Lies My Teacher Told Me by James
Loewen, 1995, Excerpts
“Their profit” was the primary reason most Mayflower
colonist made the trip. As Robert Moore has pointed out, “Textbooks neglect to
analyze the profit motive underlying much of our history.” The Pilgrims hardly
“started from scratch” in a “wilderness.” Throughout New England, Native
Americans had repeatedly burned the underbrush, creating a park like
environment. They chose Plymouth because of its beautiful cleared fields,
recently planted in corn, and its useful harbor and “brook of fresh water.”
Throughout New England, colonist appropriated Indian corn
fields for their initial settlements, avoiding the backbreaking labor of
clearing the land of forest and rock. This explains why, to this day, the names
of so many towns throughout the region – Marshfield, Springfield, Deerfield –
end in field.
In their first
year the Pilgrims, like the Indians, suffered from diseases, including scurvy
and pneumonia; half of them died. They did not cause the plague and were as
baffled as to its origin as the stricken Indian villagers. For at least a
century Puritan ministers thundered their interpretation of the meaning of the
plague for New England pulpits.
Henry A.
Bacon 1877: The Landing of the Pilgrims
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