The Racist Mythology about the Pilgrims

For many Americans, Thanksgiving is a beloved national holiday. It’s a time when people get together with their extended families to have a large feast and talk about what they are thankful for. I don’t think there is anything inherently wrong with people doing this; on the contrary, I think it can be good for families to get together and celebrate (maybe not this year, but generally speaking).

Unfortunately, the holiday of Thanksgiving as we know it today is inextricably entwined with a false mythology rooted in white supremacist thinking. The holiday continues to be abused by right-wing politicians to promote a very narrow and exclusivist vision of what sort of nation the United States is supposed to be. In this article, therefore, I want to debunk some false narratives about the Pilgrims and explain how these narratives are harmful.

Introducing Tom Cotton’s speech

On 18 November 2020, Tom Cotton, a Republican currently serving as junior United States Senator from Arkansas, gave a speech in which he passionately urged all “true Americans” to celebrate the Pilgrims and honor them as the true “founders” of our country. On account of this speech, conservatives have praised Cotton for supposedly “defending history” against members of the so-called “radical left.” The comments section for the YouTube video of his speech is full of comments like these:

• “Thank you Senator for speaking the truth of the Pilgrims and doing your part to protect our history from the lying anti-American haters on the left. The far left must be defeated.”
• “Senator Cotton, thank you! Good speech! God bless America!”
• “Thank you for your commitment to REAL HISTORY and not the revisionist garbage peddled by left-wing propagandists.”

In truth, Cotton’s speech was not a defense of history at all, but rather a perpetuation of dangerous myths, misconceptions, and half-truths. I think it is worth picking apart his speech in depth, not only because it provides an excellent opportunity for me to debunk some popular misconceptions about the Pilgrims and the so-called “First Thanksgiving,” but also because it provides an excellent window into the way that many contemporary white American conservatives seem to think.

ABOVE: Screenshot of Republican Senator Tom Cotton giving his speech on 18 November 2020 about how all “true Americans” must honor and glorify the Pilgrims as “American founders”

The Pilgrims as “our first founders”?

Cotton’s speech begins with the following words:

“A great American anniversary is upon us. Four hundred years ago this Saturday, a battered old ship called the Mayflower arrived in the waters off Cape Cod. The passengers aboard the Mayflower are, in many ways, our first founders. Daniel Webster called them our ‘Pilgrim Fathers’ on the two hundredth anniversary of this occasion.”

“Regrettably, we haven’t heard much about this anniversary of the Mayflower. I suppose the Pilgrims have fallen out of favor in fashionable circles these days. I therefore would like to take a few minutes to reflect on the Pilgrims’ story and its living legacy for our nation.”

There is no sense in which the Pilgrims can legitimately be considered “our first founders.” As I discuss in this article I published a few days ago, there were tons of people already living in the land that would later become the United States long before the Pilgrims ever showed up.

For one thing, Native people had been living in North America for well over ten thousand years before any Europeans showed up on their shores. Many of them practiced agriculture. They established complex political entities, like the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. They even built great cities like Cahokia.

ABOVE: Image from Wikimedia Commons of a modern artist’s recreation of what the city of Cahokia would have looked like at its height in the twelfth century CE

The first Europeans to settle in North America were the Norse, who established a short-lived colony at L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland in around 1000 CE. The first Europeans to settle in what is now the continental United States were the Spanish, who established colonies in New Mexico and Florida in the early sixteenth century. The oldest continuously inhabited settlement in the continental United States founded by Europeans is the city of St. Augustine, Florida, which was founded by a group of Spanish colonists under Pedro Menéndez de Avilés in 1565.

The Spanish colonists also brought the first enslaved Black people to North America. By 1602, there were already fifty-six enslaved Black people living in the city of St. Augustine. The first Asian people to settle in North America also came around this time; on 17 October 1587, a group of Filipinos from the city of Manila—known as “Luzonians”—arrived in Morro Bay in what is now California on board the Spanish galleon Nuestra Señora de Buena Esperanza.

The Pilgrims weren’t even the first English settlers to arrive in what is now the United States. The first attempt by the English to colonize North America was the Roanoke Island Colony, which was first established in 1585, reestablished in 1587, and finally abandoned sometime between 1587 and 1590. The first successful English settlement in North America was Jamestown, which was founded in 1607. Once Jamestown began to economically flourish in the 1610s (thanks in large part to the tobacco farming industry that grew up there), the English quickly began establishing more settlements around it.

By the time the Pilgrims arrived in Massachusetts in 1620, the English already had a substantial colonial foothold in North America. The only reason why anyone ever talks about the Pilgrims as “founders” of the United States is because they superficially seem to reflect the particular image of the United States that white Anglo-American Protestant conservatives want to promote. These people want to promote the idea that the United States is fundamentally a white nation founded by people of English descent on the basis of Protestant religious teachings.

ABOVE: Illustration from 1876 showing how the artist imagined it might have looked when John White returned to Roanoke to find that the colony had been abandoned

Why the Pilgrims really left Leiden

In any case, Tom Cotton’s speech continues:

“By 1620, the Pilgrims were already practiced at living in a strange land. They had fled England for Holland twelve years earlier, seeking freedom to practice their faith. But life was hard in Holland and the Stuart monarchy, intolerant of dissent from the Church of England, gradually extended its oppressive reach across the channel.”

It’s true that the Pilgrims settled in the city of Leiden in South Holland for about twelve years before moving to North America. It is not, however, true that the Pilgrims were religiously oppressed in Holland or that the Stuart monarchy was “extending its oppressive reach across the channel” specifically to terrorize them.

