MAYFLOWER, SHOPPING FOR PORCUPINES, & some observations

I am currently reading two books- MAYFLOWER, by Nathaniel Philbrick, which is a history of New England, from the time of the Mayflower’s settlement until the end of the 17th century, and SHOPPING FOR PORCUPINE, by Seth Kantner, which is a memoir of his growing up in the arctic.

Most of this post will be about something I read this morning in MAYFLOWER, but I have noticed at least one similarity between the two books.

MAYFLOWER talks about how the Indians recognized almost at once the large number of possessions the English had, and began craving most of those things themselves. The English took advantage of this as away of encouraging trade- they wanted to but furs to ship to England, and they wanted to buy land for their growing population.

In particular, the Indians craved flintlock guns. The pilgrims brought with them matchlock guns, which were an earlier technology. Most Indians could actually shoot arrows faster, more accurately, and more scrumptiously, than the English could fire their matchlocks. But the Indians recognized a superior weapon in flintlocks, and the English were glad to sell them so they could get more fur.

But within a few decades the fur bearing animals were almost gone from New England, and when they were the Indians had lost much of their sustainability on the land. They still farmed, but they had sold much of their land in order to buy the English things they admired.

The connection with SHOPPING FOR PORCUPINES is that Kantner, a Caucasian, states that in Alaska the natives likewise were eager to acquire material things, even many things that did not contribute to making a living in the arctic (such as snowmobiles, boats and guns). While Kantner grew up in an igloo and leaned many of the native ways of living, most of his native neighbors were quick to give up the practices that had sustained them for millennium.

The remainder of my comments here refers to a particular narrative in MAYFLOWER.

The book is well-written and easily holds the reader’s interest. Philbrick offers many insights into the fluid nature of the relationship between the Puritans and the Indians. The pages I read this morning dealt with an incident in the so-called “King Philip’s War,” 1675-76.

In February of 1676 two-thousand Indians were fleeing north to reconnoiter with another group of Indians, to take refuge, and to evade a troop of 600 English Cavalry. Philbrick says, “It was a scene worthy of Exodus.” His facts are based on an account written by one of their captives, Mary Rowlandson, a minister’s wife.

“Keeping two thousand Native men, women, and children ahead of a mounted English army might seem out of the question. But as Mary Rowlandson witnessed firsthand, the Indians knowledge of the land and their talent for working cooperatively under extraordinary duress made them more than a match for the fleetest of English forces.” (p. 293)

Rowlandson’s account tells how they crossed a swollen icy river by building rafts and then piling the rafts high with brush so that most crossed without ever getting so much as a foot wet.

In fact, Philbrick reports that when the Puritans arrived at the river, they were afraid to cross and pursued the Indians no further (as perhaps Pharaoh’s army would have been wise to decide in the original Exodus!)

One more element reminded me of the Exodus, in particular the account of manna in the desert:

“It was the third week of her captivity, and Rowlandson’s hunger was such that she greedily ate what she had earlier regarded as “filthy trash,” form groundnuts and corn husks to the rancid offal of a long-dead horse. Rowlandson was often on the edge of starvation, but so were her captors, whose ability to extract sustenance from the seemingly barren winter landscape seemed nothing less than a God-ordained miracle. ‘(S)trangely did the Lord provide for them,” she wrote, ‘that I did not see (all the time that I was among them) one man, woman or child die with hunger’” (p. 294)

Philbrick later quotes Rowlandson’s account of their arrival at their destination “But now I may say as Psalm 137, ‘By the Rivers of Babylon…(I) wept.”” (p. 295)

George R. Pasley
January 2, 2009