Colonial America: Pilgrims, the Mayflower Compact, and Thanksgiving

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Colonial America: Pilgrims, the Mayower Compact,

and Thanksgiving

BY TIM BAILEY

UNIT OVERVIEW

Over the course of three lessons the students will analyze primary and secondary sources on the voyage

of the Pilgrims to America aboard the Mayﬂower, the writing of the Mayﬂower Compact, and the origin

of Thanksgiving. The texts are a modern secondary source about the journey of the Mayﬂower and two

primary sources: The Mayﬂower Compact (1620) and a letter by a colonist, Edward Winslow (1621).

Students will closely analyze these materials, draw conclusions, and demonstrate their understanding

through classroom activities as directed in each lesson.

UNIT OBJECTIVES

Students will be able to

• Read primary sources and a secondary source about a historical event

• Demonstrate an understanding of the event described by creating illustrations, using text from the

document as captions

• Explain their illustrations orally to their peers

• Analyze and summarize the content and purpose of historical documents

ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS

You can use these essential questions to stimulate discussion throughout the unit:

• What conditions encouraged the Pilgrims to leave Europe?

• What challenges did the Pilgrims face during their voyage on the Mayﬂower?

• Why is the Mayﬂower Compact considered the ﬁrst document establishing an American

government?

• How did Edward Winslow describe relations between the colonists and American Indians?

• Why is Winslow’s letter considered a description of the “First Thanksgiving”?

• How does Winslow’s description of the 1621 event ﬁt with our traditional telling of the story of the

First Thanksgiving?

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NUMBER OF CLASS PERIODS: 3

COMMON CORE STATE STANDARDS

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.4.1: Refer to details and examples in a text when explaining what the text says

explicitly and when drawing inferences from the text.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.4.2: Determine the main idea of a text and explain how it is supported by key

details; summarize the text.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.5.9: Integrate information from several texts on the same topic in order to write

or speak about the subject knowledgeably.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.SL.5.1.d: Review the key ideas expressed and draw conclusions in light of

information and knowledge gained from the discussions.

LESSON

1

OVERVIEW

In this lesson, students will read a brief essay describing why the Pilgrims decided to go to the

New World and what difﬁculties they encountered on the voyage aboard the Mayﬂower. They will

demonstrate their understanding by drawing a series of illustrations that depict the events described,

using quotations from the text as captions. The students will then explain their drawings in a short

oral presentation to the class. Throughout the unit, let the students learn as much as possible from the

readings before you discuss the historical background with them.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

The journey of the Pilgrims to America in the fall of 1620 was the culmination of a series of events

that had begun decades before, when King Henry VIII abandoned the Roman Catholic Church and

established the Church of England. During his reign and the reign of his daughter, Queen Elizabeth

I, it became illegal to practice any religion other than that of the Church of England. A group known

as Separatists demanded that they be allowed to practice religion as they chose. This was not tolerated

by the English government and the group found it necessary to leave the country. They relocated to

Holland, and although they could practice their religion there, life was difﬁcult. They stayed in the

Netherlands for more than a decade, but with a Dutch-Spanish war looming and a fear that their

children were losing their family traditions, the Separatists decided to make a pilgrimage to North

America.

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MATERIALS

• “Coming to America on the Mayﬂower”

• “Telling the Story in Six Parts”

• Drawing supplies

PROCEDURE

1. Distribute “Coming to America on the Mayﬂower.”

2. “Share read” this brief essay with the students. To share read, have the students follow along

silently while you begin to read aloud, modeling prosody, inﬂection, and punctuation. Then ask the

class to join in with the reading while you continue to read along with the students, still serving as

the model for the class. This technique will support struggling readers as well as English language

learners (ELL).

3. Ask the students to decide which six events in the story are the most important and to underline

them in their copy of the text.

4. Distribute “Telling the Story in Six Parts” and drawing supplies.

5. Ask the students to draw a picture of the ﬁrst important event that they underlined and write down

a phrase from “Coming to America on the Mayﬂower” below the illustration as their caption. For

instance, a student may draw a picture of a ship in a storm and write “Storms began pounding on

the little ship” as the caption. You may allow the use of computer-generated illustrations or other

graphics in addition to drawing.

6. The students will illustrate each of their six underlined events, using a quotation from the text as a

caption for each one.

7. The students will give oral presentations using the illustrations and quotations/captions to

summarize the story of the Pilgrims and the Mayﬂower.

