Today was a shortened day but still packed with knowledgeable information. We touched on when the "Three Worlds Collide" from the European point of view. From Kindergarten we all learn about the pilgrims setting forth across the Atlantic Ocean in search of new land and hence landing on Plymouth Rock. As an adult American if you do not know this basic historical information then you should be ashamed of yourself. But today's class dug in a bit more deeper on the subject getting into the meat of the story.
Some time ago my family and I watched a show on PBS about how protestant emerged from the Catholic faith. Since I grew up in a catholic home, but now consider myself protestant, I was interested in how the church evolved. Henry the 8th was mentioned as a main factor in allowing England to have a protestant faith due to his anger at the catholic church for not allowing him to divorce one of his wives. Our professor talked about that a little bit and I was thinking to myself, YES! I KNOW THIS! I UNDERSTAND WHAT HE IS TALKING ABOUT! Henry the 8th could probably care less on which religious stand point he took as long as it would benefit him. Therefore he still kept bishops in place to help his throne rule.
The puritians didn't like this. Their goal was to purify the Catholic church. They set out looking for new land so they can worship the Bible freely without the government telling them to learn the Bible certain ways. They wanted to read the Bible on their own and study from it versus the Bishops telling them what the Bible says and the rules from it.
Now I have read somewhere, and please correct me if I am wrong, that the pilgrims coming over were supposed to be indentured servants to the area around Jamestown. This way they can get their own land after they served as slaves for a few years. A storm came and blew them off course and they landed, unprepared, on Plymouth Rock. Actually, they hit a swampy area first then moved down along the coast and found a more suitable piece of land to dock at. Since they were not prepared for winter season, (because they were supposed to be in Jamestown area) they didn't have the means to survive and majority of them died. When they landed they thought, "we don't know where we are at but we don't have to be indentured servants and we can start our own town and have the freedom to worship God as we wish." It was a strict way of life.
There is an recent article that the professor mentioned where the pilgrims were cannibals or resorted for cannibalist ways to survive. Cannibal is a term widely used for eating human flesh. There is another term that I learned while watching an info-show about the Uruguayan Flight 571 that was carrying a rugby team that crashed in the Andes (the movie Alive is based on it). True, they ate human flesh but they did not kill for the flesh. They already at the dead. That is called Endocannibalism. Donner Party that was wagon training to California had the same thing happen. They ate the dead to survive. I don't believe they killed anyone for their meat. I can see where the pilgrims would do the same thing. They had to survive and they didn't have the means to live out a bitter winter. They would take the dead and cook them. They weren't cannibal's in the since where they were out killing each other for food. They were just using to sources that they had on them which were the dead bodies. I heard most of the survivors were children. If you put the story of them being cannibals and then remembering that most of the survivors were children this could turn out to be another "Children of the Corn" or "Lord of the Flies" type of Hollywood movie. I can see the title of the movie now, "Silence of the Pilgrims" and the cover can show older children, wearing the traditional pilgrim garb, all standing around a Thanksgiving dinner spread over a table. One child would look like he was getting ready to carve into a turkey with blood dripping off the knife and instead of a turkey it would be grandma. Sorry, I can be morbid at times.
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