We Shall Remain: After the Mayflower

Part of PBS’s award winning documentary series – American Experience – we watched this video to learn the true contours of the relationship between the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag, the “Indian” tribe that offered them early assistance.  In many ways, this video took the myth we’ve often heard of the First Thanksgiving and turned it upside down, suggesting instead a history of cruelty and power that both Native and Colonist participated in.

                             In 1621, Wampanoag leader Massasoit negotiates to provide help to the ailing Pilgrims from the Mayflower.  Hungry, dirty and sick, the pale-skinned foreigners were struggling to stay alive; they were in desperate need of Native help. Massasoit faced problems of his own. His people had lately been decimated by unexplained sickness, leaving them vulnerable to their native enemies, the Narragansett to the west.  Massasoit negotiates, forming an alliance, because he thinks this alliance will ensure protection for his tribe from their enemies. Over the next fifty years, it becomes more and more clear that Massasoit was wrong.  The English continue to immigrate in greater and greater numbers, demanding more of the land, overusing and altering its bounty, forcibly converting Natives to Christianity, and threatening to swallow up Native identity.    

These pressures finally push the Wampanoag and the Pilgrims to war lead by Metacomet, Massoit’s son.  Known to the English as "King Philip," this war, King Philip's War, was the deadliest war, per capita, that America has ever seen.  Within little more than a year, twelve of the region's Colonial towns were utterly destroyed, many more damaged.  One tenth of all Colonial men were killed.  Many more Indians were killed.