In fact, we actually know the exact reasons why the Pilgrims leaders chose to leave Holland and travel to North America, because William Bradford, the leader of Plymouth Colony, describes the reasons why the Pilgrims chose to leave Holland in great detail in his journal Of Plymouth Plantation, book one, chapter one.

Bradford says nothing about the Pilgrims living in fear of the Stuart monarchy. Instead, the first reason he gives for their decision to relocate is that the only jobs available to the Pilgrims in Holland were ones involving hard, manual labor. He says that the Pilgrims honored hard work, but the jobs they were working had a severe deleterious effect on their healths and they wanted to move someplace where such work would not be necessary.

The second reason Bradford gives (and I am not making this up) is that the Pilgrims were afraid that their children would be seduced by the immoral ways of Dutch teenagers and they believed that the only way to prevent their children from becoming morally corrupted was to move far away. He writes:

“But that which was more lamentable, and of all sorowes most heavie to be borne, was that many of their children, by these occasions, and ye great licentiousnes of youth in yt countrie, and y e manifold temptations of the place, were drawne away by evill examples into extravagante & dangerous courses, getting ye raines off their neks, & departing from their parents. Some became souldiers, others tooke upon them farr viages by sea, and other some worse courses, tending to dissolutnes & the danger of their soules, to y e great greefe of their parents and dishonour of God. So that they saw their posteritie would be in danger to degenerate & be corrupted.”

The third and final reason Bradford gives is that the Pilgrims eagerly wanted to convert as many of the Native peoples of the Americas as possible to Separatist Protestantism. He writes:

“Lastly, (and which was not least,) a great hope & inward zeall they had of laying some good foundation, or at least to make some way therunto, for ye propagating & advancing ye gospell of ye kingdom of Christ in those remote parts of ye world; yea, though they should be but even as stepping-stones unto others for ye performing of so great a work.”

In other words, the Pilgrims’ decision to leave Holland and come to North America had very little to do with them wanting to escape religious persecution and a lot more to do with them wanting better economic opportunities, them being afraid that Dutch teenagers would corrupt their children, and them wanting to convert Native people to Separatist Protestantism.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a street in the city of Leiden taken in 2012. This is the city where the Pilgrims lived for twelve years before coming to North America.

Ways the Pilgrims supposedly differ from earlier settlers

Tom Cotton’s speech continues:

“So the Pilgrims fled the Old World for the New. In seeking safe harbor for their religion, the Pilgrims differed from those settlers who preceded them in the previous century—up to and including the Jamestown settlement just thirteen years earlier. As John Quincy Adams put it in a speech celebrating the Pilgrims’ anniversary: ‘Those earlier settlers were all instigated by personal interests—motivated by avarice and ambition and selfish passions. The Pilgrims, by contrast, braved the seas under the single inspiration of conscience and out of a sense of religious obligation.’”

It should be abundantly clear from the passages I have quoted in the previous section that everything Cotton says here is made-up nonsense and that the Pilgrims really weren’t much different from the earlier European colonists who settled in North America before them at all.

Of the three reasons for the Pilgrims’ decision to travel to North America that I have quoted from William Bradford, the first two (i.e., the Pilgrims’ desire for better economic opportunities and their desire to prevent their children from being corrupted by the immoral ways of Dutch teenagers) are inarguably self-centered.

Only the third and final reason stated by Bradford (i.e., the Pilgrims’ desire to convert Native people to Separatist Protestantism) is even arguably unselfish. Nonetheless, this is only a good motivation if you genuinely believe that Separatist Protestantism is the One True Religion and that anyone who is not a Separatist Protestant is doomed to burn in the fires of Hell for all of eternity. If you don’t believe this, then the Pilgrims’ desire to convert Native people to Separatist Protestantism is, at best, misguided.

ABOVE: Illustration from the 1910s showing how the artist imagined the Mayflower at sea might have looked

The Pilgrims’ voyage across the Atlantic

Cotton continues:

“Not to say that all aboard the Mayflower felt the same. About half of the 102 passengers were known as ‘strangers’ to the Pilgrims. The ‘strangers’ were traders, craftsmen, indentured servants, and others added to the manifest by the ship’s financial backers for business reasons. The ‘strangers’ did not share the Pilgrims’ faith, suffice it to say. Winston Churchill, in his History of the English-Speaking Peoples, wryly observed that the ‘strangers’ were ‘no picked band of saints.’”

“So these were the passengers who boarded the Mayflower, which Dwight Eisenhower once characterized as ‘a ship that today no one in his senses would think of attempting to use.’ One can only imagine the hardships, the dangers, the doubts that they faced while crossing the North Atlantic.”

“The ship leaked chronically, a main beam bowed and cracked, the passage took longer than expected—more than two months. Food and water—or beer, often the beverage of choice—ran dangerously low. But, somehow, through the grace of God and the skill of the crew, the Mayflower finally sighted land.”

Cotton is correct that crossing the Atlantic Ocean in early modern times was difficult and dangerous. It’s really interesting, though, how people like Cotton choose to focus on the hardships the Pilgrims faced crossing the sea while ignoring the fact that, compared to many other people crossing the Atlantic in early modern times, the Pilgrims actually had it quite easy.

Enslaved Black people purchased by European slave merchants from traders in West Africa were shipped across the Atlantic as cargo—packed together like spoons and chained to the hold. They were horribly abused and underfed. Many of them did not survive the voyage. Those who did survive were forced to undergo a period of “seasoning” before being promptly sold into slavery. Compared to what these people must have experienced, the Pilgrims’ voyage across the Atlantic was a mere breeze.

