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Plymouth Colony

Narratives of English Settlement and Native Resistance from the Mayflower to King Philip’s War More

Edited by Lisa Brooks and Kelly Wisecup

Including William Bradford’s Of Plimoth Plantation, Mary Rowlandson’s The Sovereignty and Goodness of God, and many other works

Overview
Table of Contents

Overview

Interviews Stories of colonization and continuance—a new perspective on Plymouth Colony
November 23, 2022

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For centuries the story of the Pilgrims and the Mayflower has been told and retold: the landing at Plymouth Rock, the harrowing first winter, the providential first Thanksgiving, and the decades that followed, as the colonists sought to build an enduring and righteous community in the New England wilderness. But the place where the Plymouth colonists settled was no wilderness: it was Patuxet, in the homelands of the Wampanoag people, a long-inhabited region of sustainable agriculture and food-gathering, well-traveled trade routes, and deep cultural memories and traditions. Edited by two leading scholars of the period, Plymouth Colony invites us to view transatlantic colonization from the perspective of the Wampanoag coast, reframing a once-familiar story for a new era.

Here are fascinating firsthand narratives by English settlers: A Relation or Journall, the classic account of the colony’s first year; Edward Winslow’s Good News from New England, a vivid narrative of the intricate diplomacy and brutal violence that marked Plymouth’s early relations with Native peoples; Of Plimoth Plantation, Governor William Bradford’s moving chronicle of the colony’s first three decades; New English Canaan, Thomas Morton’s irreverent challenge to Puritanism; and The Sovereignty and Goodness of God, Mary Rowlandson’s landmark “captivity narrative.” Here too is a carefully chosen selection of documents—land deeds, legal testimony, letters, and speeches—that illuminate the changing nature of Anglo–Native encounters, the complex roles played by Native converts to Christianity, and the choices made by Ousamequin (Massasoit), Weetamoo, Metacom (King Philip), and other Wampanoag leaders facing colonial encroachments on their lands and sovereignty.

The growing tensions between Plymouth and the Wampanoags culminate in the horrors of King Philip’s War, a chaotic outbreak of violence—described here in more than a dozen contemporary accounts—that killed thousands and devastated dozens of communities, both English and Native. While the war spelled the end of Plymouth’s existence as a separate colony, the Wampanoag people did not vanish from their homelands: impassioned orations by the nineteenth-century Pequot minister William Apess and the twentieth-century activist Wamsutta Frank James eloquently testify to their continuing struggle to reclaim their history and sovereignty.

This deluxe edition includes editorial commentary, endnotes illuminating historical and textual details, a chronology of key events, and an index.

Lisa Brooks, coeditor, is Henry S. Poler ’59 Presidential Teaching Professor of English and American Studies at Amherst College and the author of The Common Pot: The Recovery of Native Space in the Northeast (2008) and Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip’s War (2018), which won the Bancroft Prize.

Kelly Wisecup, coeditor, is Associate Professor of English at Northwestern University and the author of Assembled for Use: Indigenous Compilation and the Archives of Early Native American Literatures (2021) and editor of “Good News from New England” by Edward Winslow: A Scholarly Edition (2014).

This Library of America series edition is printed on acid-free paper and features Smyth-sewn binding, a full cloth cover, and a ribbon marker.

Project support for this volume was provided by The Achelis & Bodman Foundation

This volume is available for adoption in the Guardian of American Letters Fund.
Table of Contents

Introduction by Lisa Brooks and Kelly Wisecup

VOYAGES AND CAPTIVITIES
James Rosier: A True Relation
• A Voyage to the Wabanaki Homelands: 1605

Samuel de Champlain: Chart of Port Saint Louis
• A Map of pPatuxet: 1605

Captain John Smith: A Description of New England
• A Voyage to “New Wngland”: 1614

Thomas Dermer to Samuel Purchas
• The Effects of an Epidemic: 1619

Ferdinando Gorges: from A Briefe Narration
• Native Captives and Colonial Ventures: 1605–20

PLYMOUTH PLANTATION IN PATUXET
Edward Winslow and William Bradford: A Relation or Journall
• Founding Plymouth Colony: 1620–21

Edward Winslow: Good News from New England
• The Colonists and the Native Peoples: 1621–23

Phenehas Pratt: A Declaration of the Affairs
• Fleeing the Wessagusset Settlement: 1623

