The Mayflower Pilgrims

Pilgrim. For a child growing up in America, the word Pilgrim had no religious connotations. Mainly heard in the plural, Pilgrims referred to a community of storm-defying. Black-clad English Puritans who crossed the Atlantic on the Mayflower, founding for the village of Plymouth on the edge of Massachusetts Bay in December 1620. It was not the destination the Pilgrims intended-their goal had been Virginia, but where a furious winter storm delivered them. Pilgrims that they were, they accepted this as God’s will.

The following fall the Pilgrims, with the local Indians who had helped…