Read Ebook: Chosen Peoples Being the First Arthur Davis Memorial Lecture delivered before the Jewish Historical Society at University College on Easter-Passover Sunday 1918/5678 by Zangwill Israel

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Editor's introduction vii

EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION

The coming of the Pilgrims and their establishment of the Plymouth Plantation is one of the great adventures in the American experience. This book is the earliest published account of that adventure, a day-by-day journal written in a simple forceful manner by men who took part in it. The story is familiar--deceptively familiar, in that portions of it have undergone a complex process of transformation and emerge as modern myths in our national folklore. Still it is a story full of glory, and of tragedy, which deserves a wider public.

The glory, as usual, exists mostly in retrospect. The Separatists had already shown the courage of their convictions in defying both Church and State by worshiping in their own way in England. They had finally been driven to take refuge in Holland, the only European nation where they could then enjoy complete religious tolerance. After twelve years of poverty and social isolation in Amsterdam and Leyden, the self-styled "Saints" sought the New World largely as a land of economic opportunity where they hoped to start afresh. Similar motives undoubtedly moved the "Strangers," the motley group of fellow travelers who joined the party at Plymouth, England, and doubled their numbers. The "Strangers" were loyal to the Church of England, as were the few indentured servants and hired men, who soon comprised a dissident faction. They cared no more for freedom of conscience than did the "merchant adventurers," a joint stock company of about seventy London businessmen who sponsored the plantation only as a commercial venture likely to yield high profits.

Some have read the "Mayflower Compact" as the glorious cornerstone of American democracy, but it seems hardly revolutionary in context here where it first appeared in print. The fact that the Pilgrims enjoyed warm relations with some Indians is also much to their credit, but it may reflect the charity of the Indians at least as much as their own benevolence. Still one cannot belittle the achievement of these simple people. They consistently showed resourcefulness in coping with new problems, and courage in the face of danger. The greatest glory of the Pilgrims may well have been the ardent faith and dogged persistence which saw them through great tragedy.

Although there is little talk of tragedy in this volume, we know that more than half of the original party died during the first year at Plymouth. Considering their primitive living conditions, it is a wonder that so many did survive the "general sickness" while wading to and from the shallop, and working hard to develop new skills in the harsh and alien environment of a strenuous New England winter. Another tragedy is only presaged here, in the white man's facile rationalization of his usurpation of lands which had long been used by Indians. Within the span of a single lifetime, the indigenous peoples were dispossessed, and their way of life did not long survive after the mutually debilitating "King Philip's War." The tragedy and the glory of Pilgrims and Indians alike emerge in a careful reading of this journal.

Any good book must mean many things to many readers, and this journal offers more than just reflections of past glories and intimations of great tragedy. It is a primary source for American history in that critical period when a beach-head of Anglo culture was established in the New World. In this volume are the earliest accounts of the "Mayflower Compact," the establishment of a community which has become focal in our national heritage, the signing of this country's first mutual security pact, and the famous first Thanksgiving. There is no question of the book's essential authenticity, and most of it has the flavor of having been written on the spot at the time.

This sense of immediacy also enhances the value of the journal as a well written story of true adventure. The protagonists quietly suppressed an impending mutiny, even before they landed. While exploring the unknown wastes of Cape Cod, they conducted archeological excavations before they had a roof over their heads. They were attacked by Indians, and yet persisted, built their homes in a foreign land, and soon traveled freely among the natives. This is high adventure indeed!

The journal may also be viewed as a valuable ethnographic document. Although previous sporadic contacts by explorers and traders had yielded some impressionistic descriptions, the Pilgrims were the first Europeans to be in close and sustained contact with the Indians of southern New England. At first they expected only hostility from the "savages," but it was not long before they found valuable helpers in Squanto and Samoset, both of whom had learned already some English when they were kidnapped and sold as slaves by English traders. The Pilgrims were obliged to work out a modus vivendi with these "tall and proper men" whose dress seemed outlandish, whose foods were strange, and whose customs were curious enough to deserve description. We are indebted to the authors of this journal for a wealth of information about such patterns during the brief period before they disappeared forever. There are many aspects of the native ways of life of which the Pilgrims were unaware, and others which they treated with only tantalizing brevity, but a wealth of irreplaceable ethnographic data in this volume serves to illuminate our fragmentary understanding of coastal Algonquian cultures.

