Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick, Essay on Pt. One

Mayflower: Part One The novel Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick has a long list of things to teach us about the New World. The fact that it’s showed us that the very first pilgrims had no idea what they were in for was crucial. They were hit with the realization that the Natives would be wild and ferocious instead of calm and tame. They’d known they would be introduced to new ways of life, and disease, but they didn’t suspect that it’d be the most destructive part to the goodwill of the newly born colony. Within this novel, there’s certain environmental, political, environmental, and cultural relationships developed between Natives and Pilgrims. Philbrick wrote that the pilgrims first landed at the New World in 1620. “For sixty-five days, the Mayflower had blundered her way through strong storms and headwinds.” (Philbrick 1) It was for sure a long, hazardous trip, however they eventually set foot on land and set up a settlement at a place called Cole’s Hill in Plymouth, which was originally a Native settlement. The very first relationship that sprouted was an economic one. The new settlers survived with and on almost nothing. For most of that winter, they were struggling with food, and many died from disease and starvation. When Pilgrims were completely desperate for food, they decided to take corn from the Nausets, a group of close-by Natives. “The snow made it difficult to find the corn, but eventually they located 10 catches of it.” (Philbrick 66-67) Basically, they weren’t very well off. However the Natives were fine, they had plenty of crop. The Natives had survived and flourished off of the land for thousands of years, and there was a native man, Suqanto, who spoke these famous words: “Welcome, Englishman!” (Philbrick 92) He was the one who volunteered to show all the Pilgrims what he knew about farming corn, catching fish, and hunting wild game and fishing the way the Natives do. He was a Native man from the Patuxet tribe who also helped the colonists