Plymouth
The Pilgrims End Their Pilgrimage at Plymouth: The most famous congregation of Separatists, fleeing royal wrath, departed for Holland in 1608. ... The Pilgrims did not make their initial landing at Plymouth Rock but undertook a number of preliminary surveys. They finally chose for their site the shore of Plymouth Bay. ... Plymouth proved that the English could maintain themselves in this uninviting region. ... Bustling fishing villages and other settlements did sprout to the north of Plymouth where many people were as much interested in cod as God. Quiet and quaint, Plymouth was never important economically or numerically. ... Far to the north, enterprising fishermen and fur traders had been active on the coast of Maine for a 12 or so years before the founding of Plymouth. ... Shortly before the Pilgrims had arrived at Plymouth in 1620, an epidemic, probably triggered by contact with English fishermen, had swept through the coastal tribes and killed more than ¾ of the native people. Deserted Indian fields, ready for tillage, greeted the Plymouth settlers and scattered skulls and bones provided grim evidence of the impact of the disease. ... The Wampanoag chieftain Massasoit signed a treaty with the Plymouth Pilgrims in 1621 and helped them celebrate the 1st Thanksgiving after the autumn harvests that same year. ... His head was carried on a pike back to Plymouth, where it was mounted on grisly display for years. ... It consisted of the 2 Massachusetts colonies (the Bay Colony and Plymouth) and the 2 Connecticut colonies (New Haven and the scattered valley settlements).