When the 350th anniversary of the Mayflower voyage was celebrated in 1970 a spokesman for the Wampanoag tribe on whose territory the settlers had landed was invited to give a speech.
At the last moment he was excluded because the organisers ‘didn’t like what he had to say.’ He had planned to tell the world that the Wampanoag were part of the Mayflower story and should be recognised as such. And so they should. The tribesmen could easily have driven off the interlopers, half of whom died within five months of landing in November 1620, but instead, they made peace, they showed the settlers how to survive in that alien landscape, grow corn, catch fish and ensure their first harvest.
The long-delayed expression of their grievances was to be central to an ambitious ceremony planned for Plymouth, Devon, where the Mayflower docked briefly before sailing to America in September, 1620. Postponed last year and rescheduled for July 10-11 - only to be kiboshed again by Covid.
You would imagine universal disappointment at the news but not so. Take this acerbic tweet from @MayflowerLondon, one of the many significant players in the anniversary celebrations: ‘Great news that the awful M400 Ceremony has been cancelled. Focussing M400 celebrations on Plymouth Devon distorted the history of Britain.’
The reason for their hostility? For many - and for me who spent five years writing Voices of the Mayflower which is out now - the story has become, not about the Mayflower, not about the settlers, but about the Native Peoples.
The re-writing of history has been under way since that snub in 1970, shared and encouraged by the governing body, the General Society of Mayflower Descendants, and reinforced months ago when the original anniversary plans for the UK were announced.
Jo Loosemore, director of the Plymouth museum The Box, declared that the need to examine ‘difficult history’ was central to a ‘major exhibition looking at the controversial history of British colonisation.’ Myths would be debunked - though the publicity did not spell out what they were. She and Mayflower 400, the umbrella group organising events across the country, were advised by Wampanoag activist, Paula Peters, who described the collaboration as a chance to tell ‘a story that has been marginalised for centuries’.
But it is the Mayflower settlers who have been marginalised. More, many descendants, proud of their heritage, consider that the narrative of their ancestors’ audacious voyage has been hijacked.
The Box’s pre-pandemic publicity enthused about its exhibition, Mayflower 400: Legend & Legacy with its array of Mayflower-related artefacts but the headlines were about a Wampanoag ceramicist who was to make a cooking pot based on a traditional design and there was great enthusiasm for a ‘fully decolonised art and events programme’ presented by 29 Native American artists from New Mexico. (Not a destination on the itinerary of the 1620 voyagers).
Much was made of a wampum belt made of shells from the New England sea shore as a symbol of the spirit and culture of the indigenous peoples. What the publicity did not explain was that wampum, more prosaically, was used as a currency by Europeans and Native Peoples alike and as the settlers’ governor William Bradford wrote: ‘It makes the tribes hereabouts rich, powerful and proud and provides them with arms and powder and shot...’
That small piece of knowledge brings some balance to the inference that the Wampanoag culture was snuffed out by exploitative colonialists.
Nevertheless, the official position was that the Wampanoag had been ‘excluded from the narrative... despite having been devastatingly affected by colonisation due to the Mayflower's arrival and subsequent European settlement.’ The indigenous people ‘eventually saw their lands and homes brutally taken from them and ultimately the slaughter of their proud people.’
Well, let’s look at those statements. One claim is that disease spread by the settlers killed off the Native Peoples. Not so. It was spread by different explorers some three years earlier.
Devastatingly affected? When the settlers arrived the land was deserted. They did not fight for it, or seize it. Even years later, as the settlement in new Plymouth expanded its borders, they bought the land from the Wampanoag.
Paula Peters, the anniversary adviser, once declared: ‘The goal (of the Mayflower incomers) if not to annihilate was to assimilate (the Wampanoag)’ but there were negligible hostilities between the English and Wampanoag apart from a brief flurry of gunshot and arrows when they first landed. Furthermore both parties signed a peace treaty in March, 1621, which lasted for more than 50 years. It was only then that the all-out assault on the indigenous people began and it was led by a different group of settlers.
This idea of a colonising force, so casually bandied about, is preposterous when you realise that the Mayflower sailed short of weapons -‘nor every man a sword to his side,’ grumbled Bradford. Furthermore, the voyagers were made up of families with almost as many women and children as men on the ship. Not the most effective force to annihilate even the feeblest of foes.
So how have we reached this alternative version? It seems clear that centuries of justified rage at the genocide of their people, disgust at slavery - though there is no evidence that the settlers used forced labour - has been conflated and attributed to the settlers. And what better time than an anniversary to promote that message?
How was that anger, that need for reparation, to be reflected by Mayflower 400? Before Covid struck, plans had been made to hold an ‘unforgettable weekend (on July 10-11) of music and dance fusing hip-hop with an evening of live music, choirs and schools’.
Well, it might have been fun. It was also hilariously inappropriate. One can only imagine what Governor Bradford and his pious settlers would have made of it.
This was the man who sent a band of armed men to destroy a rival English settlement because they were ‘quaffing and drinking both wine and strong waters in great excess. They also set up a May-pole, drinking and dancing aboute it, inviting the Indian women for their consorts, dancing and frisking together.’ This is also the religious diehard who broke up a Christmas party because ‘there should be no gaming or revelling in the streets.’
He might have been perplexed by the Mayflower 400’s plans for Plymouth which have survived, including a giant puppet in the form of a dragon which is destined to roam through the city and distinctly unamused by a comedy play which considers important Mayflower-related issues such as, ‘why do our American friends call trousers pants?’
It’s not as if there cannot be fitting commemorations. Talks, walks and festivals are going on from Chorley Lancs, to Southampton, from Shrewsbury to Harwich, in Dorking and in Dartmouth. A flotilla sailed up the Thames recently on the 400th anniversary of the Mayflower’s return to Rotherhithe and in Scrooby, Notts, a festival will be held in the manor where many of the dissidents who inspired the pilgrims gathered in the late 16th, early 17th, centuries.
But the enterprising Bassetlaw Museum in nearby Retford has also been beguiled by the Wampanoag story and plans to demonstrate the building of a traditional Indian dwelling. Educational, interesting, but how about telling how the half a dozen able-bodied settlers managed to wrest homes out of the wilderness during the first winter as half their number fell dying amongst them?
But let’s not be spoil sports like the stern Bradford. What about the formalities - the speeches, the appeals to the core values of freedom, humanity, imagination and the future which were to be extolled during the revelries?
In the publicity, much was made of leading representatives of the Wampanoag taking part. All right and proper. But there was something - or rather someone - missing. Although, ‘high-ranking dignitaries’ were to speak, there was no mention of a Mayflower descendant being included, and despite me asking twice, no one was able to confirm that anyone from Plymouth, Massachusetts, home of the General Society of Mayflower Descendants, was attending. In fact, one leading light in the Mayflower community had made her own arrangements only to have her plans thwarted by quarantine regulations.
There are 30 million or so Mayflower descendants scattered around the world and a few thousand Wampanoag in New England. They both deserve to have their voices heard.
