Sarah Vowell Meets the Puritans

What did you learn in school about the Puritans?

I remember the Pilgrim story, although I think most of those recollections actually come from the book The Pilgrims' Party by Sadyebeth & Anson Lowitz.


From this book, I learned that before the Pilgrims left England, they disagreed with the king about churches and got thrown in jail, so they left for Holland. But the Pilgrim kids quickly became like Dutch kids, and their parents didn't like that, so they got a ship and and left for America. When they landed at Plymouth, they were greeted by a big rock that smiled at them (seriously, that's what the illustration shows). Then they chopped down a bunch a trees and overnight had a neat little village full of wooden houses.

Soon they were befriended by an Indian named Samoset, who somehow already spoke English. Soon he brought other Indians and then the chief, Massasoit. A boy named Squanto stayed with the Pilgrims, and showed them how to catch game animals and fish, as well as plant corn.


One of the things I remember most about the Puritans' religious services is that they had a big stick with a feather on one end and a round knob on the other: tickles on the nose for the drowsy, knob on the head for the rambunctious.

The Pilgrims grew so much food they didn't know what to do with it, so they decided to have a feast.


The boys and girls got gravy on them and butter from ear to ear. (I remember, I thought all the kids shown in this picture were girls.)


The Indians had a great time at the feast, too, and even brought popcorn, which puzzled the Pilgrims.

So much for the Pilgrims, down in the separate colony of Plymouth. What about Massachusetts or the rest of New England?

I don't remember much about Boston until the years just before the Revolution, sorry. Connecticut I remember from Elizabeth George Speare's novel The Witch of Blackbird Pond, which takes place in Weathersfield, north of Saybrook on the Connecticut River. The novel does a better job of getting across some of the tenets of Puritan beliefs, as well as just how much hard work was involved in their lives. It was also my introduction to Quakers, embodied in the idealized old lady Hannah, complete with kittens, a snug, thatched-roof cottage and the endearing use of "thee" and "thou."

I know I read Jonathan Edwards' "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" in 10th grade English and didn't like it much. (This was right around the time that a singer named Jonathan Edwards had a hit song called "Sunshine," featuring the lyric "He can't even run his own life, I'll be damned if he'll run mine." Even at 15 I found that juxtaposition amusing.) We read something by Cotton Mather, too, but I'm not sure what. From all that, I retained the impression that the Puritans believed in predestination -- that people go to heaven not because of what they do on earth, but because God had picked them from birth. This never made any sense to me at all.

I generally remember that Roger Williams founded Rhode Island for religious freedom, but not really any details. I have some notion that Quakers were involved. Not sure if that's from the elementary or junior high years, or possibly American history in 11th grade. (I imagine my teacher, Mr. Orokos, would be disappointed in how much I remember from his class, despite my 95 average.)

All this was in my mind when I picked up Sarah Vowell's book The Wordy Shipmates, which, like her other writings, is an encounter between a spunky 21st century wordsmith and the places and peoples of the past, this time the Puritan leaders of Boston from the time of its founding through the mid-17th century.

Vowell introduced me to John Winthrop, original governor of Massachusetts and author of the "city on a hill" speech that was freely adapted by Peggy Noonan for Ronald Reagan; Roger Williams in a lot more detail than I had recalled from school; Anne Hutchinson, who was only a name to me. And she told me a lot more about the native populations of Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island than anyone had ever mentioned in social studies.

For the most part, Vowell found that the Puritans viewed the natives as an impediment to God's intended plan for New England, which was to be "His plantation." The non-Puritan English weren't much better; after hearing of the mass deaths of natives from English-spread disease, King James (he of the famous Bible translation) went on record thanking "Almighty God in his great goodness and bounty toward us" for "this wonderful plague among the savages" (page 31).

Seeing disease as divine intervention is bad enough, but it gets worse. A squabble over a mistakenly killed banished Puritan leads to an all-out war between the Bostonians and the Pequot, which results in what is known as the Mystic Fort Massacre. It took place in what is now Groton, Connecticut -- though I never heard of it until this book.

But it's a true massacre. The Puritans attacked a sleeping village and set fire to it, killing every man, woman and child -- 600 to 700 people in all. They guarded the exits with muskets to make sure no one escaped. The Puritan commander wrote of the evening's work, "It is the Lord's doings, and it is marvelous in our eyes!" To which Vowell comments, "That may be the creepiest exclamation point in American literature" (page 194).

At the same time Vowell holds the Puritans accountable for all this, she also sees elements of good in them. While they were early purveyors of the questionable idea of American exceptionalism, it was tempered by their feeling of self-loathing before God. No one knew who the "elect" were who had a predetermined ticket into heaven, after all. Vowell writes, "This humility, this fear, was what kept their delusions of grandeur in check. That's what subsequent generations lost. From New England's Puritans we inherited the idea that America is blessed and ordained by God above all nations, but lost the fear of wrath and retribution" (pages 71-72).

Vowell gives a lively sketch of Roger Williams. More pure than the other Puritans, Williams was offended by the theocracy he saw evolving in Massachusetts, believing that mixing government with religion devalued religion. In her typical acerbic style, Vowell writes, "I just feel sorry for him that he lived in an age before air quotes; maybe he would have calmed down about the use of the word 'Christendom' if he could make sarcastic hand gestures every time he heard or said it" (page 114).

Banished from Boston for his beliefs, Williams ends up in the lands of the Narragansett in what is now Providence, Rhode Island. He depends upon the support and education of the local residents until he gets his bearings, but later spies on them for Boston and ends up turning his back on them in their fight against Boston and Plymouth, even as he translates their language into one of the first Algonquin-English dictionaries and welcomes Jews, Quakers and banished Puritans to Providence.

The closing sections of the book are devoted to Anne Marbury Hutchinson, who, like Williams, was banished from Boston and ended up in Rhode Island. Unlike Williams, though, Hutchinson left no written records. Vowell says, "She suffers the same fate in the historical record as the Pequot; her thoughts and deeds have been passed down to us solely through the writings of white men who pretty much hated her guts" (page 207).

Mother of 15 children and a midwife at the births of many others, Hutchinson dared to hold study groups with other women in which she advocated ideas counter to the official Puritan line. According the proceedings of her trial, Hutchinson sounds as though she heard voices (which she attributed to God... sort of like Michele Bachmann) and had some delusions of grandeur as well (likening herself to the Old Testament's Abraham and Daniel). But she also successfully challenged the logic of her accusers and revealed their hypocrisy (always a way to become popular).

Hutchinson went on to found the city of Portsmouth, Rhode Island, before moving to Dutch-held New Amsterdam, where she and her entire family except one daughter were killed by natives who were at war with the Dutch. (The one daughter is, by coincidence, one of John Kerry's ancestors.)

All in all, The Wordy Shipmates is the type of book that makes history accessible without oversimplifying it. Despite its title (which I find pretty dull, even off-putting, compared to her Assassination Vacation) its contents is as personal and compelling as all of Vowell's works, transforming the remote and hard-to-understand into the real and even imaginable.