Just as we can learn much about the Indians from this book, we can also gain rich insights into the character of the Pilgrims themselves. Mention of the threat of mutiny explodes the hoary myth of dedicated unity of purpose among all members of the party. The bravery of the Pilgrims emerges in bold relief, as does their readiness to rob the graves of Indians. In light of this text, their industriousness cannot be doubted. Flashes of humor occur, and their strong sense of being a "chosen people" is clearly manifest in recurrent references to a felicitous "divine providence."

"Human interest" is not lacking either. We can imagine the chagrin of William Bradford unwittingly caught up in a deer snare, just as we can sympathize with the consternation created when a prankish boy fired his father's musket in a ship's cabin where open kegs of gunpowder lay about. It is easy to feel for the "old woman whom we judged to be no less than a hundred years old" who wept because "she was deprived of the comfort of her children in her old age" when Capt. Hunt kidnapped her three sons. And how his playmates must have envied the boy who was lost on Cape Cod, and was returned by the Nauset Indians, "behung with beads"!

Five "relations" constitute the major portion of the book, and none of these is signed. The first and longest, on "The proceedings of the plantation ...," begins with the departure from Plymouth, England, and recounts events of the next six months, including the voyage, the signing of the "compact," the several "discoveries," the choice of a site and the building there, as well as early contacts with the Indians, culminating in the signing of a peace treaty with Massasoit. A second deals with "A journey to Pokanoket ..." and describes further friendly dealings with the Wampanoag Indians. The next treats "A voyage ... to the Kingdom of Nauset, to seek a boy that had lost himself in the woods...." An account of "A journey to Nemasket ..." shows how the Pilgrims sought to defend their Indian allies against the hostile Narragansets, and "A relation of our voyage to the Massachusets ..." describes the expansion of trade relations to the north.

It is suggested that he had at some time been associated with the authors of the relations, whom he called "my both known and faithful friends." It is also suggested that he had long hoped to emigrate to the New World, "... as myself then much desired, and shortly hope to effect, if the Lord will, the putting to of my shoulder in this hopeful business." These criteria clearly apply to Robert Cushman, who, as we have seen, was a person who might appropriately have introduced such a book.

The specifications also apply to another member of the Leyden congregation who was active in negotiating with the "merchant adventurers" until he did sail to Plymouth, on the first ship bound for the plantation after the book was printed. If no more than the initials had been given in the signature to the introduction--as was the case in every other portion of the volume--there would be little hesitation to identify the author as George Morton.

My intention is to provide the contemporary reader with an appreciation of this exciting book as it was received by an eager and curious public when it was first published almost three and a half centuries ago. In keeping with this aim, the entire text is included here, in the order of the original. So that the authors may speak forcefully and directly to the reader of today, I have introduced only uniform spelling, punctuation, and paragraphing, structural niceties which were of no concern to authors or printers until late in the eighteenth century. The eloquent English language of the period is familiar to us all, through the King James version of the Bible or the works of Shakespeare, and I have scrupulously left each word intact. The text, then, is reproduced verbatim, including marginalia, chapter headings, and running heads, altered only by the use of modern orthography for the sake of clarity.

I have deliberately avoided distracting the reader from the original text, by introducing a minimum of footnotes. Some annotation seems indispensable for understanding the work of another age, but this edition does not bear the tender burden of scholarly disquisition. Modern equivalents are given for archaic words and place-names, and I have offered brief explanations of a few outdated allusions. Dates are retained as in the original, so that ten days must be added to any date given in the text in order to fit it into the modern Gregorian calendar, which was not adopted by England and her colonies until 1752.