ABOVE: Illustration from 1788 showing how enslaved Black people were stored in the cargo hold of the British slave ship Brookes

The Pilgrims’ arrival in Massachusetts

Cotton continues:

“Yet the dangers only multiplied. William Bradford, a Pilgrim leader, whose Of Plymouth Plantation is our chief source for the Pilgrims’ story, recorded those dangers. They had now no friends to welcome them, nor ends to entertain or refresh their weather-beaten bodies, no houses or much less town to repair to seek for succor. And, for the season, it was winter, and they that know the winters of that country know them to be sharp and violent and subject to cruel and fierce storms, dangerous to travel to known places, much more to search an unknown coast. Besides, what could they see but a hideous and desolate wilderness?”

It’s true that the Pilgrims perceived North America as what Cotton calls “a hideous and desolate wilderness,” but they only perceived it this way because they were expecting to find such a wilderness.

In truth, at the time of the Pilgrims’ arrival, Massachusetts was home to thousands of Native people, belonging to at least a half dozen different tribes, including Mahican people, the Massachusett people, the Nauset people, the Nipmuc people, the Pennacook people, the Pocomtuc people, and the Wampanoag people.

A large part of the reason why it was possible for the Pilgrims to continue perceiving North America as a vast and empty wilderness even after they arrived in Massachusetts is because most of the Native American population of New England had recently been wiped out by diseases introduced by European settlers. Entire tribes and villages had been totally annihilated. Even for the tribes who survived, things were still extremely bleak; for many of these tribes, European diseases had already wiped out somewhere between half and two thirds of their populations.

New England at the time of the Pilgrims’ arrival wasn’t a “desolate wilderness” devoid of inhabitants, but rather more like a post-apocalyptic world. There were ruined villages everywhere and thousands of survivors struggling to continue their existence in the face of overwhelming death and devastation.

ABOVE: Illustration of how some Native people from New England in the early seventeenth century might have dressed during some parts of the year, created by the French cartographer and ethnologist Samuel de Champlain (lived 1567 – 1635)

The Pilgrims in the wrong land?

Cotton continues his speech:

“And, to those physical dangers, you can add legal and political danger. While the Mayflower had found land, it was the wrong land! For, you see, the Pilgrims’ patent extended to Virginia—but Cape Cod was hundreds of miles to the north.”

The popular story that Cotton repeats here about the Pilgrims supposedly settling in New England by accident when they were really supposed to settle in what is now the state of Virginia is not entirely accurate. It seems to originate from a misreading of a statement made by William Bradford in Of Plymouth Plantation, book one, chapter six. Bradford writes:

“Aboute this time also they had heard, both by Mr. Weston and others, yt sundrie Honbl: Lords had obtained a large grante from ye king, for ye more northerly parts of that countrie, derived out of ye Virginia patente, and wholy secluded from their Govermente, and to be called by another name, viz. New-England. Unto which Mr. Weston, and ye cheefe of them, begane to incline it was best for them to goe, as for other reasons, so cheefly for ye hope of present profite to be made by ye fishing that was found in yt countrie.”

Some people have misinterpreted Bradford’s remark about “ye Virginia patente” to mean that the Pilgrims were originally supposed to settle in what is now the state of Virginia. The first problem with this interpretation is that, at the time Bradford is speaking of, the name “Virginia” applied to all territories claimed by England along the North American coast south of Long Island. This naturally included much greater territory than just the modern-day state of Virginia.

The second problem is that Bradford only says that the Pilgrims’ charter was “derived out of ye Virginia patente.” This means that the Pilgrims’ charter was an extension of the Virginia charter, not that the Pilgrims were supposed to settle in the part of Virginia that was already being settled. In fact, Bradford explicitly tells us that the Pilgrims’ charter was “for ye more northerly parts of that countrie” (i.e., lands in North America north of what is now Virginia) and that the Pilgrims’ colony was to be “wholy secluded from” the Virginia government and “called by another name, viz. New-England.”

The Pilgrims do indeed seem to have settled further north than they were supposed to according to their patent. The land where they had permission to settle, however, was not the modern-day state of Virginia, but rather the general vicinity of what is now northern New Jersey and southern New York. In other words, they were a little bit further north than they were supposed to be—but not nearly as far as is often claimed.

ABOVE: Map of Virginia by John Smith, published in 1612

The Mayflower Compact

Cotton goes on to speak at great length about the so-called “Mayflower Compact,” saying:

“According to Bradford, some of the ‘strangers’—perhaps hoping to strike out on their own in search of riches—began to make ‘discontented and mutinous speeches.’ These strangers asserted ‘that, when they came ashore, they would use their own liberty; for none had the power to command them’ in New England.”

“Maybe they had a point, but ‘stranger’ and Pilgrim alike had a problem: They couldn’t survive the desolate wilderness alone. Before landfall, then, they mutually worked out their differences and formed what Bradford modestly called ‘combination.’ This ‘combination’ is known to us in history, of course, as the Mayflower Compact.”

“But this little compact—fewer than two hundred words—was no mere ‘combination.’ [laughs slightly] It was America’s very first constitution—indeed, in Calvin Coolidge’s words, ‘the first constitution of modern times’! Likewise, Churchill called the Mayflower Compact ‘one of the more remarkable documents in history, a spontaneous covenant for political organization.’ High praise coming from him!”

This is all ridiculous.

The significance of the Mayflower Compact has been wildly, absurdly exaggerated beyond all semblance of scope and proportion. It was not a “constitution” in any sense. It was literally just an agreement between the forty-one adult men who signed it saying that they would organize themselves into a “civic body politic” of some sort and that they would establish “such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions and offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the Colony.”

