Of Pilgrims & Pillorying
By Stephen B. Bagley
I hope if you have to travel during Thanksgiving that you drive carefully. If you take public transportation, ride the bus or train with great caution. Remember only you can prevent forest fires. So stay out of the forest! The chipmunks don’t want you there. They and the squirrels plot against you, and the less said about the devious chipmunks, the better.
I intended to write something about Thanksgiving, but most people know the story of the Pilgrims and their long perilous journey across the ocean. Or they pretend to know it because it’s history and they got plenty of that in high school, thank you very much. To tell something new and exciting about the Pilgrims, one would have to do months of hard research and consult learned scholars. Instead, I’m going to use an easier way that is prominent in today’s society, particularly in Congress: I’m going to make it up.
The Pilgrims left Plymouth, England, in 1620, crossed the ocean in the Mayflower, and landed at Plymouth, America, two months later. They left Plymouth and ended up at Plymouth. How disappointing that must have been and a lesson to us all to never venture out expecting the trip to take us to someplace better than we left.
The Pilgrims were fleeing religious persecution from the governments and churches in Europe. The European religious establishment was quite willing to make ashes out of dissenters by burning them at the stake at huge community gatherings. What a happy time was had by all, not including the spoil-sport heretics who complained loudly.
The Pilgrims were led by John Alden or maybe Miles Standish. I’m a little unclear on this. It could have been Flappy Slapdashy. Look it up. On the trip over, several sailors died. This could have been seen as a bad omen, but the Pilgrims didn’t believe in omens. They also didn’t believe in baths. No, this part is true. They thought baths were sinful and should be taken only once a year—say, for instance, when their undergarments were capable of walking to the water by themselves.
Some modern-day scholars have taken this to mean that the Pilgrims were “stinky and dour” people, like Republicans, but at least the latter isn’t true. In 1637, Warwick William “Willie” Wipingnose smiled in public at a Pilgrim gathering. Twice. He was immediately flogged and pilloried, but he did smile. Okay, I’m kidding; he only smiled once. (This leads people to assume the Baptists are directly descended from the Pilgrims due to the decorum of our services, but that isn’t true. We allow smiling AND clapping—as long as it is respectful and quiet and a special occasion. Otherwise, stop it! We don’t come to church to have a good time. Behave!)
Many people are horrified the Pilgrims practiced pillorying, the act of fastening someone in a wooden framework in a public area so the Pilgrims could insult and demean them. You should remember this was long before Facebook and Twitter. The Pilgrims had to make do with what they had. And it was better to be pilloried in the New World than in the Old World. In the latter, they would throw rotten vegetables at the pilloryee. The Pilgrims had no food to spare for such fine sport and had to make do with mud, rocks, and—wait for it—dung. On second thought, it wasn’t better at all.
Besides gathering for pillorying, the Pilgrims held well-attended meetings where they would discuss such matters as starving, religious disputes, starving, who kept writing scarlet letters on the foreheads of sleeping Pilgrims, starving, what exactly was the relationship of Miles Standish to Priscilla Mullens, starving, was John Alden really stalking Priscilla, and, of course, starving.
Why so much talk about starving? you may ask, and let’s assume you did so I can give you the answer. Soon after the Pilgrims arrived in the New World, they discovered, due to bad planning, all the supermarkets were in the Old World. Food got scarce. Several Pilgrims disappeared, but were found in various cooking pots in the Donner home. Everyone laughed in relief. The Donners belched contentedly.
The winter was cold, the wolves were gathering, and the pantry was bare. Disease struck the colony. The colony struck back, but Disease dodged and ran around town, giving the colonists wedgies. That scamp!
Hannibal Donner threw a party and invited all the colonists, but they had grown wise to the Donner family and rose up and cast them out. At least that was the story, and the Pilgrims stuck to it, even though no graves were ever found.
The winter continued, and the colonists continued to starve. But help was just beyond the horizon, or actually just inside the deep, dark woods. Chief…ah...let’s say...Acornugger of the Native American Whatchamacallit Tribe had met the Pilgrims some time ago. He hadn’t liked them, finding them “stinky and dour.” His medicine man Pokeineye had warned him of the white man, saying, “They come in long ships to take our forests and our lands and will drive us before them. Do not let them. Invest in casinos. Sell them plenty of smoking weed.”
For a while, Acornugger led his brave braves against the white men in daring raids, taking tools, clothing, and an entire case of fancy embossed dinner napkins.
Once he—or some other chief, just read on—captured several white men and were putting them to death by bashing in their heads with war clubs. Those wacky Native Americans knew how to party! The last victim was a man named John Smith (possibly not his real name). They pushed Smith down on a tree stump and started to give him a terminal headache when the chief’s daughter Pocahontas threw herself on top of the captive. The chief was overcome by this display of pity and ordered Smith released, although Pocahontas kept insisting she had tripped. (Historians say this story might not be true and the lovely, noble Pocahontas and John Smith were never an item despite what gossipy Priscilla Mullens said.)
Anyway, Chief Acornugger saw that the white people were starving and felt his heart swell with pity, but it turned out to be gas. Instead, Chief Massasoit and the Pokanoket tribe actually brought food to the famished settlers, including corn, fish, lobster, clams, berries, squash, venison, and Pumpkin Spice Twinkies®.
The Pilgrims and Native Americans gathered for a goodwill feast and open slam dance, giving thanks for the food and friendship shared by all. The Pilgrims were so grateful they didn’t steal the land of the Pokanokets until forty-five years later.
And that's the story of the First Thanksgiving. Sort of.
--------------------
From the forthcoming book Floozy Comes Back by Stephen B. Bagley. Copyright 2017. All rights reserved.
No comments:
Post a Comment