An adventure such as this rightfully belongs to all who would chase rainbows!

SAMUEL DE CHAMPLAIN'S MAP OF PLYMOUTH HARBOR

Although the Pilgrims were the first Europeans to establish a permanent colony in northeastern North America, they did not come to an unknown land. As early as 1605, Samuel de Champlain had mapped Plymouth Harbor, in the course of a three-year expedition during which he explored the coast from Nova Scotia to Martha's Vineyard. The quality of his detailed and accurate observations on the land and people appears in this map, and in his notes on the visit: "There came to us two or three canoes, which had just been fishing for cod and other fish which are found there in large numbers. These they catch with hooks made of a piece of wood, to which they attach a bone in the shape of a spear and fasten it very securely. The whole has a fang-shape, and the line attached to it is made out of the bark of a tree. They gave me one of their hooks, which I took out of curiosity. In it the bone was fastened on by hemp, like that in France, as it seemed to me, and they told me that they gathered this plant without being obliged to cultivate it, and indicated that it grew to the height of four or five feet. This canoe went back on shore to give notice to their fellow inhabitants, who caused columns of smoke to arise on our account. We saw eighteen or twenty savages, who came to the shore and began to dance. Our canoe landed in order to give them some bagatelles, at which they were greatly pleased. Some of them came to us and begged us to go to their river. We weighed anchor to do so, but were unable to enter on account of the small amount of water, it being low tide, and were accordingly obliged to anchor at the mouth. I went ashore, where I saw many others, who received us very cordially. I made also an examination of the river, but saw only an arm of water extending a short distance inland, where the land is only in part cleared. Running into this is merely a brook not deep enough for boats except at full tide. The circuit of the bay is about a league. On one side of the entrance to this bay there is a point which is almost an island, covered with wood, principally pines, and adjoins sandbanks, which are very extensive. On the other side, the land is high. There are two islets in this bay, which are not seen until one has entered, and around which it is almost entirely dry at low tide. This place is very conspicuous from the sea, for the coast is very low, excepting the cape at the entrance to the bay. We named it the Port du Cap. St. Louis...".

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH'S MAP OF NEW ENGLAND

Capt. Smith, who had already gained some fame and fortune in Virginia, dedicated to Prince Charles this effort in which the term "New England" first appeared: "... it being my chance to range some other parts of America, whereof I here present your highness the description in a map, my humble suit is you would please to change their barbarous names for such English, as posterity may say Prince Charles was their godfather." Several English place-names were incorporated in the map, but posterity disregarded most of them, a noteworthy exception being "Plimouth." Smith notes that the Indians called the site "... Accomack, an excellent good harbor, good land, and no want of any thing but industrious people," recalling that "After much kindness, upon a small occasion we fought also with 40 or 50 of those ; though some were hurt and some slain, yet within an hour after, they became friends."

AS ALSO A RELATION OF FOUR several discoveries since made by some of the same English Planters there resident.

With an answer to all such objections as ere were only a single God, and He a God of justice and the world, how could He be confined to Israel? The Mission could not but come. The true God, urges Mr. Wells, has no scorn or hatred for those who seek Him through idols. That is exactly what Ibn Gabirol said in 1050. But those blind seekers needed guiding. Religion, in fact, not race, has always been the governing principle in Jewish history. "I do not know the origin of the term Jew," says Dion Cassius, born in the second century. "The name is used, however, to designate all who observe the customs of this people, even though they be of different race." Where indeed lay the privilege of the Chosen People when the Talmud defined a non-idolater as a Jew, and ranked a Gentile learned in the Torah as greater than the High Priest? Such learned proselytes arose in Aquila and Theodotion each of whom made a Greek version of the Bible; while the orthodox Jew hardly regards his Hebrew text as complete unless accompanied by the Aramaic version popularly ascribed to the proselyte Onkelos. The disagreeable references to proselytes in Rabbinic literature, the difficulties thrown in their way, and the grotesque conception of their status towards their former families, cannot counterbalance the fact, established by Radin in his learned work, "The Jews Among the Greeks and Romans," that there was a carefully planned effort of propaganda. Does not indeed Jesus tell the Pharisees: "Ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte"? Do not Juvenal and Horace complain of this Judaising? Were not the Idumeans proselytised almost by force? "The Sabbath and the Jewish fasts," says Lecky, doubtless following Josephus, "became familiar facts in all the great cities." And Josephus himself in that answer to Apion, which Judaism has strangely failed to rank as one of its greatest documents, declares in noble language: "There ought to be but one Temple for one God ... and this Temple common to all men, because He is the common God of all men."

