Pilgrim's Progress

Johnny cakes on a wood-fired griddle.

After landing at Plymouth in 1620 and surviving that first terrible winter, the Pilgrims set about repaying their debts.  While the voyage to the New World was undertaken to escape religious persecution, it was an expensive venture and required backing.  The congregation obtained funding from the Company of Merchant Adventurers of London, a for-profit group of overseas trading merchants. They fully expected a return on their investment.

Due to the hardships of the colony’s early years and some mismanagement, the rate of repayment was slow and the Merchant Adventurers pressed for redoubled efforts.  By 1625, the Pilgrims concluded that the fur trade would offer the most viable means to retire their debt.  They were able to obtain a charter from the King granting them rights on the Kennebec River in what is today the state of Maine.

So the Pilgrims built a shallop, a sailing vessel designed for coastal navigation, and set out for Merrymeeting Bay, 200 miles to the north, then up into the Kennebec River.  Twenty five miles upriver, at the head of the tide where current and tides mark the extreme of navigable water, they established a trading post at Cushnoc, the site of modern-day Augusta.

The indigenous tribe, the Abenaki, were anxious to trade.  They had abundant furs to offer in exchange for corn, of which the Pilgrims were producing a surplus, and other goods. As Governor Bradford put it, “not only with corn, but also with such other commodities as the fishermen had traded with them, as coats, shirts, rugs and blankets, biscuit, pease [sic], prunes, etc.”  In exchange for a shallop-load of corn sailed up the river, 700 pounds of beaver pelts came back down.  With beaver fur in great demand in London, the Pilgrims were able to satisfy their debts by 1636.

What industry, skill, and self-reliance.  Within several years of carving the Plymouth colony out of the wilderness, the Pilgrims were producing a surplus of corn in large quantities.  They downed timber, hewed planks, and built a sturdy coastal sailing vessel without power tools.  They sailed over 200 miles and established a mutually beneficial trading relationship with the Abenakis. They paid off their debts.

Today in Augusta, at the site of the Cushnoc trading post on the banks of the Kennebec, stands Old Fort Western.  The fort was built in 1754 to provide security and encourage settlement of the area.  It has been restored and operates as a living museum, with docents dressed in period clothing demonstrating daily activities such as cooking, gardening, soap making, quilting, and blacksmithy. 

One spunky, 80 year-old docent, dressed in a heavy ankle-length woolen dress, showed us how to make Johnny cakes on a wood fired griddle.  She explained that early cooks toasted bread over the coals using tongs, and how pleased they were to get the new-fangled toaster which held two slices of bread upright, facing the coals to be toasted.  And how the whole contraption could be flipped around to toast the other side… modern miracles!

She told us of a bright, inquisitive 8 year-old who she asked to participate by placing bread into the toaster.  He indicated that he didn’t know how.  “Just like your toaster at home,” she explained.  “I’m not allowed to touch the toaster at home,” he replied, embarrassed.  “It’s electric,” his mother clarified.

Our docent contrasted this to another young man who she asked to hang a pot of water from a hook over the coals.  He did so, handily, and she didn’t notice till later that he had a withered arm.  He had compensated with no fuss by using his forearm.

“Just which of these boys is truly handicapped?” she mused.

I think we know what the Pilgrims would say.