Revisionist History - Bradford and the Pilgrims
by Dr. Del Tacket, The Truth Project
In his introduction to Governor William Bradford's Letter Book,1 John C. Kemp, Associate Director of Colonial Interpretation at Plymouth Plantation, rightly contends that this "little treasure trove of documents and letters to and from Plymouth Colony in the 1620s" – a collection of source material that Bradford himself never intended to publish – casts a valuable light on the story of New England's earliest settlement. Unfortunately, he obscures that light by twisting the significance of these documents to serve his own ends.
Kemp's thesis, stated broadly, is that Bradford himself was America's first writer of revisionist history. In the Letter Book, he tells us, we see the plain, unadorned facts of Plymouth's early history laid bare in such a way that we can no longer take seriously the "Calvinist vision" and "polemical Predestinarianism" that inform and animate Bradford's account of the same events in Of Plymouth Plantation. By studying these letters, he suggests, we may free ourselves at last from the "subtle power of the mythical Pilgrim" whose image has been foisted upon the American consciousness by Bradford and his uncritically patriotic interpreters. It's a remarkable argument – less for its cleverness than for the blatant violence it does to the obvious truth.
For example: Kemp says that pilgrims are conspicuously absent from the documents contained in Governor William Bradford's Letter Book. That's because the colonists who came over on the Mayflower never really considered themselves to be any such thing: "That part of the story, the idealizing of colonists into Pilgrims (Pilgrims with a capital 'P'), occurred in the late 18 th and 19 th centuries."2
Apparently forgetting that he is supposed to be talking about Bradford and his "17 th-century biases," Kemp informs us that America's "Pilgrim heritage" is largely the fabrication of men like John Quincy Adams and Daniel Webster. Webster, we learn, "did much to popularize the Pilgrim Fathers" as "uniformly hard-working, right-minded, freedom-loving proponents of the virtues upheld in Victorian Boston throughout the 19 th century and well into the 20 th." The problem is that "these are not the struggling, precariously disorganized, and contentious people we find in the Letter Book."3
One has to wonder whether Kemp has actually read Bradford's account of the founding of New England. The settlers described in Of Plymouth Plantation are certainly hard-working, right-minded, and pious. But they are not uniformly so. What's more, Bradford is brutally honest about portraying his fellow colonists precisely as a "struggling, disorganized, and contentious" lot. That's because he wants us to see "the infinite qualitative difference between the human and the divine." Of Plymouth Plantation, says Francis Murphy,
affirms the possibility of grace without losing sight of the fact that man is fallen, that he is both creature as well as creator, and that he depends utterly on God's help for salvation … It is part of Bradford's genius to show us dramatically the struggle of Puritan piety to survive in difficult circumstances, often caused by themselves, and to describe the complex motives that underlie all human action.4
That's not to mention that the Mayflower emigrants did in fact think of themselves as "pilgrims" in the best biblical sense of the word. As early as their sojourn in Leyden, the Scrooby Separatists were interpreting their difficult circumstances in terms of the language of Hebrews 11:13-16: "They knew they were pilgrims, and looked not much on those things, but lift up their eyes to the heavens, their dearest country, and quieted their spirits."5
In similarly skewed fashion, Kemp argues that Governor William Bradford's Letter Book makes it clear that the Plymouth colonists had little concern for the welfare of their Native American neighbors. Indians, like Pilgrims, are never mentioned in these documents, says Kemp. Why not?
It's a bad reason, a very meaningful omission. In fact, after all the lofty words about friendship and Christian love when the colony began, the colonists' lack of concern for their Pokanoket or Wampanoag neighbors just a few years later says a great deal about colonialism. Colonists don't like to think about the people they are colonizing.6
But how are we to reconcile this statement with Bradford's many expressions of indebtedness to Samoset, Hobomok, and Squanto? His heartfelt grief on the occasion of Squanto's death? Or his detailed descriptions of relations with Massasoit, the Wampanoag chief who kept his treaty with the Plymouth settlers for over forty years? Even when compelled to use force against openly hostile Native Americans, as in the case of Wituwamat and Pecksuot, Bradford always did so reluctantly, bearing in mind the words of his pastor, John Robinson, who had written from Leyden: "Oh! How happy a thing had it been, if you had converted some, before you had killed any!"7
The fact of the matter is that there is another reason – a very simple and straightforward reason – for the glaring "omissions" Kemp has noted. Most of the documents contained in Bradford's Letter Book are examples of business correspondence. They deal primarily with finances, accounts, inventories, and the profits the London Adventurers hoped to receive from Plymouth colony. It's not surprising that writings of this nature should have little to say about the spiritual idealism of "pilgrims" or the day-to-day challenges of maintaining relations with indigenous tribesmen.
What can have driven a responsible scholar like Mr. Kemp to promote such blatant misrepresentations of the facts? Lacking an explanation from his own pen, we are left to speculate. But given the spirit of the times in which we live, it seems reasonable to suppose that his motives might be similar to those of the school textbook writers who have seen fit to edit phrases like "In the name of God, Amen" out of the Mayflower Compact.
Like them, Kemp understands that the prize to the victors in the battle over history is power: power to control the present and shape the course of the future. This is the power of historical revisionism, fiddling with the past to control beliefs in the present.
1Governor William Bradford's Letter Book, Introduction by John C. Kemp ( Bedford, Massachusetts: Applewood Books, 2001), iii-x.
2 Ibid., iii.
3 Ibid., vii.
4 Francis Murphy, Introduction to William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, 1620-1647 (New York: Modern Library College Editions, 1981), xvii, xix.
5 William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, 50. "It was owing to this passage, first printed in 1669, that the Mayflower's company came eventually to be called the Pilgrim Fathers." (Samuel Eliot Morison, footnote 4.)
6 Kemp, iii.
7 Cited in Gary D. Schmidt, William Bradford: Plymouth's Faithful Pilgrim ( Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1999), 133.