When Israel was a child, then I loved him, And out of Egypt I called My son.

But it is in the glowing, poetic soul of Jehuda Ha-Levi that this election of Israel, like the passion for Palestine, finds its supreme and uncompromising expression. "Israel," declares the author of the "Cuzari" in a famous dictum, "is among the nations like the heart among the limbs." Do not imagine he referred to the heart as a pump, feeding the veins of the nations--Harvey was still five centuries in the future--he meant the heart as the centre of feeling and the symbol of the spirit. And examining the question why Israel had been thus chosen, he declares plumply that it is as little worthy of consideration as why the animals had not been created men. This is, of course, the only answer. The wind of creation and inspiration bloweth where it listeth. As Tennyson said in a similar connection:

And if it is so, so it is, you know, And if it be so, so be it!

The stages of growth are still more clearly marked in English history. That national self-consciousness which to-day gives itself the mission of defending the liberties of mankind, and which stands in the breach undaunted and indomitable, began with that mere insular patriotism which finds such moving expression in the paean of Shakespeare:

This happy breed of men, this little world, This precious stone set in the silver sea, . . . . . . . This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England, . . . . . . . This land of such dear souls, this dear, dear land.

This sense of itself had been born only in the thirteenth century, and at first the growing consciousness of national power, though it soon developed an assurance of special protection--"the favour of the love of Heaven," wrote Milton in his "Areopagitica," "we have great argument to think in a peculiar manner propitious and propending towards us"--was tempered by that humility still to be seen in the liturgy of its Church, which ascribes its victories not to the might of the English arm, but to the favour of God. But one hundred and twenty-five years after Shakespeare, the land which the Elizabethan translators of the Bible called "Our Sion," and whose mission, according to Milton, had been to sound forth "the first tidings and trumpet of reformation to all Europe," had sunk to the swaggering militarism that found expression in "Rule, Britannia."

When Britain first at Heaven's command Arose from out the azure main, This was the charter of the land, And guardian angels sung this strain: Rule, Britannia, rule the waves; Britons never will be slaves.

The nations not so blest as thee Must in their turn to tyrants fall; While thou shalt flourish, great and free, The dread and envy of them all.

To thee belongs the rural reign, Thy cities shall with commerce shine: All thine shall be the subject main, And every shore it circles, thine.

It is the true expression of its period--a period which Sir John Seeley in his "Expansion of England" characterizes as the period of the struggle with France for the possession of India and the New World: there were no less than seven wars with France, for France had replaced Spain in that great competition of the five western maritime States of Europe for Transatlantic trade and colonies, in which Seeley sums up the bulk of two centuries of European history. Well may Mr. Chesterton point to the sinking of the Armada as the date when an Old Testament sense of being "answered in stormy oracles of air and sea" lowered Englishmen into a Chosen People. Shakespeare saw the sea serving England in the modest office of a moat: it was now to be the high-road of Empire. The Armada was shattered in 1588. In 1600 the East India Company is formed to trade all over the world. In 1606 is founded the British colony of Virginia and in 1620 New England. It helps us to understand the dual and conflicting energies stimulated in the atmosphere of celestial protection, if we recall that it was in 1604 that was initiated the great Elizabethan translation of the Bible.

