Even by typical August standards of heat and humidity, last August in Massachusetts was unbearable. And yet, early August was the only time when my work schedule, the kids’ school schedule and United Airlines’ available frequent-flier flights aligned.
It was tolerable on the Plymouth waterfront, but just a few miles inland, the shore breeze had disappeared. We were standing on the dirt floor of a one-room wooden house, watching a woman in a floor-length dress stirring fish stew in an iron pot over a smoky fire. Welcome to Plimoth Plantation, where it is 1627 all the time.
“Aren’t you hot in that heavy dress?” someone asked.
“Oh, no, mistress,” she said in the cadence of Jacobean Eng-
land. Her heavy wool overskirt was best for working before the fire, she explained, because wool catches fire slowly. If a spark should land on her dress, she could beat it out before it burned up.
Plimoth Plantation is full of moments like that. In about 20 thatched-roof houses, the everyday life of 17th-century emigrants goes on. They build houses, make furniture, chase children, pick fruit. Another area, Hobbamock’s Wampanoag Homesite, shows a native family’s settlement as it would have been in that era. There’s also a livestock barn and a crafts center, where a potter throws on the wheel, a textile artist spins and weaves, carpenters make furniture and a basketmaker bends willow.
About their business
Plantation historians picked 1627 because it was the year that the colonists completed their obligation to the “merchant adventurers” who had paid for their voyage and supplies. They prepared to divide the colony among themselves by drawing up documents that listed all the residents of Plymouth at that time.
The English colonist interpreters, played by actors and historians, aren’t there to lecture. They go about their business, cooking, building and hoeing, until someone speaks to them.
“Do you miss having money?” someone asked a man in red breeches who was building a four-legged stool in the back yard of his little house, where onions and herbs were growing.
“I’ve been thinking about that,” he said, sitting down and wiping the sweat. “Money’s no good to us. You can’t eat it … We’re a small group here. If the man across the road needs help with his roof and I oblige him, then he owes me half a day.”
Someone asked what he did in England. “I was a cooper by trade,” he said. A barrel maker, in other words.
Later that day, at the Mayflower II, my daughter sat at the bare feet of a gray-bearded sailor who talked about bringing across the people we call Pilgrims. The crew had no interest in staying in the New World; they were more interested in making their way back to Eng-
land and setting out on the next voyage with a load of cargo or passengers. He knew of only one exception: John Alden, the ship’s cooper, who had been taken on at Southampton and opted to stay with the Separatists in Massachusetts.
A light bulb went on. I had been talking to John Alden! The John Alden, the one who went courting Priscilla Mullins in the place of Capt. Myles Standish, a story every New England schoolkid knows. (According to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Priscilla said, “Prithee John, why do you not speak for yourself?” and the Mullins-Alden union eventually produced 11 children.)
Shocking talk
Spend some time in the sweat and dust with these 17th-century people and many of your notions of the sainted Pilgrims will go right out the window – or rather, the voids in the log houses covered with oiled paper to let in a tiny bit of light. These people worked hard to reproduce their English way of life in an alien place. Half their number died that first winter. Their talk of “improving the heathen” and being the “elect” who alone were entitled to God’s grace is historically accurate but shocking to the modern ear.
In the Wampanoag village, native folks in traditional deerskins cook, build canoes, scrape hides and play with their children. They will gladly talk about the history and customs of the Wampanoag people, both before the English colonists arrived and after. But they’re not roleplaying, and they don’t like to be asked whether they’re “real Indians” (they are) or “how much blood” they have (none of your business). The visitors’ guide counsels not to approach these staff members with “How” or ask them where their squaws are. As they worked on the dugout canoe, the main topic of conversation among the men in this August afternoon appeared to be Patriots training camp.
Anachronisms were many. “Ah, those are Spanish lands,” a Pilgrim man told someone from California. The Pilgrim couple were having lunch, a mishmash of what looked like cooked chicken and green beans. The man heaped food on the blade of his knife. His wife spoke with a Dutch accent; the Separatists lived in the Netherlands for 11 years before deciding to make their way to the New World. A Bible was open on the table.
We could have spent a lot more time exploring the villages, but it was just too hot. The Mayflower II, down on the water, was far more pleasant.
You have to think a bit harder to visualize life aboard the Mayflower on its 65-day voyage from the west of England to Massachusetts. Below decks, hard bunks are curtained off to show the size of living space. But they can’t imitate the conditions they endured, nor the smell of more than 102 people, plus dogs, goats, pigs and chickens who spent months at sea.
Still, it made an impression on the children, who took these visitors from the past very, very seriously. Sara and Bradley, both 10, listened respectfully and asked questions the adults would not have dreamed of. “Do you like what you’re cooking?” Sara asked.
Living history museums have a way of opening up the past that no video tour or four-color guidebook can match. We visit them in the name of teaching my kids history, but the truth is, the adults like them too.
Lisa Everitt is a freelance writer who lives in Arvada.
The details
Plimoth Plantation, 3 miles south of downtown Plymouth, is open March 25 through Nov. 26 from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. The Mayflower II, on the Plymouth waterfront, is open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Combination tickets that cover both locations (two days at the plantation and a third day at the Mayflower) are $24 for adults, $14 for children (ages 6-12), $21 for senior citizens 62 and over with ID. Children 5 and under are free. Visit plimoth.org.