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LESSON

2

OVERVIEW

In this lesson, the students will learn how to read and understand a complex primary source. This

will be done by “chunking” the text and asking very precise questions to help students understand the

seventeenth-century language and, ultimately, the purpose of the document. They will demonstrate

their comprehension through class discussion and completion of an activity sheet.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

After arriving on the East Coast of North America, far north of the intended location for their

settlement in the Hudson River valley, the Pilgrims found themselves facing a number of challenges.

One of those challenges was the creation of an organized form of government. The Pilgrims had

assumed that upon reaching the land set aside for them by the Virginia Company they would be under

the governance of England and the king, although they would be free to practice their religious beliefs.

They had negotiated a trade agreement with the Virginia Company and had reached an amicable

arrangement with King James. Yet the Pilgrims found themselves outside the jurisdiction of either

the Virginia Company or the king, and they knew that without some kind of government, their colony

would devolve into chaos. William Bradford wrote that he was already seeing signs of factionalism

in the group. The Mayﬂower Compact represents the establishment of that new government. The

Mayﬂower Compact was signed on November 11, 1620, by forty-one of the adult men. This agreement

established majority rule as the foundation for their new society.

MATERIALS

• Teacher’s Resource: The Mayﬂower Compact (Complete). Source: The modernized text presented

here is based on the original version (London, 1622) as reprinted in Mourt’s Relation or Journal of

the Plantation at Plymouth with an Introduction and Notes by Henry Martyn Dexter (Boston: John

Kimball Wiggin, 1865), 6–8.

• ”Analyzing the Mayﬂower Compact”

• Overhead projector or other display device

PROCEDURE

1. Distribute ”Analyzing the Mayﬂower Compact.”

2. Project an image of the worksheet so that the entire class can see it and follow along on their

personal copies.

3. Share read the text in the activity sheet with the class as described in Lesson 1.

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4. Model the activity with the class. Address one question at a time and help the students reason out

the best answer. This activity is designed to develop critical thinking skills and effective strategies in

reading difﬁcult texts. This abbreviated version of the text is based on the original 1622 document

as reprinted in Mourt’s Relation (1865), with punctuation and spelling modernized for readability.

5. For the summary section, show the students how to use the answers to the questions to construct a

paragraph.

6. Use the Historical Background information to discuss with the students why the Pilgrims wrote the

Mayﬂower Compact.

LESSON

3

OVERVIEW

Students will read a primary source describing what has come to be known as the “First Thanksgiving.”

Students will closely analyze a letter written by colonist Edward Winslow on December 11, 1621.

They will demonstrate their comprehension through class discussion and answers to critical thinking

questions.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

The Pilgrims’ settlement in Plymouth very nearly ceased to exist only a few months after it was

established. Of the 102 Pilgrims who reached America in the late fall of 1620, less than one-half lived to

see the spring. Several factors led to this calamity. Many of the colonists were very weak and sick from

the Atlantic crossing, and therefore fewer people were available to build shelters and forage for food.

The supplies aboard the Mayﬂower had nearly run out, and since it was so late in the season, there was

not enough time to plant and harvest any crops. During the winter of 1620–1621 both starvation and

disease devastated the new colony.

Fortunately for the Pilgrims, they established a friendly relationship with an English-speaking

American Indian named Tisquantum, or Squanto. He had been captured and taken to Spain but escaped

and returned home, where he found that his people had died of disease. He introduced the Pilgrims to

Massasoit, chief of the Pokanokets, and other leaders of the various tribes of the Wampanoag people

who had lived near the Plymouth settlement for centuries before the Pilgrims arrived.

One of the colonists who had crossed the Atlantic on the Mayﬂower, Edward Winslow, survived the ﬁrst

terrible winter and served as a leader of the colony.

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MATERIALS

• “Excerpts from a Letter by Edward Winslow, December 11, 1621.” Source: E[dward] W[inslow],

“A Letter Sent from New England to a Friend in These Parts, Setting Forth a Briefe and

True Declaration of the Worth of that Plantation,” Relation or Iournall of the Beginning and

Proceedings of the English Plantation Setled at Plimoth in New England, by Certaine English

Aduenturers both Merchants and Others (London: John Bellamie, 1622), 60–64. In the version

of the text presented below, the original punctuation and spellings have been modernized for

readability.

• “Analyzing a Letter by Edward Winslow, December 11, 1621”

PROCEDURE

1. You may choose to have the students complete the lesson individually, as partners, or in small

groups.

2. Distribute “Excerpts from a Letter by Edward Winslow, December 11, 1621.”

3. Share read the text as described in Lesson 1.

4. Distribute “Analyzing a Letter by Edward Winslow, December 11, 1621” and ask students to answer

the critical thinking questions. Emphasize that they must support their answers with quotations

from the letter.