The soldier taught that inward mail to wear And fearing God, how they should nothing fear?

The fact is that great and masterful souls identify themselves with the universe. And so do great and masterful nations. It is a dangerous tendency.

At the death of Queen Anne England stood at the top of the nations. But it was a greatness tainted by the slave-trade abroad, and poverty, ignorance, and gin-drinking at home. We recapture the atmosphere of "Rule, Britannia" when we recall that Thomson wrote it to the peals of the joy-bells and the flare of the bonfires by which the mob celebrated its forcing Walpole into a war to safeguard British trade in the Spanish main. Seeley claims, indeed, that the growth of the Empire was always sub-conscious or semi-conscious at its best. This is not wholly true, for in "The Masque of Alfred" in which "Rule, Britannia" is enshrined, Thomson displays as keen and exact a sense of the lines of England's destiny as Seeley acquired by painful historic excogitation. For after a vision which irresistibly recalls the grosser Hebrew prophecies:

I see thy commerce, Britain, grasp the world: All nations serve thee; every foreign flood, Subjected, pays its tribute to the Thames,

he points to the virgin shores "beyond the vast Atlantic surge" and cries:

This new world, Shook to its centre, trembles at her name: And there her sons, with aim exalted, sow The seeds of rising empire, arts, and arms.

Britons, proceed, the subject deep command, Awe with your navies every hostile land. Vain are their threats, their armies all are vain: They rule the balanced world who rule the main.

The Lord our God Most High, He hath made the deep as dry, He hath smote for us a pathway to the ends of all the earth.

But it is only as the instrument of His purpose, and that purpose is characteristically practical.

And it is a true picture of British activities. Even thus has England on the whole ruled the territories into which adventure or economic motives drew her. The very Ambassador from Germany, Prince Lichnowsky, agrees with Rhodes that the salvation of mankind lies in British imperialism. But note how the less spiritual factors are ignored, how the prophet presents his people as a nation of pioneer martyrs, how the mission, finally become conscious of itself, gilds with backward rays the whole path of national advance, as the trail of light from the stern of a vessel gives the illusion that it has come by a shining road. Missions are not discovered till they are already in action. Not unlike those archers of whom the Talmud wittily says, they first shoot the arrow and then fix the target, nations ascribe to themselves purposes of which they were originally unconscious. First comes the tingling consciousness of achievement and power, then a glamour of retrospective legend to explain and justify it. Thus it is that that great struggle for sea-power to which Spain, Portugal, Holland, England, and France all contributed maritime genius and boundless courage, becomes transformed under the half-accidental success of one nation into an almost religious epic of a destined wave-ruler. There could not be a finer British spirit than Mr. Chesterton's fallen friend, the poet Vern?de, yet even he writes:--

God grant to us the old Armada weather.

Thomson was not poet enough--nor the eighteenth century na?ve enough--to create a legend in sober earnest. But the fact that he throws "Rule, Britannia" eight centuries back to the time of Alfred the Great, before whom this glorious pageant of his country's future is prophetically unrolled, serves to illustrate the retrospective habit of national missions.

The history of England is brief, and the mission evolved in her seven centuries has not yet finally shaped itself, is indeed now shaping itself afresh in the furnace of war. Her poets have not always troubled with the soul of her. They have often, as Courthope complained of Keats, turned away from her destinies to

Magic casements opening on the foam Of fa?ry lands in perilous seas forlorn.

If it is suggested that to explain the Bible by men and nations under its spell is to reason in a circle, the answer is that the biblical vocabulary merely provides a medium of expression for a universal tendency. Claudian, addressing the Emperor Theodosius, wrote:--

O nimium dilecte deo, cui militat aether.

The Egyptian god Ammon, in the great battle epic of Rameses II, assured the monarch:--

Lo, I am with thee, my son; fear not, Ramessu Miammon! Ra, thy father, is with thee, his hand shall uphold thee in danger, More am I worth unto thee than thousands and thousands of soldiers.

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