The compact doesn’t describe how this “civic body politic” will operate, nor does it specify what sorts of laws it will have other than that they will be “just and equal” (whatever that means) and that people will have to obey them. If you don’t believe me, here is the full text of the Mayflower Compact as it has been passed down to us:

“In the name of God, Amen. We whose names are under-written, the loyal subjects of our dread sovereign Lord, King James, by the grace of God, of Great Britain, France, and Ireland King, Defender of the Faith, etc. Having undertaken, for the glory of God, and advancement of the Christian faith, and honor of our King and Country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the northern parts of Virginia, do by these presents solemnly and mutually, in the presence of God, and one of another, covenant and combine our selves together into a civil body politic, for our better ordering and preservation and furtherance of the ends aforesaid; and by virtue hereof to enact, constitute, and frame such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions and offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the Colony, unto which we promise all due submission and obedience. In witness whereof we have hereunder subscribed our names at Cape Cod, the eleventh of November, in the year of the reign of our sovereign lord, King James, of England, France, and Ireland, the eighteenth, and of Scotland the fifty-fourth. Anno Dom. 1620.”

That’s it. That’s literally all the compact says. If this was supposed to be some sort of “constitution,” it was clearly a very inadequate one.

As far as American history is concerned, the Mayflower Compact is actually significantly less important than the 1620 Charter of New England, which was issued by King James VI and I of Scotland and England on 3 November 1620—eight days before the signing of the Mayflower Compact. This charter is significant because it laid out the principles of colonial self-rule much more explicitly than the earlier Virginia Charter of 1606.

ABOVE: The Signing of the Mayflower Compact, painted in 1899 by the American painter Jean Leon Gerome Ferris

Tom Cotton’s amazing ability to interpret anything as the Declaration of Independence

Let’s look at how Tom Cotton tries to spin the Mayflower Compact as some kind of seventeenth-century Declaration of Independence. Cotton says:

“So it’s worth reflecting a little more on a few points about the compact. First, while the Pilgrims affirmed their allegiance to England and the monarchy, they left little doubt about their priorities. The compact begins with their traditional religious invocation: ‘In the name of God, Amen.’ They expressed the ends of their arduous voyage, in order: ‘the glory of God,’ the ‘advancement of the Christian faith,’ and only then the ‘honor of our King and Country.’”

Cotton would have to be extremely desperate to interpret this as any kind of radical political statement—or, indeed, any kind of political statement at all. For English people living in the seventeenth century, there was no inherent conflict between loyalty to God and loyalty to the English monarch because, from their perspective, God commanded loyalty to the monarch. In fact, the Mayflower Compact itself explicitly refers to King James VI and I as king of Great Britain “by the grace of God”—thereby affirming on no uncertain terms that the king possessed the divinely ordained right to rule over all his subjects.

Virtually every seventeenth-century English legal document begins with some kind of religious invocation, so there is nothing even remotely unusual about the fact that the Mayflower Compact begins with the words “In the name of God, Amen.” Likewise, there’s nothing even remotely surprising or unusual about the Pilgrims putting “the glory of God” and the “advancement of the Christian faith” ahead of “honor of our King and Country.” Indeed, quite frankly, it would have probably been seen as sacrilegious for them to have done otherwise.

ABOVE: Official court portrait painted in around 1605 by John de Critz depicting King James VI and I of Scotland and England, the king whose divine right to rule is explicitly affirmed in the Mayflower Compact

Alas, Cotton only tries even harder to portray the Mayflower Compact as a precursor to the Declaration of Independence, saying:

“And much like the Founding Fathers’ famous pledge to each other before Divine Providence one hundred fifty-six years later, the Pilgrims covenanted with each other, solemnly and mutually in the presence of God.”

Once again, there’s nothing surprising or unusual here. When you’re trying to establish a new colony together, it only makes sense to make some kind of “covenant” saying that you’re going to be working together.

Cotton continues:

“Second, they respected each other as free and equal citizens; whether Pilgrim or stranger, the signatories covenanted together to form a government—irrespective of faith or station.”

It makes no sense to interpret the Mayflower Compact as an expression of American egalitarianism. To the extent that the compact is egalitarian, it is banal; all the men who signed it were white Englishmen of similar station, so it makes sense that they would treat each other as equals.

Moreover, Cotton is keen to overlook the ways in which the Mayflower Compact is, in fact, a very unegalitarian document. Noticeably, Cotton totally overlooks the fact that, even though women made up a substantial portion of the Mayflower’s crew, only men were allowed to sign the compact. Thus, instead of all the men and women signing the compact on their own behalves, the men signed the compact on behalf of not only themselves, but also their wives and daughters.

The Pilgrims clearly did not see women as “free and equal citizens.” Of course, the men who signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776 didn’t see women as “free and equal citizens” either, but that’s a subject for another time.

Cotton continues:

“Third, and related, that government would be self-government, based on the consent of the governed. The Pilgrims did not appoint a patriarch; they formed a ‘civil body politic’ based on ‘just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions, and offices.’ And, immediately after signing the compact, they conducted a democratic election to choose their first governor.”

The 1620 Charter of New England—the one issued by King James VI and I eight days before the Mayflower Compact was signed—explicitly granted the New England colonists the right to govern themselves and to make their own laws, as long as those laws did not conflict with the laws of England. Since the colonists had explicit legal permission from the Crown to govern themselves, it only makes sense that they would choose to do so. This wasn’t a radical decision on the part of the colonists in any way.

Similarly, in the seventeenth century, there was nothing even remotely radical about the idea that laws should be just and that they should apply to and benefit everyone. On the contrary, this idea was fundamental to the legal traditions of most ancient Greek city-states, to Roman civil law, to English common law, and, indeed, to most other legal systems around the world.