5. Students can brainstorm as partners or in small groups but must ﬁll in their own activity sheet to

complete the assignment.

6. Let the students reason out the meaning of unfamiliar vocabulary through context. If they are truly

stuck or context clues are insufﬁcient, then provide a simple deﬁnition.

7. Ask groups or individual students to share their answers to the critical thinking questions aloud.

Compare those with the responses from other individuals or groups. Use the Historical Background

information during a class discussion about the “First Thanksgiving.”

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Coming to America on the Mayower

In the early 1600s a group of English men and women called Separatists

were living in Holland. They had moved there because in England they did

not have religious freedom and were forced to belong to the Church of

England. They did not believe in the Church of England, so they decided to

separate from that church and go to Holland where they could worship God

as they chose. But after living in Holland for a while these people began to

think that their children were losing their family traditions and becoming too

much like the Dutch. They decided that they needed to move again. This time

they would go somewhere where they could raise their children as they chose

and no one could tell them what religion they had to follow. They chose to

sail to the New World—America.

These people, who we now call Pilgrims, hired two ships to take

them to America. The two ships were the Mayower and the Speedwell.

The Pilgrims made an agreement with the Virginia Company to build a

settlement in Virginia and begin a new life in America. After loading the two

ships with food, water, and other supplies the Pilgrims set sail for America

in August 1620. Almost immediately the Speedwell began leaking. The

Pilgrims had to turn around and sail back to England to x the ship. Over

two weeks passed before the Speedwell was ready. On August 21, 1620,

the Pilgrims set off again for America. But soon water was again leaking

into the Speedwell. After sailing nearly 300 miles toward America they had

to turn back again. This time the Pilgrims decided to leave the Speedwell in

England and sail to America with just one ship, the Mayower.

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Of course, putting all of the supplies and all of the people from

two ships onto one ship made the Mayower very crowded. There

were now about 130 people on the small ship, 102 of them Pilgrims.

On September 6, 1620, the Mayower set sail once again for America.

Unfortunately, because of the delay, the Mayower was going to cross

the Atlantic Ocean during the dangerous stormy season.

The rst few weeks of the voyage went fairly well. The only real

problem was seasickness among many of the Pilgrims. It was cold, wet,

and very uncomfortable aboard the ship.

Then violent storms began pounding on the little ship. One man

was washed overboard during a storm and was only saved by grabbing

a rope and being pulled back onboard. The Mayower began to take

on water and a wooden beam cracked. The ship’s crew quickly began

to plug the cracks in the Mayower and repair the broken beam. The

storms pushed the ship farther and farther north. When the storms nally

ended the Pilgrims and the crew of the Mayower found themselves

hundreds of miles north of where they were supposed to be. But there

was some good news as well. A baby was born to Elizabeth Hopkins

during the voyage. She named him Oceanus. On November 11, 1620,

the Mayower stopped at Cape Cod. It had been sixty-six days since

they left England.

The Pilgrims decided to build their

settlement near Cape Cod in a place they

named Plymouth. The Mayower stayed

in Plymouth through the winter as the

Pilgrims built their houses, and the

ship nally returned to England on

April 5, 1621.

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Name __________________________________________Period_________Date __________________________

Telling the Story in Six Parts

Number your drawing here ___________.

___________________________

Write your caption here.

___________________________

Write your caption here.

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John Carver

William Bradford

Edward Winslow

William Brewster

Isaac Allerton

Miles Standish

John Alden

Samuel Fuller

Christopher Martin

William Mullins

William White

Richard Warren

John Howland

Stephen Hopkins

Edward Tilley

John Tilley

Francis Cook

Thomas Rogers

Thomas Tinker

John Ridgdale

Edward Fuller

John Turner

Francis Eaton

James Chilton

John Crackstone

John Billington

Moses Fletcher

John Goodman

Digory Priest

Thomas Williams

Gilbert Winslow

Edmond Margeson

Peter Brown

Richard Britteridge

George Soule

Richard Clark

Richard Gardiner

John Allerton

Thomas English

Edward Doten

Edward Leister

The Mayower Compact

In the name of God, Amen. We whose names are underwritten, 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, &c.

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 rst Colony in the Northern parts of VIRGINIA, do by these

presents solemnly & mutually in the presence of God and one of another,

covenant, and combine ourselves together into a civil body politick,

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, ofces 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, Cape

Cod 11. of November, in the year of the reign of our sovereign Lord King

JAMES, of England, France, and Ireland, 18. and of Scotland 54. Anno

Domini 1620.

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Name __________________________________________ Period _____ Date __________________________

The Mayower Compact The Mayower Compact Analysis

In the name of God, Amen.

