Mayflower: Part One The novel Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick has a long list of things to teach us about the New World. The fact that it’s showed us that the very first pilgrims had no idea what they were in for was crucial. They were hit with the realization that the Natives would be wild and ferocious instead of calm and tame. They’d known they would be introduced to new ways of life, and disease, but they didn’t suspect that it’d be the most destructive part to the goodwill of the newly born colony. Within this novel, there’s certain environmental, political, environmental, and cultural relationships developed between Natives and Pilgrims. Philbrick wrote that the pilgrims first landed at the New World in 1620. “For sixty-five …show more content…

The strongest of all tribes brawled for control of the abandoned land. Massasoit tried to get most of them, also in return for Pilgrim assistance, Massasoit also taught Pilgrims how to farm on the land, also giving them food. Consequently they had found a communal goal that they could assist each other within a political relationship. For culture, the relationships that sprouted concerned religion. Although the interpreters Massasoit and Squanto, along with William Bradford, the Natives and Pilgrims began to share ideas. One idea was that the Pilgrims gave the Natives Christianity. The Pilgrims had originally been Christians who left England for then New World for freedom to express religion as they pleased. Their first goal was to try and convert the other Natives, but later things became more hostile, and the Pilgrim’s intake on the conversion changed. They started to attract to more killing than converting in the name of God. “And if any of his did hurt any of ours, he should send the offender, that we might punish him accordingly.” (Philbrick 99). That showed that the Pilgrims would order a punishment if the Natives harmed a Pilgrim, whereas if an English man hurt a Native man, there would be no punishment. In 1621, the first colonists corn harvest was successful, and the Plymouth colonists and Wampanoag Natives shared a feast for friendship and benevolence. “The old Indian warriors welcomed us with such food as they had...”