Summary about the book Boston tea party - Essay Example

The story talks about how the United States of America walked its way into the top of the western hemisphere and settled in a country that has become the most powerful nation in the world. Philbrick explained in this book that the issue of race, religion and violence has always taken center stage in American polity. Nathaniel Philbrck uses the account of William Bradford and Benjamin Church to describe the story of the Mayflower. The book is the story of a ship and its journey on a large and stormy sea into a land that nothing much was known about.

Mayflower talks about how the Pilgrims came to settle in New England, the risky ocean crossing that they embarked upon and the sharing of the first Thanksgiving. He gives the true story of the Pilgrims and their tragic but heroic experience at the ocean. Philbrick described how a group of Pilgrims endured the raging of the storms in order to find a very suitable place to worship. The Mayflower ship clumsily moved through winds and storms for sixty-five days. According to Philbrick, “For sixty-five days, the Mayflower had blundered her way through storms and headwinds, her bottom a shaggy pelt of seaweed and barnacles, her leaky decks spewing salt water onto her passengers’ devoted heads.” (3). There were 102 humans and 2 dogs in the ship and Phulbrick explained that they were not the usual group of colonists that people are familiar with.

They were neither noblemen or servants, but a group of men, women and children who were ready to sacrifice their lives in order to have the assurance that they could worship their God as they pleased. The arguments that the Pilgrims put forward for embarking on such a deadly voyage was that God was in support of their emigration to America (Philbrick 259). Philbrick dedicated a chapter to Thanksgiving with a good account of the events of the feast that lasted for days. The people that took part in the Thanksgiving feast were 100 Pokanoket Indians and 50 colonists.

Philbrick noted that the Pilgrims did not originally arrive at Plymouth Rock as people have been made to believe. They first arrived at an Indian graveyard, the Pokanoket tribe had been hit by a strange plague that weakened majority of their population and they did not have the strength to fight against the Pilgrims. The Pokanoket tribe had no other choice than to make peace with the Pilgrims. It is clear from the description of Philbrick that the Thanksgiving feast did not take place in November, but by the end of September or October.

There is a possibility that the men that took part in the Thanksgiving feast went fowling for their Thanksgiving feast. The Thanksgiving feast that took place at the fall gave the Americans a glimmer of hope as the events that took place during this period gave signs that things would turn out for their good (Philbrick 104-108). The book talks about how the Pilgrims or people that could be described as religious refugees landed in Plymouth Harbor during a period of catastrophe for the Native Americans.

The Native Americans had to struggle with an alien disease that was brought into their lands by the European fishermen and this drastically reduced their population. Philbrick talked about the relationship between the Pilgrims and the Wampanaoags. The Pilgrims were led by the belligerent military officer, Miles Standish while the Wampanaoags were led by the enigmatic and scheming Chief Massasoit. The Wampanaoags were