William Bradford: Of Plimoth Plantation
• A History of Plymouth Colony: 1620–46

TRANSNATIONAL DIPLOMACY: Councils and Deeds Between Indigenous Leaders and Settlers from Plymouth Colony
Seekonk Deed, 1642
Bridgewater Deed, 1649
Nonaquaket Deed, 1651
“Old Comers” Deeds, 1639–1652
Old Dartmouth Deed, 1652
Sowams Deed, 1653
Wamsutta’s Mortgage, 1657
Freemen’s Deeds, 1659
Wamsutta’s Protests Over Cattle, 1659–1660
Metacom to Governor Thomas Prence, date unknown
Exchange Between Awashonks and Governor Thomas Prence, 1671

WRITINGS ABOUT THE BROADER WAMPANOAG AND MASSACHUSETT HOMELANDS
William Wood: from New England’s Prospect
• The Landscape and the Native Peoples: 1634

Thomas Morton: New English Canaan
• An Unorthodox View of Plymouth Colony: 1637

Experience Mayhew: from Indian Converts
• Christian Wampanoags on Martha’s Vineyard: 1632–1712

Caleb Cheeshateaumuck to “Honoratissimi Benefactores”
• A Wampanoag Scholar Writes to His Benefactors: 1663

Thomas Cooper: Traditional Story from Martha’s Vineyard

Helen Attaquin: How Martha’s Vineyard Came to Be

Daniel Gookin: from Historical Collections of the Indians in New England
• A Colonial Magistrate’s View of Native Peoples: 1674

KING PHILIP’S WAR OR THE FIRST INDIAN WAR
John Easton: A Relacion of the Indyan Warre
• The Origins and Course of the War: January 1675–February 1676

John Easton to Josiah Winslow
• An Attempt to Protect Wampanoag Lands: May 1675

John Brown to Josiah Winslow
• Fears of an Indian Uprising: June 1675

Thomas Church and Benjamin Church: from Entertaining Passages Relating to Philip’s War (I)
• Preparing for Conflict: Kune 1675

Josiah Winslow to Weetamoo and Ben, June 15, 1675
• A Message to the Saunkskwa of Pocasset

Roger Williams to John Winthrop, Jr., June 25 and 27, 1675
• Meeting with Narragansett Leaders

John Freeman to Josiah Winslow, July 3, 1675
• The Wampanoag Attack on Taunton

Thomas Church and Benjamin Church: from Entertaining Passages Relating to Philip’s War (II)
• Campaigning Against the Wampanoag: Summer 1675

William Bradford to John Cotton
• Fighting in the Pocasset Swamp: July 1675

Testimony of Peter, George, and David
• Fleeing from the English: Summer 1675

Josiah Winslow and Thomas Hinckley: A Brief Narrative of the Beginning and Progress of the Present Trouble
• An Appeal to the United Colonies: September 1675

Statement by the Commissioners of the United Colonies
• The United Colonies Respond: September 1675

Roger Williams to John Leverett, October 11, 1675
• A Meeting with Canonchet

Examination and Relation of James Quananopohit
• A Christian Massachusett’s Spy Mission: January 1676

Mary Rowlandson: The Sovereignty and Goodness of God
• A Colonist’s Captivity: February–May 1676

Note attributed to James Printer
• A Nipmuc Warning to the Colonists: February 1676

Thomas Church and Benjamin Church: from Entertaining Passages Relating to Philip’s War (III)
• Hunting Metacom: August 1676

Edward Rawson to Josiah Winslow, August 28, 1676
• The War Continues

Petition of William Wannukhow, Joseph Wannukhow, and John Appamatahqeen
• A Plea for Mercy: September 1676

Record of a Court Martial Held at Newport
• Trying Narragansett Prisoners: August 1676

Deeds for Conquered Wampanoag Lands, 1676–1680

Moxus and Other Wabanaki Leaders to John Leverett
• War in the Wabanaki Homelands: July 1677

WAMPANOAG CONTINUANCE
William Apess: from Indian Nullification of the Unconstitutional Laws of Massachusetts
• The Struggle for Wampanoag Rights: 1835

William Apess: Eulogy on King Philip
• A Tribute to Metacom: 1836

Wamsutta Frank James: Speech at the First National Day of Mourning
• A Wampanoag Man’s Protest: 1970

Linda Coombs: The Audacity of Assumption
• A Native Perspective on Colonization: 2020

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