The Pilgrim Conspiracy

by Jeroen Windmeijer

  ‘Seventy years old, Plimoth Plantation,’ Tony said. ‘It was the boyhood dream of an archaeologist, Henry Hornblower II. He wanted to tell the story of the Plymouth Colony, so he started the museum in 1947 with the help of his business partners, and family and friends. They built two cottages and a fort on Plymouth’s historic shoreline. Then they expanded it with a replica of the Mayflower, a reconstruction of the English village and the Wampanoag tribe’s village and so on. It’s a wonderful place, it really is.’

  The bus had left the subterranean station now, and they were travelling along the quiet road that led to the coast.

  ‘You should visit Archeon next time you come to the Netherlands,’ Peter said. ‘It’s a living history museum near Leiden. They’ve recreated three periods there – pre-history, Roman, and the Middle Ages. They have guides in period costume who explain everything and answer questions. They call them archeo-interpreters.’

  ‘Ah, there aren’t any guides here,’ Tony said proudly. ‘Everyone you’ll see walking around the site is an actor. It takes them a whole year to prepare for the role. They read everything they can about the person they’re going to be. They even have English accents … And they stay in their role the whole time. It’s like they just left Leiden a couple months ago. It’s fantastic.’

  Peter picked up his book and opened it to the page where he had left off.

  ‘How was your visit with the Masons yesterday?’ Tony asked, apparently oblivious to Peter’s hint that he wanted to read.

  Peter gave him a curious sideways look, but it appeared that Tony was genuinely interested and couldn’t wait to hear all about Peter’s visit to the grand lodge.

  ‘Well,’ Peter began, ‘it was a very interesting visit. I can tell you that much.’

  ‘Great, great,’ Tony said. ‘I’m glad to hear it was a success.’

  This short answer seemed to be enough to satisfy Tony’s curiosity because he asked no further questions.

  This would be the obvious moment to ask why he was kicked out of the Freemasons, Peter thought. But that might get our trip off to an awkward start. And we have an entire day to get through. He decided to concentrate on his book instead.

  Despite the early hour, the bus was soon full and ready to depart. They left the city, and a broad, tree-lined highway took them through a dull landscape of industrial estates and residential suburbs that stretched out into the distance.

  Should I ask Tony if he knows anything about the two missing men? And if he thinks the murders in Jerusalem have something to do with the ones in Leiden? Or if all three cases are connected?

  Peter suddenly felt reluctant to put those questions to him. Who knew what old wounds they might open up? But just as he had decided that he should ask them anyway, he saw that Tony had pulled his cap down over his eyes. His head was tipped back, and his mouth was slightly open. It looked like he had fallen asleep.

  I’ll leave it until later. We’ll have plenty of other things to talk about.

  Two hours later, the bus stopped on a parking lot outside an enormous McDonald’s. Tony, Peter and a handful of people got off the bus before it pulled away and headed for its final destination in Hyannis.

  Peter and Tony got into the car at the front of a row of taxis opposite the bus stop, and within fifteen minutes, they were at Plimoth Plantation, well before its opening time of nine o’clock.

  They sat on one of the benches in the visitor centre and waited for the ticket booths to open.

  Lots of people recognised Tony. He introduced Peter to everyone who stopped to talk to him, referring to him as his ‘most distinguished’ or, sometimes, ‘most honoured’ guest from Leiden, ‘the Netherlands, Europe’.

  Only one person responded with interest when they heard that Peter was from Leiden.

  He could have told everyone else that I was from Ulaanbaatar for all the difference it made, Peter thought.

  They gave the little exhibition and the restaurant in the visitor centre a miss.

  ‘We can get something to drink in the craft centre later,’ Tony said, as he marched briskly ahead of Peter.

  They left the building via the rear door and went outside. A winding path took them down into an area covered in trees.