It wasn’t radical for the Pilgrims to have an elected governor either. After all, back home in England, holders of municipal offices were generally elected. (For instance, William Shakespeare’s father John Shakespeare is recorded to have held multiple municipal elected offices in Stratford-upon-Avon, the first of which being a position as the town’s official ale-taster, to which he was elected in 1556.)

On account of the longstanding tradition of municipal elections back home, it only made sense for the English colonists to elect officials in their new colonies as well. The Pilgrims were not the first to do this; the Jamestown settlement had a governing council with an elected president. The first president of this governing council was Edward Maria Wingfield, who was elected on 13 May 1607 to a one-year term as president—thirteen years before the Pilgrims even set sail.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the house of John Shakespeare in Stratford-upon-Avon. John was elected to several municipal offices throughout his life, including to the position of official town ale-taster in 1556.

Even after all this, Cotton still can’t stop himself from making his attempts to portray the Mayflower Compact as a unique document prefiguring the Declaration of Independence even more humiliatingly ridiculous:

“Fourth, again prefiguring the Declaration, the Pilgrims not surrender all rights to that government; they promised ‘all due submission and obedience’ to the new government. Not total, or unquestioning, or permanent ‘submission and obedience’! That obedience would presumably be ‘due’ as long as the laws remain ‘just and equal’ and the officers appointed perform their duties in a ‘just and equal’ manner.”

At this point, Cotton sounds like a middle schooler who clearly doesn’t understand the reading assignment doing his best to BS his way through the oral report. He is desperately trying to find Enlightenment principles in the Mayflower Compact that quite simply are not there.

The Mayflower Compact says nothing whatsoever about the people having a right to overthrow the government if it isn’t working for them or the people having a right to disobey the government’s ordinances if they think those ordinances are unreasonable. All it says is that the forty-one men who signed the compact (and their respective families) pledge to obey the laws and ordinances of the colony as is appropriate. That’s it. The compact very clearly was not written by John Locke.

ABOVE: Portrait of the English philosopher John Locke (lived 1632 – 1704), who famously theorized that the people have a right to overthrow the government if the government is unjust

Cotton goes on to speak about what he evidently considers to be the most important American ideal prefigured in the Mayflower Compact:

“Finally, even in that moment of great privation and peril, the Pilgrims turned their eyes upwards to the higher, nobler ends of political society. They listed their ‘preservation’ as an objective of the new government, but even before that came ‘our better ordering.’ The Pilgrims understood that liberty, prosperity, faith, and flourishing are only possible with order and that, while safety may be the first responsibility of government, it is not the highest, or ultimate purpose of government. This new government would do more than merely protect the settlers or resolve their disputes; it would aim for the general good of the colony.”

These remarks about “order” supposedly being more important than the safety of the people reveal so much about Tom Cotton’s whole political philosophy. Cotton’s ideal government is evidently more concerned with imposing “order” than with helping real, individual people to live quality lives.

Given the current political context, it is rather difficult for me to avoid interpreting Cotton’s remarks as a commentary on how he thinks the government should handle Black Lives Matter protesters. A man who believes that imposing “order” is the “highest” and “ultimate” purpose of government is not the sort of man who is likely to have a problem with law enforcement agents brutally assaulting protesters with tear gas, rubber bullets, and clubs.

ABOVE: Photograph of armored police officers using tear gas against protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin

The Pilgrims… or perhaps an ancient Roman herb cheese spread?

Cotton concludes what can be charitably described as his “analysis” of the Mayflower Compact with these words:

“There aboard that rickety old ship, tossed about in the cold New England waters, the Pilgrims foreshadowed in fewer than two hundred words so many cherished concepts of our nation: faith in God and his Providential protection, the natural equality of mankind, ‘From many one,’ government by consent, the rule of law, equality before the law, and the impartial administration of the law.”

All of the ideas listed here by Cotton are either not found in the Mayflower Compact at all in any form or, if they are found in it, they were already widespread long before the compact was ever drawn up. (For instance, the ideas of “faith in God” and “the rule of law” are certainly present in the Mayflower Compact, but the Pilgrims sure as Hell didn’t invent these ideas.)

In a particularly egregious example, despite what Cotton claims, the Mayflower Compact does not contain any reference whatsoever to the phrase “From many, one.” This phrase actually originates from line 104 the ancient Latin poem “Moretum.” The poem is included in the Appendix Vergiliana and was attributed in ancient times to the poet Vergil (lived 70 – 19 BCE), although this attribution is now generally believed to be spurious.

Ironically, in the poem, the phrase is not used in a political context at all, but rather is used to describe the blending of different colors in the process of making moretum, a kind of ancient Roman herb cheese spread similar to pesto. Lines 103–104 of the poem in Latin read as follows:

“It manus in gyrum; paullatim singula vires
deperdunt proprias; color est e pluribus unus.”

This means, in English:

“It goes in a circular motion with the hand; little by little the separate powers
destroy the parts; the color is, from many, one.”

It is therefore not entirely ridiculous to argue that the United States government has been influenced to a greater extent by an ancient Roman sauce made of herbs and cheese than by the Mayflower Compact.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of moretum, an ancient Roman herb cheese spread. It is from a Latin description of the making of this dish that we get the phrase “E pluribus unum.”

More distortions and misleading statements from Cotton

Finally, Cotton moves on from fanboying over the Mayflower Compact and resumes his earlier strategy of simply fanboying over the Pilgrims in general:

“Little wonder, therefore, that Adams referred to the Mayflower Compact and the Pilgrims’ arrival as ‘the birthday of your nation.’ Or that Webster, despite all the settlements preceding Plymouth, said: ‘The first scene of our history was laid there.’”

