By Judith Gayle | Political Waves
At this time of year, I usually mention my ancestors who came to this continent aboard the Mayflower. Of the seven who made the crossing, only two survived that first year: John Howland, a young bond servant to John Carver, suspected author and signer of the Mayflower Compact, and another, Elizabeth Tilley, child of Pilgrim parents, who eventually married. The boomerang effect of stripping whitewash off our mythologies, including the origin story of those first years in Plymouth, has offered us a more realistic look at the humanity that built this nation, and that is one of the blessings I’m counting this holiday season. As one of the 30 million descendants of that first motley crew of 102 immigrants, I find all this business of saintliness and unblemished virtue tedious.
I should mention an earlier adventurer, the lately maligned — and deservedly so — Christopher Columbus who “sailed the ocean blue” in 1492. We mostly ignore what happened during those years between mention of Spain’s entry and the perilous passage of the Mayflower in 1620. Since Columbus never got this far north, recorded history is sketchy, but stories of deprivation so severe at the Jamestown Colony in Virginia that inhabitants resorted to cannibalism have recently been confirmed forensically. No wonder, then, that the group who landed in Plymouth was reduced in number by half within the first few bitterly cold winter months.
Grampa John (times 13 generations, in my case) had a singular accomplishment prior to landing in Massachusetts: he was swept off the ship in a raging storm and grabbing hold of the topsail halyard, held on until he was eventually hauled back in. As a religious Separatist (Puritan), John no doubt considered his rescue providential. As bondsman to the first governor of the colony (who also served as representative of the British merchants who funded the expedition), his retrieval was also considered the successful securing of an asset. We have been about this game of profitable conquest — the birth of American exceptionalism and a hint of the fledgling doctrine of Manifest Destiny — since the very beginning.
As things are rarely as simplistic as historical events (that might prove useful to politics) are depicted, we are finally taking a realistic look at the socioeconomic complexity of our national heritage. The recent National Geographic two-part mini-series, Saints And Strangers, came closer to an accurate accounting of this event than we’re used to, although, as entertainment, liberties were necessarily taken with the dialogue, time line shortcuts were imposed, and facts important to indigenous Americans overlooked.
The tale is narrated, for instance, by William Bradford as leader of the colony, although he did not become governor until the second year at Plymouth. History tells us that Governor Carver — who presided at the first Thanksgiving but never saw the second — was soundly criticized posthumously by his financiers, for having spent too much time in those first critical weeks organizing the struggling colony and not enough securing profitable resources. Evidently, in service to the movie version of events, at any rate, he who fails to prosper can be consigned to history’s trash heap.
To its credit, this National Geographic offering attempts to grapple with the ethics of, for example, pilfering stores of corn buried by the locals, and explores the moderate voices of both colonists and Native American leaders, as well as those quick to judgment. Since everyone has a perspective dear to them, you will not be shocked to learn that we can find disparity in the reviews of Saints And Strangers.
Mainstream media like the Washington Post seemed to welcome the attempt at a more accurate accounting, while over at über-conservative Breitbart, the reviewer found the mini-series unimpressive, although it gave points for not succumbing to the “politically correct, anti-Western European hate-fest we’ve come to expect from Hollywood.”
Most conservative and several mainstream reviewers found the offering “boring,” which tells me more about them and their expectations of life as simplistic drama than about the facts at Plymouth colony. We seem to have an unstated need for some Kumbaya moment to take the edge off the harsher face of our aggressions — something more soothing, like one of one of those little construction paper Pilgrim hats we made in Kindergarten, celebrating the discovery of maize with our new Red Indian friends [sic.]
On the opposite side of the argument, the Wampanoag, who had been contracted to verify the accuracy of the script and dismissed when they demanded approval, find the mini-series denigrating and culturally inaccurate, and this, of course, in defiance of National Geographic’s reputation for historical accuracy. Frankly, it’s understandable if this topic is as sensitive as a wild hare among those who have seldom seen their history sympathetically portrayed, let alone truthfully told. And while I can be empathetic to their outrage, it seldom helps to settle a controversy. I appreciated a measured and not entirely negative review by a Mohawk man in Indian Country, titled “Close Enough is Great.” Gotta start somewhere telling a story not so warm and cozy, right ?
I’ve not yet been able to see Saints and Strangers, but I look forward to it. The cast includes characterizations of both my ancestors, which will be interesting to watch. There is, however, the bigger questions we don’t address when we discuss this topic — things like American hegemony, our continued empiricism, and the necessity of ‘American leadership’ that almost always extends our footprint of influence without improving the circumstances of those we seek to protect.
Was the Plymouth landing the first step in an intentional genocide of the indigenous population or was that just another of those unintended consequences we’re so good at? And after all these generations, all this time relating to our neighbors, should’t we have questions about who and what the “savages” really are? At least, in this starker version of the Thanksgiving story, we can chew over the moral and ethical implications of taking what is not ours simply because we can.
There are some valuable takeaways, important in the scheme of things: gratitude for our ability as a species to overcome great odds and thrive in spite of them. There is encouragement in this story, in that we were able to find commonality with one another, even though those early agreements did not hold for long, along with admonition that we must continue to respect our varied cultural differences while caring for our mutual survival. There is comfort in knowing we’ve overcome so many of those early deprivations and influences that killed us so easily, that we’ve created a less difficult — if not dangerous — world to navigate.
The simplest bit of wisdom we can glean from this story can be imagined easily enough in my mind’s eye, me face to face with Grampa John, asking what he might consider the most important thing to remember on this epic journey. Not hard to conjure him telling me — telling all of us — that when the storm breaks all around, hold tight to the rope!