  ‘We’ll visit the Wampanoag Homesite first,’ Tony said. ‘It’s very interesting. You know, I’ve heard all the criticism of Mayflower 400. A lot of people are saying, “Yes, but what about the indigenous population?” But I – or rather, we – have always been aware of what a sensitive issue it is. Race is such an incredibly complex thing in the United States. I mean, you can ask someone how much they earn, or what their house is worth. Most people will answer those questions without a second thought. But asking someone where they come from? Well, that’s just not done. It’s complicated. Although, essentially, of course, if you go back in time far enough, all Americans are immigrants. But it’s still not something you can ask people about. It’s awkward. It’s like you’re making a judgement. Who’s lived here the longest? Who’s the most American?’

  ‘There’s a lot of discrimination, of course,’ Peter added.

  ‘Yes, very true,’ Tony agreed. ‘And that’s … Well, like I said, it’s a sensitive subject. So that’s why – and this is what I was about to say – that’s why, from the very start, we’ve worked hard to involve the Native Nations, as the indigenous people in America call themselves. Obviously, we realise that the colonists’ arrival was a mixed blessing, and that’s putting it very mildly. Children have been taught the myth of the empty land in their history classes for far too long. So we’re emphasising that it’s a commemoration rather than a celebration. We avoid using the word “celebration” as much as we can.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘We want to present a more balanced picture. We see this as a partnership, not just of three nations – the United States, England and the Netherlands – but four nations. In fact, the Native Nations are very much a part of this. They’re happy that they have this opportunity to tell their side of the story. Actually, Mayflower 400 will be the start of a decade of commemorations because there are towns all over the country marking a four-hundredth anniversary of some sort, whether it’s of a battle that took place there or of the date they were founded.’

  According to the map, they had arrived at the Wampanoag Homesite. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, the Wampanoag Indians lived near the shore during the agricultural season. This was where they cultivated their crops, fished, collected herbs and berries, and cut cane to weave mats and baskets.

  Peter knew that when the Pilgrims arrived in November 1620, the Wampanoag had moved inland, as they usually did at that time of year. But now and then, they would wander close to the coast, and had these Native Americans not helped the new arrivals, every last one of the colonists would have died. In the end, half of the Mayflower’s passengers survived.

  The Homesite was a large, open area in the woods with huts made of wood, mud and straw. A path through the trees led to a small stretch of beach next to a lake. A pair of canoes had been dragged onto the sand, halfway out of the water.

  On the right, a Native American man stood next to a collection of objects arranged on a blanket. He explained that they were toys and showed them dolls made of deerskin, a dice game made of animal bones, and something that looked like a spinning top.

  A little further on, they came across a hollowed-out tree trunk which Tony insisted Peter try sitting in. He gamely obliged and mimed paddling through the water with the wooden oar.

  They walked over to a semi-circular hut that was completely open at the front with an open framework of thin tree trunks and thick branches at the back. Three men and a woman sat underneath its straw roof dressed in clothes made of what looked like soft leather. The men wore only trousers and sandals, with necklaces hanging around their necks. The woman’s dress left one shoulder bare. They sat on sawn-off tree stumps arranged in an arc around a log fire that seemed to be producing more smoke than flam
e. One of the men, whose head was shaved bald, turned a rabbit over it on a spit.

  The ground in the middle of the Wampanoag Homesite was taken up by crops. A wooden scaffolding structure had been built next to them where the tribe traditionally watched out for birds and scared them away from their fields, Tony explained.

  Water was just coming to the boil in an earthenware pot. The woman took a handful of herbs from a pouch at her waist and threw them into the water. She invited Tony and Peter to sit down.

  Tony had told Peter that he wasn’t acquainted with the people inside. These weren’t actors playing a role, but real Native Americans – not necessarily from the Wampanoag tribe, but of Native American descent.

  The woman poured the hot water into clay bowls with a large, wooden ladle and handed them to Peter and Tony. The steam that rose from them was fresh and sweet, a combination of mint and thyme.

  She left the fire and sat down at a waist loom where she was weaving a long, narrow strip of cloth.

  ‘Where are you from?’ the youngest of the three men asked as he busied himself with roasting the meat over the fire.

