settlers.