Where did the Pilgrims land in America?
On November 21, 1620, the Mayflower reached North America’s shores. It had sailed for ten weeks across the Atlantic, bringing 102 passengers searching for a place free from the Roman Catholic Church.
Pilgrims were complete separatists. They believed the Catholic Church was too corrupt to be reformed. Over the last two years, the passengers had left England for the Netherlands, then gathered the funds to immigrate to the “New World” and establish Plymouth Colony. They were given permission to settle in the Colony of Virginia, then owned by the Company of Merchant Adventurers.
Strong winter winds had forced their ship northward, first sighting land off what is now Cape Cod. Though they tried to sail south, the harsh winter seas forced them to set anchor at what is now First Encounter Beach in Provincetown. They spent the next month exploring the area, finally deciding to settle in an area now called Plymouth on what was the site a former Wampanoag village (Patuxet).
The Wampanoag had left only a few years prior after an epidemic decimated their population, though there was likely still evidence of their occupation when the Pilgrims arrived. Settling atop Indigenous villages was a common practice of early European settlers, since Indigenous sites-like Patuxet-were ideal. Patuxet (now Plymouth) had easy access to fresh water and high-quality lumber while being easily defensible atop a hill.
Within a few years, the Pilgrims built a village and fort on a hill near the bay. The settlement was in use until the 1680s, at which point it became a burial ground known as Burial Hill. Though this history was passed down orally and in some written records, the original settlement became buried by time. Subsequent development-graves, houses, farm buildings, and later city buildings-further obscured the site. By the twentieth century, Burial Hill was known as the Pilgrim’s first home, but no one had evidence to show exactly where the village and fort had been.
Early Accounts and Maps
The Pilgrims were literate and recorded their journey in the New World. One of the more extensive accounts is by William Bradford, who produced a sketch of the town as it was built in 1620 (see below). His sketch shows a town laid out at the intersection of a “streete” and a “high way.” It includes seven lots, allocated to Peter Brown, John Goodman, William Brewster, John Billington, Isaak Allerton, Francis Cooke, and Edward Winslow.
It’s important to remember that the Pilgrims were some of the first Europeans to encounter and explore what is now New England. Contemporary depictions of the region like Bradford’s were colored by what the Pilgrims knew, which didn’t include how their settlement fit into the continent (since they had not explored it and satellites did not exist!).
The first written account about the site by an outsider was by Englishman John Pory. He visited in 1623 and remarked on the “substantial palisade about their [town] of 2700 foot in compass” and a blockhouse at the highest point in town. Pory also provided details about the surrounding land, stating that a small river ran under the town into a lake about a mile wide, and that within two miles were freshwater ponds and lakes, both providing substantial amounts of fish. Another visitor in 1623-Englishman Emmanuel Altham-provided a report that the colony had about twenty houses, all within the fortifications atop Burial Hill, and was stocked with goats, hogs, pigs, and hens.
In 1627, Dutch explorer Isaack de Rasieres visited Plymouth. The colony was growing, recently expanding belong the fort by granting one acre to each person for private family use. In a letter to Samuel Blommaert back in Denmark, de Rasieres described the settlement:
New Plymouth lies on the slope of a hill stretching east towards the sea-coast, with a broad street about a cannon shot of 800 feet long, leading down the hill; with a [street] crossing in the middle, northwards to the rivulet and southwards to the land. The houses are constructed of clapboards, with gardens also enclosed behind and at the sides with clapboards, so that their houses and courtyards are arranged in very good order, with a stockade against sudden attack; and at the ends of the streets there are three wooden gates. In the center, on the cross street, stands the Governor’s house [Bradford], before which is a square stockade upon which four patereros are mounted, so as to enfilade the streets. Upon the hill they have a large square house with a flat roof, built of thick sawn planks stayed with oak beams, upon the top of which they have six cannon, which shoot iron balls of four and five pounds, and command the surrounding country. The lower part they use for their church, where they preach on Sundays and the usual holidays. . . .
While the written evidence above is quite helpful in understanding what to look for to confirm the site’s existence, none of the descriptions provide enough evidence to say exactly where on Burial Hill the fort was located. This is where archaeological work takes over.
Archaeological Discovery
The Pilgrims utilized local natural resources to build their first settlement. This meant their homes were built from wood, which decomposes over time. Without the use of bricks or stone foundations, the remains of their first settlement were not easy for archaeologists to find. It required finding “post holes”-small holes where wooden posts marked the corners of buildings or fortifications-in association with fragments of pottery, metal, or other goods known to have been brought aboard the Mayflower.
In 2015, a team of archaeologists led by David Landon from the UMass Boston’s Andrew Fiske Memorial Center for Archaeological Research discovered a settlement strongly linked to the Pilgrims. Located at Burial Hill in downtown Plymouth, Massachusetts, the site had been under excavation for three seasons when links to the Pilgrims were finally solidified. This evidence was darkened soil deposits that demonstrate the presence of post holes-called “post and ground construction”-typical of European settlers at the time.
Archaeologists also found artifacts dating to the 1600s, including pottery, tins, trade beads, and musket balls. Since the artifacts were found in association with post holes, it became clear that their excavation was an early site of European settlement. They also found a domesticated calf buried whole (which they nicknamed “Constance”). Given the region’s known history, and since only Europeans domesticated cattle, the link to the Pilgrims was established.
Archaeological work at the site, known as Burial Hill, is ongoing as part of the Project 400: The Plymouth Colony Archaeological Survey. This project seeks to understand both the Pilgrim’s settlement and the surrounding lands — including Indigenous sites that interacted with Plymouth Colony.
Notably, in 2015, archaeologists found evidence of an Indigenous tool-making workshop dating to the Woodland period (500 BC to 1100 AD). The workshop demonstrated that Indigenous peoples had occupied the site at least 500 years before the Pilgrims arrived.
Sources
Cultural Resource Management Study №75a: Project 400: The Plymouth Colony Archaeological Survey Public Summary Report on the 2015 Field Season Burial Hill, Plymouth, Massachusetts. August 2016.
Josh Hrala, “ Archaeologists Think They’ve Found the Pilgrims’ Original 1620 Plymouth Settlement,” Science Alert, December 1, 2016.
Plymouth Town Early Descriptions, 1620–1628, compiled by Patricia Scott Deetz and James Deetz, 2000.
This content is accurate and true to the best of the author’s knowledge at time of publication. © 2022 Tiffany Isselhardt