Cotton has loaded his speech with so many overzealous quotations that I now feel the need to remind him that just because a famous person said something doesn’t necessarily make it true. Listing off quotations from people who weren’t even alive at the time Cotton is talking about doesn’t do his claims any good.

Moving on:

“But that history was only just beginning! The Pilgrims still had to conquer the desolate wilderness and establish their settlement.”

As I noted earlier, Massachusetts before the Pilgrims’ arrival was not a “desolate wilderness”; it was home to thousands of Indigenous people. In fact, it’s seldom mentioned that the Pilgrims actually founded the Plymouth settlement on the site of a Wampanoag town called Patuxet. Nearly all the inhabitants of the town had died of diseases that had been introduced by European settlers. As such, the town was completely abandoned, allowing the Pilgrims to come in and take over.

Ignoring this, Cotton declares:

“Considering the challenges, it’s a wonder that they did. As Coolidge observed, though, the compact was not the most wonderful thing about the Mayflower. The most wonderful of all was that those who drew it up had the power, the determination, and the strength of character to live up to it from that day.”

It wasn’t hard for them to “live up to” the compact considering that it was, as I have mentioned, literally just an agreement that they would create some kind of “civic body politic” with laws and such. The bar was so low that pretty much the only way they could have failed to step over it would have been if they had just declared anarchy and run around shooting each other.

Cotton continues:

“They would need all that and more to survive what has been called the ‘Starving Time.’ Upon landfall, the Pilgrims fell upon their knees and blessed the God of Heaven, who had brought them over the vast and furious ocean. But it would be a sad and lamentable winter of disease, starvation and death, as half the settlers died and seldom more than half a dozen had the strength to care for the ill, provide food and shelter, and protect the camp.”

“As anyone who has endured a New England winter knows, at that rate, there might not have been any camp left to protect by spring. But what can only be seen as a Providential moment came in March when a lone Indian walked boldly into their camp and greeted them in English! His name was Samoset. He had learned some broken English by working with English fishermen off the waters of what is now Maine.”

The use of the word “Indian” in reference to Native American people is inaccurate and outdated. It’s also confusing, since there’s literally a nation-state in southern Asia called “India” whose inhabitants are known as “Indians.” The easiest way to reduce confusion is by simply referring to Native Americans by their proper name.

Moreover, since Native people generally identify first and foremost with their particular tribe, rather than with the generic label of “Native person,” it is usually best practice to identify a Native person by their tribe if their tribe is known. In the case of Samoset, we do happen to know that he was a member of the Abenaki tribe.

ABOVE: Illustration from 1853 showing how the artist imagined the first encounter between the Pilgrims and Samoset might have looked

Distortions and omissions about Tisquantum’s backstory

Cotton goes on:

“Samoset and the Pilgrims exchanged gifts and he promised to return with another Indian, Squanto, who spoke fluent English. Squanto’s tribe had been wiped out a few years earlier by an epidemic plague. He now lived among the Wampanoag tribe in what is today southeastern Massachusetts.”

Everything Cotton says here is technically correct, but there is a whole lot of important information that he is clearly deliberately leaving out. First of all, the real name of the man Cotton calls “Squanto” was actually Tisquantum. “Squanto” seems to have been a nickname given to him by the English colonists.

Furthermore, Tisquantum was not just from any old tribe that had been wiped out by diseases; he was specifically from the Patuxet band of the Wampanoag tribal confederation, on the ruins of whose village the Pilgrims had built their settlement. Cotton also neglects to mention the fact that European settlers were the ones who introduced the diseases that annihilated Tisquantum’s entire village in the first place.

Finally, Cotton slyly avoids mentioning that the whole reason Tisquantum could speak English so fluently was because the English explorer and slave trader Thomas Hunt had captured him, shipped him across the Atlantic, and sold him into slavery in the city of Málaga in Spain. Tisquantum had eventually made it to England, where he lived for a while, learning English. By the time Tisquantum made it back to Patuxet in 1619, he discovered that his entire village had been utterly wiped out by European diseases and that he was the only survivor.

I’m certain that Tom Cotton knows the dark history of Tisquantum’s brutal enslavement by the English and his eventual journey back home, but he deliberately avoids talking about it because he doesn’t want to say anything that would reflect poorly on the English settlers.

ABOVE: Illustration from 1911 showing what the artist imagined Tisquantum might have looked like. (No one knows what he looked like in reality.)

The alliance between the Wampanoag people and the Pilgrims

Cotton continues:

“The plague had also weakened the Wampanoags, though not neighbor, rival tribes. The Wampanoag chief, Massasoit, thus had good reason to form an alliance with the Pilgrims. Squanto introduced him to the settlers and facilitated their peace and mutual agreement, which lasted more than fifty years.”

Here, in the midst of all his colonialist silliness, Cotton actually seems to almost inadvertently make a really good point. It is, unfortunately, very common for white people to falsely portray the Wampanoag people as naïve altruists who decided to help the Pilgrims simply because they somehow weren’t “civilized” enough to understand how to be mean to other people.

In historical reality, the Wampanoag people probably decided to help the Pilgrims out of careful strategic pragmatism. They knew they needed allies against rival tribes and they believed that the English would make strong allies. Therefore, they decided to help them. This was undoubtedly a carefully considered and entirely rational decision.

Of course, I’m pretty skeptical about Cotton’s claim that the Wampanoag people’s rivals hadn’t also been devastated by diseases. I should also point out that the real name of the man Cotton calls “Massasoit” was probably Ousamequin. “Massasoit” seems to have actually been a title meaning “Great Sachem” or “Great Chief” that the Pilgrims mistook for Ousamequin’s actual name.

