Mayflower Question

9. I think Church showed humility, and acting just like the first pilgrims, didn't put himself so far above the indians to not ask them for help. He showed tolerance for the Indians who had converted and humbled himself to ask for their help. I don't really think that this makes him a hero though. In all likelihood, he probably had a little prejudice against even the indians that he asked help from, but overcame it because he recognized it as something that needed to be done.

Mayflower Question

8. The book lets you relate to the characters somewhat and helps you think of these historical figures as actual people with real emotions and lives and stuff. Movies a lot of times portray indians as stupid and uncivilized because they lived in tents and didn't wear pants and shirts, or exaggeratingly spiritual, wise, nature-y people. This book shows how smart they really were, and that people are pretty much the same in that they can all be power-hungry and sneaky to get what they want. Squanto is a good example, from all of the planning and deceiving he did, it really humanizes him. The only cliche indian characteristic I can think of as pretty realistic is their use and connection of nature.

Mayflower Question

6. The sons and daughters of the first pilgrims didn't have to work for what they had. They became arrogant and got a sense that they deserved everything, like they forgot what got them where they were in the first place! They were proud of themselves without reason. I think the reputation was earned and entirely deserved, not a self-full filing prophecy. People made the judgement based on the second generation's behavior not the other way around.

Mayflower Question

5. Squanto was really smart. He charmed his way into being close to Bradford and he was already close with Massasoit so that he had large influences over them. His power-hungry motives would be his downfall. He played on fears of both sides, especially when he told Massasoit the story about the plague the pilgrims kept in their barrels, actually full of gunpowder. When he told the sachem that the pilgrims could release the plague at will, he was taking advantage of being the only one that could speak both languages fluently. He used this to his extreme advantage. But for all of his little plotting, when things turned unexpected and left the sachem Massasoit, not himself, in charge of the area. Things would have been different between pilgrims and the natives and who knows how the world would be today.

Mayflower Question

4. The original pilgrims' complex relationship with the indians depended a lot on their early reliance on the tribes for survival. Free of this dependence, the second generation were not as respectful. They undid so much of what their parents worked for by taking on an heir of undeserved superiority. Two other things that lead to King Phillip's war, and the end of peace between the pilgrims and indians, were massive purchase of indian land by the settlers and the unfair trial regarding the man's dead body that was thrown in the frozen lake. I think the peace could've continued, had the second generation pilgrims been acted a little more humbly towards their indian neighbors.

Mayflower Question

3. Since no one here was around back then, we rely on written descriptions of the events from people like Bradford that were there. The stories have been Hollywood-ed up since then and made more interesting. Things were built up and made to sound special because it was more inspirational than truer accounts of what had happened. It could almost be looked at as a form of propaganda. I think stories like the First Thanksgiving have been exaggerated to make you feel proud to be an American. I'm sure it's also like the Pocahontas story that was changed a ton, because the version we made up was more romantic and entertaining.

Mayflower Question

1. The pilgrims were steadfast in their faith; this took them very far. It kept their spirits up in the hardest of times. They had humility in that they didn't think themselves too good to receive help from the native people. They showed extreme perseverance throughout the whole story. They continued to attempt survival, instead of just giving up, in the beginning when so many of them had been lost to disease and they faced constant fear of Indian attacks. They were good at adapting to their new surroundings for both moves, both to Holland and America. The only traits that turned out to work against them later was the second generation's laaack of humility which would later contribute to the build up of King Phillip's war and it also worsened the pilgrims relations with future settlers because of their sense of superiority and religious intolerance.