Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War

The systematic genocide of the Original Americans began long before the US government codified it's decimation of the Indian Peoples, so well chronicled by Dee Brown in his now iconic classic, "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee." The truth of the matter is that we need look no further than to the Mayflower. Yes, the English immigrants who hopped on that mythologized vessel to avoid their own religious persecution, played a key role in helping to shape the attitudes & subsequent behavior of our nation's people to come. Well, what I just intimated is not entirely fair. The actual Pilgrims who first arrived on these shores found themselves in such a weakened position - barely able to feed themselves - concluded that they had to discover common ground with their new neighbors. And, so they did, collaborating & compromising so that both groups could survive & prosper. The real culpability can be laid at the doorsteps of the next generation of Pilgrims & Puritans & Native Americans who forgot that they all needed one another. In that "forgetting" came the seeds for the King Philip's War which is what the "Mayflower" is all about. Philbrick does a simply brilliant job of introducing us to a host of characters - Native Americans, Pilgrims, Puritans, politicians, warriors, statesmen, entrepreneurs, charlatans & thieves - who make this drama come alive. From Benjamin Church, a true hero of that war, a man who "embraced the wilderness his forefathers has shunned" to Captain Samuel Mosley whose motto was : "get mad and get even" and also allegedly the man responsible for coining the slur "the only good Indian is a dead Indian," Philbrick recreates for us the society, Caucasian & Indian, that laid the ground work for the heartbreaking tragedies that unfolded. Regardless of the accountability that existed on both sides, at the end of the day, it was the Original Inhabitants who got the short end of the stick. Prior to the onset of the war Native Americans "constituted almost 30% of the population of New England." Following the war that percent was reduced to less than 15% A tradition had been established & it was not nearly as cheery as the Pilgrim's famous Thanksgiving.

It is a good book but not superior than "in the heart of the sea"

I learned so much reading this book. It always caught my attention and I loved every part of it.