  ‘I’m from Holland,’ Peter said. ‘And he’s from Boston. I live in Leiden, the city where the Pilgrims lived before they came to America. Leiden …’ Peter paused dramatically ‘… where Thanksgiving actually comes from.’

  The man looked at him blankly. The name ‘Leiden’ didn’t even seem to ring a bell, much less the connection between Leiden and Thanksgiving.

  ‘How do you feel about 2020?’ Peter asked. ‘The events around the anniversary of the Pilgrims arriving on the coast here four hundred years ago?’

  The men exchanged nervous looks.

  ‘Look,’ one of the other two men said. ‘We want to make it clear that we don’t see it as a cause for celebration.’

  ‘That’s why we’re calling it a commemoration and not a celebration,’ Tony said hastily.

  ‘Yes, exactly,’ the man agreed. ‘No, it’s not a celebration … You know, for us it’s more of a chance to tell our story. Not just about what happened, but to let people know about what life is like for us now. Things have improved, but there’s still a lot more to be done in terms of education, economic development, discrimination, unemployment. Whichever way you look at it, it would have been better for the Native Nations if all those people from Europe had never come at all. I belong to the Wampanoag Nation myself. Our territory, Wampanoag territory, stretched from Weymouth to what’s now called Cape Cod. Our land included the island of Nantucket – you know, the one in Moby Dick – and Martha’s Vineyard. It went all the way to Bristol and Warren and the north-eastern corner of what came to be called Rhode Island. You know, it was all ours. The land wasn’t empty when they got here. We’d already been living on it for ten thousand years. That’s why we Wampanoag are called People of the Dawn or People of the First Light. Because we were the first ones here. There were between fifty and a hundred thousand of us in those days. Now there are only five thousand of us left. Thousands upon thousands died between 1616 and 1618 alone because of the sicknesses that the Europeans brought with them.’

  Tony gave a little cough. Then he blew exaggeratedly on his tea before taking a sip.

  Maybe this conversation is going in completely the opposite direction to what he was hoping for, Peter thought.

  ‘But even so,’ he said, not willing to drop the subject. This is a unique chance to talk to a Native American about it. ‘You’re all sitting here, though. You’ve decided to be a part of this, of Plimoth Plantation.’

  ‘Yes, that’s true,’ the second man said. ‘But, as my friend here says, that’s because it gives us a chance to tell our story. We’re grateful for the opportunity to be involved in it all. It means that we can start to change the image of the Pilgrims that’s being presented in schools, the mythology that’s been created around the Pilgrims. Take the Thanksgiving meal, for example. If you look at the contemporary accounts given in books and letters, they say that the Pilgrims celebrated their first harvest in the fall of 1621, “rejoicing in a special manner together”. At that time, Massasoit was the sachem, the leader of a village in Pokanoket on Rhode Island, where Bristol and Warren are now. Massasoit wasn’t actually his name, by the way. That was his title. It means something like “great leader”. His real name was Ousamequin. But I’m digressing. According to legend, he and about ninety other men joined the colonists for this feast. At some point in the nineteenth century, it became known as the first Thanksgiving. That was more than two hundred years later. But it’s probably not that simple. Both the English and the Native Nations had long traditions of giving thanks for the harvest.’

  ‘Our stories about the origins of Thanksgiving are completely different.’ The third man, who had so far remained silent, spoke up. ‘There’s a whole other version of its history.’

  The man who had been cooking the rabbit muttered something in a language that Peter didn’t understand, their native language, he assumed.

  A short but heated argument arose that was mostly conducted in whispers.

  Afterwards, the man carried on talking, unperturbed. ‘What we object to is the myth of the empty land.’

  Tony looked at Peter and nodded.

  ‘This image of brave European pioneers conquering America is still being presented far too often in education and the media,’ he went on. ‘People driving over wide-open prairies in covered wagons, building fences around the land and claiming it as theirs from that moment on. Like it didn’t already belong to someone! The settlers might have had trouble with the Redskins from time to time, but in the end, they conquered the land all the way to the North Pacific. How the West was lost. That’s the real story.’

