Monday, 7 July 2008: The Pilgrims and the Hebrew model of national migration; prototype of white exclusiveness and purity? William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation (introduction, esp. p. xxii; chapters I-IV).

Text-objective discussion leader: Larry Stanley

Objective 5:  To observe and analyze the effects of immigration and assimilation on cultural units or identities.

-          Community and laws

Old World culture is often organized by traditional or family laws and a distant, autocratic state. New World culture conforms to impersonal laws and a democratic, regulated, but self-governing state.

-          Religion

 In traditional societies of the Old World, religion and political or cultural identity are closely related. Modern cultures of the New World tend toward a secular state and private religion.

Religion is the identity factor that resists assimilation the longest-but not necessarily forever.

William Bradford as a Puritan-Presbyterian

Pg. X. The word puritan became a part of the English language in the 1560’s, only thirty years before Bradford was born. It was originally a term of derision, used to characterize a group of people thought to be dyspeptic and malcontent, too rigid and severe…They believed that churches, or congregations, should be “particular”…not clergy assigned to a parish by any ecclesiastical authority.

Bradford as a Puritan-Separatist

Pg. XI. The church at Scrooby, however, was more extreme. These Puritans saw no hope of reforming the national church from within; they were Separatists, dangerous in the eyes of church and state and willing to suffer persecution for their belief.

Seeing that the Church of England as “no true church” and could not be changed under the hierarchical government of archbishops, their courts and canons, Bradford and members of the Scrooby congregation were forced to settle in Amsterdam and later in Leyden where they resided for eleven years. Still not free from dissention, with a language alien to them and hard times, the Puritans decided America would be a better choice of residence.

Four reasons for their want to leave Leyden:

1. The hardness of the country and low standard of living for immigrant families
2. The harsh and continual labors stole their strength and hastened their deaths
3. Parents’ burdens were put on their children, producing sad and sorrowful effects
4. The hope of propagating and advancing the gospel in the remote parts of the world

Pg. XIII. The Puritans signed a contract with Thomas Weston on July 1, 1620, and three weeks later they sailed to England on the Speedwell, intending to combine forces with the Mayflower, but the Speedwell proved unseaworthy, and everyone still determined to embark transferred to the Mayflower. The ship sailed with 101 passengers, not counting officers and crew.

The Mayflower: Approximately 90-110 ft. long, 25 ft. wide, with a crew of 25-30.

Arriving at Cape Cod sixty-five days later, they found a good harbor they called Plymouth. Times proved hard, and Bradford’s wife fell overboard after six weeks, historians declining an accidental death to her unwillingness to face the certain rigors of the future. Fear and further miseries confronted the immigrants.

Pg. 27. For there they should be liable to famine and nakedness and the want…of all things. The change of air, diet and drinking water would infect their bodies with sore sicknesses and grievous diseases. And also those which should escape or overcome these difficulties should yet be in continual danger of the savage people…not being content only to kill and take away life, but delight to torment men in the most bloody manner that may be; flaying some alive with the shells of fishes, cutting off the members and joints of others by piecemeal and boiling on the coals, eat the collops of their flesh in their sight whilst they live, with other cruelties horrible to be related.

Faced with these dangers, the Puritans could only look to their God for salvation and help.

Pg. 28 They lived here but as men in exile and in a poor condition…for the twelve years of truce (The Thirty Year War) were now out and there was nothing but beatings of drums and preparing for war. The Spanish might prove as cruel as the savages of America, and the famine and pestilence as sore here as there, and their liberty less to look out for remedy. After many other particular things answered and alleged on both sides, it was fully concluded by the major part to put this design in execution and to prosecute it by the best means they could.

Question: Most often, when the immigrant goes to a new country, that country will have an equal or higher degree of cultural standard. The Pilgrims were faced with entering a country whose people had little or no education, only the want to protect their people. If the Indians would have been more culturally developed with a fixed religion of their own, would the Pilgrims have stayed and tried to change that religion to suit theirs? Or would they have moved along for centuries as the Jewish people did until they found a country of their own?