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Voyage of the Mayflower II, 1957 — 1 Comment

  1. When Obama made reference that the refugees coming to the USA were akin to the Mayflower, he must have been remembering the fairytale taught in grade school.

    It wasn’t that way at all!
    I’m watching it for the 3rd time on PBS.

    In the months after their arrival in the New World in 1620, the Pilgrims would face rampant starvation, disease, and death; their relationship with the indigenous population was complex. Living in a former Wampanoag village, whose inhabitants had been killed years earlier when European settlers brought disease to the region, the Pilgrims’ first months were marked by a skirmish with the native Wampanoag people. But in their first spring, out of mutual desperation, the Pilgrims and the Wampanoags agreed to support each other. Tisquantum, the sole survivor of the former Wampanoag village the Pilgrims now inhabited, lived with them to act as an interpreter and help them plant their crops.

    By 1675, Metacom, the son of Wampanoag chief Massasoit, led an armed effort to drive out the colonists from Wampanoag land. In the end, more than 600 colonists and approximately 3,000 Native Americans, including Metacom, were killed.
    http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/introduction/pilgrims-introduction/