We . . . the loyal Subjects of

our dread sovereign Lord King

JAMES . . .

Who wrote this compact?

_______________________________________

________________________________________

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 rst Colony in the

Northern parts of VIRGINIA,

Why did they take a voyage?

________________________________________

do by these presents solemnly

& mutually in the presence

of God and one of another,

covenant, and combine

ourselves together into a civil

body politick,

What action are they taking?

________________________________________

for our better ordering and

preservation, and furtherance of

the ends aforesaid . . .

Why are they doing this?

________________________________________

Analyzing the Mayower Compact

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Name __________________________________________Period_________Date __________________________

The Mayower Compact The Mayower Compact Analysis

to enact . . . such just and

equal Laws, Ordinances, acts,

constitutions, ofces 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.

What will they do now?

________________________________________

In witness whereof we have

hereunder subscribed our

names, Cape Cod 11. of

November, in the year of the

reign of our sovereign Lord King

JAMES, of England, France, and

Ireland, 18. and of Scotland 54.

Anno Domini 1620.

Summary:

_______________________________________________________________________

Analyzing the Mayower Compact

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Excerpts from a Letter by

Edward Winslow, December 11, 1621

Loving, and old Friend,

[W]e have built seven dwelling houses . . . and have made preparation

for divers others. We set the last spring some twenty acres of Indian

corn, and sowed some six acres of barley and peas, and according to the

manner of the Indians, we manured our ground with herrings . . . which

we have in great abundance . . .

Our corn did prove well, & God be praised, we had a good

increase of Indian corn . . . our harvest being gotten in, our governor

sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a more special manner

rejoice together, after we had gathered the fruit of our labors . . . at

which time amongst other recreations, we exercised our arms, many of

the Indians coming amongst us, and amongst the rest their greatest king

Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained

and feasted, and they went out and killed ve deer, which they brought

to the plantation and bestowed on our governor, and upon the captain,

and others. And although it be not always so plentiful, as it was at this

time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want, that

we often wish you partakers of our plenty. We have found the Indians

very faithful in their covenant of peace with us . . . it hath pleased God so

to possess the Indians with a fear of us, and love unto us, that not only

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the greatest king amongst them called Massasoit, but also all the princes

and peoples round about us, have either made suit unto us, or been glad

of any occasion to make peace with us . . . so that there is now great

peace amongst the Indians themselves, which was not formerly, neither

would have been but for us; and we for our parts walk as peaceably and

safely in the wood, as in the highways in England, we entertain them

familiarly in our houses, and they as friendly bestowing their venison on

us. They are a people without any religion, or knowledge of any God, yet

very trusty, quick of apprehension, ripe-witted . . .

I never in my life remember a more seasonable year, than we have

here enjoyed . . . For sh and fowl, we have a great abundance, fresh

cod in the summer is but coarse meat with us, our bay is full of lobsters

all the summer, and affordeth variety of other sh . . . all the springtime

the earth sendeth forth naturally very good sallet herbs: here are grapes,

white and red, and very sweet and strong also. . . . [T]he country wanteth

only industrious men to employ, for it would grieve your hearts (if as I)

you had seen so many miles together by goodly rivers uninhabited, and

withal to consider those parts of the world wherein you live, to be even

greatly burdened with abundance of people. . . . I forbear further to write

for the present, hoping to see you by the next return, so I take my leave,

commending you to the Lord for a safe conduct unto us. Resting in Him

Plymouth in New England this 11 of December, 1621.

Your loving friend

E. W.

Source: Relation or Iournall of the Beginning and Proceedings of the English Plantation

Setled at Plimoth in New England, by Certaine English Aduenturers both Merchants

and Others (London: John Bellamie, 1622), 60–64.

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Name __________________________________________ Period _____ Date __________________________

Analyzing a Letter by Edward Winslow, December 11, 1621

Critical Thinking Questions

Use quotations from the text in the answers to these questions.

1. Whose planting technique did the Pilgrims copy?

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

2. Why did the governor send “four men on fowling” (to go bird hunting)?

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

3. What did Chief Massasoit and his men bring to the celebration?

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

4. According to Winslow, what is the Pilgrims’ relationship with the American Indians?

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

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Name __________________________________________Period_________Date __________________________

5. According to Winslow, are the Pilgrims afraid of the American Indians or are the

Indians afraid of the Pilgrims?

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

6. What kinds of food are there for the Pilgrims to eat?

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

7. Does Winslow want more people to come to America?

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

8. Using evidence from the text, where do you think Edward Winslow’s friend

might live?

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

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