  Peter glanced at Tony again, but he was focusing intently on his bowl, like a Zen master performing a tea ceremony.

  ‘The whole idea of God-fearing, hard-working men and women boldly going where no man had gone before … The discovery of America – even just that word, “discovery”! It implies that America didn’t even exist until the Europeans first set foot on it, that it wasn’t relevant, that it wasn’t significant until they arrived.’

  ‘But the Pilgrims weren’t the first colonists, were they? The English had already settled in Jamestown in Virginia by then. And the Pilgrims didn’t use violence to take the land by force. That was done much later and on a massive scale in the eighteenth century by the English, Germans, Irish, Dutch …’

  ‘Yes, that’s right, but the Pilgrims were the vanguard of an influx that had disastrous consequences for the culture of the indigenous people of North America. And I should add that people like Captain John Mason came to America from England with the great Puritan exodus, and he was responsible for the slaughter of seven hundred members of the Pequot tribe in 1637. The colonists were angry because a man from the Pequot tribe had killed a trader that they suspected of kidnapping Native American children. So when the tribe gathered for their annual Green Corn Festival, a militia made up of Puritans and colonists surrounded the village and murdered the seven hundred men, women and children inside. They shot them, stabbed them, burned them … they even kicked their decapitated heads around like footballs.’

  Peter shook his head in horror, his lips pressed tightly together.

  ‘The church declared a day of thanksgiving,’ the man continued, ‘to celebrate the “success” of the massacre. And that is where the modern tradition of a Thanksgiving meal started. They even passed a law stipulating that the day of this huge massacre should be remembered every year from then on, thanking God for their victory and celebrating their complete subjugation of the Pequot tribe. History is always written by the victors, so the story of that bloodbath was replaced with the Thanksgiving myth that’s widely accepted today. This is the alternative history that I was talking about. It’s been turned into a feast of gratitude for the harvest and so on, with sanitised pictures of whites and natives enjoying a lavish meal together in brotherly love. But the reality is very diffe
rent. It’s what’s called an invented tradition.’

  ‘Okay,’ Tony said, drawing the word out pointedly. He drank the last dregs of his tea.

  Peter realised that he hadn’t touched his tea at all, and he emptied the bowl with a few gulps. It was cold now, but it still tasted good.

  ‘Thanks for the story, gentlemen,’ Tony said as he got up.

  Peter stood up too.

  ‘It’s important that this story is told too,’ Tony added. ‘I’d like to thank you for taking the time to talk with us,’ he said. ‘And thank you for the tea,’ he said to the woman who had sat quietly weaving throughout the entire conversation.

  The three men nodded.

  Tony and Peter left the hut and went to look inside a large house that, from the outside, appeared to be made entirely of long strips of bark, deftly laid over the top of each other.

  I suspect that Tony would prefer not to talk about this subject any more, Peter thought. The Dutch don’t like being reminded of the war crimes that were committed in the Dutch East Indies either.

  Inside the house, a young Native American man was sitting on a dais covered in animal skins and talking to some of the other tourists who had arrived in the village while they had been in the hut. The walls were hung with wooden tools, bows and arrows and animal pelts, and on the floor were baskets filled with grain and beans.

  Peter and Tony listened politely for a while as the man told his audience about the Indians’ use of herbs and plants, but after a few minutes, they went back outside.

  They walked along a path that wound upwards and away from the village.

  ‘The great Puritan exodus …’ Peter said. ‘I’d not heard that expression before.’

  ‘No? That was between about 1620 and 1640. More than twenty thousand English Puritans went to Massachusetts and to the West Indies, Barbados mostly. The unusual thing about the history of the Puritans is that it wasn’t just individuals migrating, but whole families. That was something new at the time, as was the fact that they weren’t primarily looking for financial gain but for religious freedom. Many Christians, including the Pilgrims, identified with the history of the real Exodus. They explicitly compared themselves to the people of Israel in their writings.’