Nevertheless, on this occasion, I’m willing to give Cotton a few points for not being totally wrong about everything.

ABOVE: Nineteenth-century illustration showing how the artist imagined Ousamequin and John Carver might have looked while sharing a peace pipe

The so-called “First Thanksgiving”

Unfortunately, Cotton immediately squanders his brief moment of not sounding like an idiot by saying this:

“Squanto remained with the Pilgrims, acting, in Bradford’s words, as their ‘interpreter’ and a ‘special instrument sent of God for their good beyond their expectations.’ He instructed them on the cultivation of native crops like corn, squash, and beans. He showed them where to fish and to hunt. He guided them on land and sea to new destinations.”

“And you probably remember what happened next. As the Pilgrims recovered and prospered throughout 1621, they received the blessings of a bountiful fall harvest. The Pilgrims entertained Massasoit and the Wampanoags and feasted with them to express their gratitude to their allies and to give thanks to God for his abundant gifts. This meal, of course, was the first Thanksgiving.”

Nope!

First of all, the Pilgrims probably would not have described the three-day-long feast that they held with their Wampanoag allies in fall 1621 as a “thanksgiving,” since, from their perspective, a “thanksgiving” was a solemn, religious event that was supposed to take place in church and that was not supposed to involve any kind of feasting. Instead, they probably would have described the feast they held in fall 1621 as a “harvest dinner.”

Furthermore, the Pilgrims were not in any sense the first European settlers to hold a celebration of this kind in the territory that would later become the United States. The earliest recorded celebration of this kind was actually held by the Spanish settlers under Pedro Menéndez de Avilés in St. Augustine, Florida, on 8 September 1565. Later, the English settlers at Jamestown are recorded to have held a celebration of this kind in 1610.

In other words, the feast shared by the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag people in 1621 was not a “thanksgiving,” nor was it the first of its kind. In fact, it did not mark the beginning of the modern Thanksgiving holiday either. For the Pilgrims themselves, their feast in 1621 was simply a one-time event; it was not the beginning of any kind of continuous tradition of celebrating “Thanksgiving” every year.

Although the Pilgrims and their descendants did hold harvest feasts on later occasions, they had no concept of an annual “Thanksgiving” holiday. There were various local celebrations of “Thanksgiving” throughout the early nineteenth century, but it was first declared a holiday for all states by Abraham Lincoln in 1863 at the request of the American author Sarah Josepha Hale (lived 1788 – 1879). The idea behind the creation of the new holiday was that establishing a new American family tradition would help bring the North and the South back together after the Civil War.

ABOVE: Portrait of American writer Sarah Josepha Hale, painted in 1831 by James Reid Lambdin

Cotton’s misleading portrayal of the relationship between Native people and English settlers

If we depart from Cotton’s speech for a moment, I’d like to talk about how his overall portrayal of the relationship between the English colonists and the Wampanoag people is highly selective and misleading. There’s a reason why he doesn’t mention any of the later history after 1621. You see, as the English settlements in New England grew, the English stole more and more land from the Native people who lived there and used this land to build towns for English people. For obvious reasons, this didn’t make the Native people very happy.

The alliance between the English colonists and the Wampanoag people was fragile from the very beginning and its existence was even only possible due to Ousamequin’s pragmatic determination to maintain peace with the English. After Ousamequin died in 1661, the alliance quickly disintegrated.

In 1675, war broke out, with the Wampanoag people and their Native allies on one side and the English settlers and their Native allies on the other. The Wampanoag alliance was led by Ousamequin’s own son Metacom (lived 1638 – 1676), who was also known by the English name “King Philip.” The war in which he led the Wampanoag people and their allies against the English has therefore become known as “King Philip’s War” or “Metacom’s War.”

Metacom’s War was one of most devastating violent conflicts in colonial American history. The Wampanoag people and their allies managed to destroy about a dozen English settlements and kill roughly one tenth of all the English settlers. The English, however, came out of the war on top. They killed thousands of Native people, including nearly half the total population of the Wampanoag tribe, and sold hundreds more Native people into slavery. In their victory, the settlers claimed effectively all the Wampanoag people’s land for England.

King Philip’s War was undoubtedly one of the most significant events in colonial American history. Unfortunately, most Americans have never even heard of it. Instead, all most Americans have heard about the relationship between English settlers and Native people in New England is the childish fairy tale about them living together in peace and harmony.

ABOVE: Fictional illustration of Metacom, who was also known by the English name “King Philip,” drawn in 1772

The exclusionist agenda behind this Thanksgiving mythology

Nearing the end of his speech, Cotton turns his attention to current events. In doing this, he provides an excellent window into the modern political ideology that the mythology of the Pilgrims is currently being used to support. He declares:

“Now the Thanksgiving season is upon us and we have much to give thanks for. But this year we ought to be especially thankful for our ancestors, the Pilgrims, on their four hundredth anniversary.”

Notice how he stresses the idea that the Pilgrims are “our ancestors.” In saying this, he is deliberately creating an extremely exclusive definition of what it means to be a true American. In Cotton’s view, the only people who counts as true Americans are descendants of the English colonists who came to North America in the seventeenth century.

He is deliberately excluding Native Americans whose ancestors were already here long before the English showed up, Hispanic Americans who are descended from the Spanish colonists who arrived mostly before the English, Black Americans whose ancestors were forcibly brought from Africa to North America as slaves, and other people—including many people who we today consider “white”—whose ancestors came to North America in more recent times as immigrants.

Cotton continues:

“Their faith, their bravery, their wisdom places them in the American pantheon, alongside the patriots of 1776, the Pilgrims of 1620 deserve the honor of American founders.”

