Istarted this book quite awhile ago… way back when we started school and had a three week review of the Pilgrims. I had every intention of reading a book a week, but life is too busy for that right now. I decided that I will keep up with “my” reading even if I’m decades behind what the kids are reading. In the last few years I’ve discovered that I really enjoy history!

The fine print at the bottom of the book cover says “A Story of Courage, Community, and War.” I figured a book with the title, Mayflower, would be about the Mayflower and it’s passengers. It started out that way with the Part 1 being 104 pages of “Discovery” with chapters including information on key players, the passage, the hard winter they endured, the geography, and Thanksgiving. The next two chapters were still somewhat about those first Pilgrims, but just under 1/2 the book is about the 2nd-3rd generation Pilgrims/Indians and King Philip’s War.

Part 2 is 17 pages of the “Accomodation” which included how the Pilgrims carved out their space. They made friendships with some of the Indians near them and learned to live together fairly peacefully.

Part 3 is 37 pages of “Community” which brought more settlers and frontiersmen who had no desire to be part of the “community.” It also began the trade of guns with the Indians in exchange for more furs. Land sales took place with misunderstandings on what the term “sell” really meant.

Part 4 is 116 pages of War. Just under 1/2 the book. For the most part, it was interesting to see how the second generation of Pilgrims and Indians quickly forgot the alliances of their fathers. Quite often I was lost in the details of the various tribes, wars, and movements of what is called King Philip’s War, but there were enough personal stories to keep my attention.

Overall, I’m glad I read the book because I have a much greater understanding of the early Pilgrim days. I hadn’t realized that slave trade was part of this time period with captured Indians being sent to the Caribbean sugar fields.

From the back cover: “It would be left fo their (first generation Pilgrims) children and grandchildren to discover the terrifying enormity of what is lost when two peoples give up on the difficult work of living together.”