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.

Giving thanks for the harvest

Pieter Bruegel the Elder. The Harvest. 1565.

Northwestern Pennsylvania is farm country, and we know about the harvest.

Quite a few years ago, my young classmates and I were enthralled by the story of the first Thanksgiving.  Plymouth, Massachusetts, seemed remote and exotic; we envisioned Plymouth Rock as an enormous, looming protuberance, much like the Rock of Gibraltar. It turns out that the rock is actually quite small, but it remains a stirring monument to the intense faith and hard labors of the Mayflower Pilgrims.

The colonists had originally intended to depart Europe in early 1620 to give them at least a partial growing season in the New World.  But that was not to be. After many delays and false starts, the Mayflower finally left Plymouth, England, on September 6.  Inclement weather, unfavorable winds, and turbulent seas extended the grueling journey to over three and a half months. Finally, on December 21, the first landing party came ashore at New Plymouth, and several days later the construction of a common house was begun. 

Winter is not the easiest time to establish a colony.  In the harsh, frozen land they hoped to claim, nearly half of the original 102 Mayflower passengers perished by spring.  Husbanding the meager provisions remaining on the Mayflower, hunting in the surrounding lands, and fishing the sea, fifty three of the colonists managed to survive.  Now the challenge was to clear land, plant crops, and pray for a favorable harvest.

It turns out that they were lucky, or blessed, or both.  The soil was rich, weather gentle, and crops grew vigorously.  The harvest was plentiful and, with salted cod, smoked venison, and other provisions stored in plentitude, the odds of surviving the coming winter appeared good.  The Pilgrims celebrated a harvest festival along with a band of Massasoits with whom they had a treaty of peace.  It is quaint to think so today, and perhaps even illegal in our public schools, but they gave deep, heartfelt thanks to God for their good fortune.

We have become very disconnected from the sources of our food.  By and large, unlike the Pilgrims, we don’t have personal involvement in planting and harvesting the food that we eat.  Potatoes grow in hills of soil and were harvested with flat-tined pitchforks in the fall.  Corn and pumpkins were planted together because the pumpkin plants smothered weeds and helped to retain moisture for the corn.  All this the Pilgrims knew; we know how to drive to the grocery store.

So this Thanksgiving, while we are giving thanks for the Black Friday shopping binge to come, please give a thought to our blessings, the hard working farmers who labor for us, their bountiful harvest, and how very fortunate we are.