Once again, Cotton singles out the Pilgrims as “American founders,” completely ignoring all the peoples who were here before them. He also deliberately reinforces the association he has already drawn between the white English Pilgrims and the white English men who signed the Declaration of Independence, thereby implicitly emphasizing the idea that the United States is a country founded by white English men for white English men.

ABOVE: The Declaration of Independence, painted between 1817 and 1819 by John Trumbull. Notice anything interesting about all the people depicted in this painting?

Next, Cotton goes on to say this:

“Sadly, however, there appear to be few commemorations, parades, or festivals to celebrate the Pilgrims this year—perhaps in part because revisionist charlatans of radical left have lately claimed the previous year as America’s true founding. Nothing could be further from the truth! The Pilgrims and their Compact, like the Founders and their Declaration, form the true foundation of America.”

Notice how he portrays people who don’t subscribe to his fantasy of the Pilgrims as heroic American founders (rather than seventeenth-century English colonizers) as “revisionist charlatans of the radical left.” He is so dedicated to his worldview that he sees anyone who disagrees with it as evil and dishonest.

Also notice how he adamantly insists on defining the “true foundation of America” in terms of two documents signed exclusively by white English men. That’s no accident; Cotton is knowingly advancing an agenda here.

Cotton continues:

“So count me in Coolidge’s camp. On this anniversary a century ago, he proclaimed: ‘It is our duty and the duty of every true American to reassemble in spirit in the cabin of the Mayflower, rededicate ourselves to the Pilgrims’ great work by re-signing and re-affirming the document that has made mankind of all the earth more glorious.’”

Notice the emphasis that both Coolidge and Cotton place on the idea that “true Americans” are the ones who celebrate white English people for colonizing North America and taking land away from Native people. In doing this, they imply that anyone who does not actively support and celebrate English colonialism is not a “true American.” This inherently creates a definition of the term “true American” that is based on whiteness.

Also notice the emphasis that Coolidge and Cotton place on the supposed universal significance of the Mayflower Compact. As I have mentioned previously, this document was signed by forty-one adult white male English Protestant colonists. There was not a single signatory of the Mayflower Compact who was non-male, non-white, non-English, or non-Protestant.

When people promote the Mayflower Compact as a founding document of the United States, they are promoting the narrative that the United States is and always has been a nation for white male English Protestants. When people like Coolidge and Cotton go a step further and claim that the Mayflower Compact is a “document that has made mankind of all the earth more glorious,” they are overtly claiming that white male English Protestants act as a universal civilizing force for all human beings. This is literally just the old racist notion of the “white man’s burden” repackaged.

ABOVE: Grotesquely racist political cartoon from April 1899 titled “The White Man’s Burden,” depicting the personifications of Great Britain and the United States “nobly” carrying the supposedly barbarous and uncivilized nations of the non-white races to the glory of “civilization”

Next Cotton says:

“Some—too many—may have lost the civilizational self-confidence that is needed to celebrate the Pilgrims.”

I wrote an article back in February 2020 about how conservatives use the phrase “western civilization” as a euphemism for “white civilization.” As such, it’s obvious what Cotton really means when he says “civilizational self-confidence”; this is clearly a dog whistle for “pride in the glorious achievements of the supreme white race.” He’s talking about white supremacy without using the words “white supremacy.”

“Just today, The New York Times called the story a ‘myth’ and a ‘caricature.’ In the ‘food’ section no less! Maybe the politically correct editors of the debunked 1619 Project are now responsible for pumpkin pie recipes at the The Times as well!”

The story of the Pilgrims as most Americans know it today is indisputably a “myth” and a “caricature.” You don’t need to be a supporter of the 1619 Project to see this.

Also notice how Cotton uses the phrase “politically correct.” This is a phrase that is absolutely beloved by American conservatives. They use it constantly to insinuate that everything they believe is correct and that anyone who disagrees with them knows they are correct, but is too afraid to admit it because they don’t want to go against current political attitudes. The use of this phrase is an insidious method of delegitimizing disagreement by portraying anyone who disagrees with the speaker as knowingly disingenuous.

Tom Cotton’s “revelation” of white supremacy

Finally, having attacked people who don’t believe in his mythology, Cotton delivers his closing remarks, in which he deliberately tries to portray himself as morally superior to those who criticize the Pilgrims:

“But I, for one, still have the pride and confidence of our forebears, so, here today, I speak in the spirit of that cabin and I re-affirm that old Compact. As we head into the week of Thanksgiving, I’ll be giving thanks in particular to our Pilgrim Fathers and the timeless lessons they bequeathed to our great nation. For, as Coolidge observed: ‘Plymouth Rock does not mark a beginning or an end; it marks a revelation of that which is without beginning and without end.’”

What is this “revelation” of which Coolidge and Cotton speak? Ostensibly, they seem to be talking about democracy, but yet the Pilgrims were not supporters of democracy in the modern sense and the idea of democracy can be traced all the way back to remote antiquity, so there is no reasonable sense in which the Pilgrims can be described as marking the “revelation” of democratic government.

The truth, then, is that Coolidge and Cotton are talking about the supremacy of white male English Protestants. They see the Pilgrims as important not for any importance they might actually have, but rather because they represent the specific demographic group that they believe the United States should stand for.

I do not advocate abolishing Thanksgiving. On the contrary, I think it’s nice to have a holiday in November where families get together and talk about what they are thankful for. I do, however, strongly believe that the dangerous mythology associated with the holiday needs to be gotten rid of. We need to stop talking about the Pilgrims as “American founders” and recognize that this conception of them is a fantasy that is deliberately constructed to exclude people from the definition of “true Americans.”