Nathaniel Shilbrick Mayflower Analysis

In the “Mayflower”, Nathaniel Philbrick dissects the relationship between the Native Americans and the English settlers. He focuses on pointing out the honest truth of what caused King Philip's war, disproving what many of us know to be true. Philbrick does so by dividing up this story into four sections, discovery, accommodation, community, and war. Each part portrays the real events that led to the fall of the once unified community. Humanity is often questioned throughout the book on both sides. The common belief that the Indians were savages and the English kept taking is the known belief of Americans today. Not one side can be held at full accountability when both took, killed, stole, lied, and betrayed. Many events took place to cause one of the bloodiest wars in American history and Philbrick hopes to shed light on the beginning of the “New World”. In 1620 a band of 102 English men and women set out across the Atlantic Ocean on …show more content…
In 1630, seventeen new English ships arrived in New England carrying over one thousand new settlers. With the new Pilgrims arriving the original settlers realized the newer generation did not have the same religious mindset and their main reason for coming here were disappearing. With the population growing to over three times what they were, starvation, violence, and struggles for the community increased. The next generation of pilgrims got greed hungry and started to push the Natives too hard, slowly breaking down the alliance their parents had created when they came to the New World. They were driving Indians from their land until they had enough of it. This led to Philbrick's next section on King Philip's War, which affected New England for many years. King Philip's war lasted from 1675 to 1676 and is known as one of the bloodiest wars in our history. It was the Native