Visit Plimoth Plantation

Plimoth Planation is dedicated to recapturing the actual conditions of the first Thanksgiving. The interpreters are schooled in the behavior, dress, manner and worldview of the colonists and native peoples, speak in the authentic dialects of the people they represent and will converse with visitors about their daily lives.

The journey back in time begins at the visitor center, unmistakably in today's world, but go out the back and down a wooded pathway and your steps lead back to the year 1627. The path forks, and one branch leads to Hobbamock's Homesite, where life is as it was for thousands of years before the Pilgrims arrived.

Hobbamock was a Pokanoket Wampanoag who lived in this area with his family in the 1620s. The homesite is a reproduction that centers around dwellings that housed clan members, constructed of saplings stripped of their branches, planted into the earth and bent over and lashed together to form a framework. Shingled with sheets of bark, the fires within could keep the interior heated to 80 degrees Fahrenheit despite frigid New England winter weather outside.

The surrounding land of Plimoth Plantation provides a glimpse of daily activity: corn is growing, a wooden dugout canoe is ready for use in the stream and the fruits of hunting are waiting to be used. An interpreter explains what life was like, and it is a good opportunity for modern-day visitors to understand that the Native Americans who dwelled here were part of a people who were acclimated to the climate, familiar with the resources and skilled in using the fertility of the earth, sea and forest.

The Pilgrims landed in Plymouth in 1620, and the first terrible winter saw more than half of the 102 original colonists dead from exposure and disease. Life was hard for everyone in those days, but all the more difficult for a small band establishing a toehold in a new land. Here is a rare chance to see what the life they built was like.

A visitor to Plimoth Plantation arrives in the year 1627, after the community has had a chance to assume a real structure and identity. The little settlement is inside a protective palisade, guarded at the high end by a small wooden fort that also serves as a meetinghouse, place of worship and jail. In an emergency the entire colony can retreat to this bastion for protection.

From the fort there opens up a vista of the entire village, simple houses fronting on a street free of any paving but the packed earth of walking feet. Pens contain livestock like sheep or cows, while chickens run free in yards and in the street. Each house has its garden, as well as a section of land outside the village proper apportioned by shares. The inhabitants go about their varied daily tasks but willingly stop and talk to new arrivals. Theirs is the knowledge of 1627, however, and they react with puzzlement to references to places and technology unknown in their time.

Enter any dwelling. For instance, that of Edward Winslow, who is a prosperous citizen whose success can be measured by his large house, big enough not only to contain a living room for himself and his wife, but also stalls for his livestock under the same roof. A real bed brought from England or Holland instead of a pallet on a rude frame or on the dirt floor itself, a carved chest and four or five books on a shelf signify his wealth.

Across the street from Plimoth Plantation is the house of Myles Standish. It is much like most of the other dwellings here in New Plymouth: one room, with a loft for storage; a frame of heavy, hand-hewn timbers; thick thatched roof; a hearth with an open chimney above it and walls of wattle and daub-basically interwoven sticks plastered with a mixture of clay, sand and straw. Later these would be sheathed on the outside with siding planks. Each plank had to be sawn from a tree by hand, laboriously, using the great pit saw; but then, everything had to be made by hand, and intensive labor was simply a fact of everyday life.

There are about 15 residences to visit, and a variety to the buildings in the community. Some houses, like that of John and Elinor Billington and their two sons, or the home of Jane and Anthony Annable and their two daughters, look like thatched roofs and nothing more; upon entering, it turns out that they are actually semi-dugouts, a style common in rural England. There are also buildings used as barns for storing salt hay or grain, and the earliest structure built in the village, a common house for a number of families, has since been converted into a forge where the blacksmith, an essential community member, works at his trade while he talks to visitors.

Speak to a woman engaged in her tasks; she'll willingly tell strangers about what she has endured since her voyage here, and how much better life is-at least by the standards of the times, and in comparison to the first difficult years. Elsewhere at Plimoth Plantation one may come across a servant, happy to take time out from hauling water, shoveling manure or cleaning a chicken for cooking to gripe about being marched back and forth, to and fro, in endless militia drilling.

Outside the walled town, back in the present, is a crafts center where visitors can watch artisans make authentic reproduction furniture, baskets and ceramics such as those used in daily life in the days of the colonists.

Plimoth Plantation is a useful reminder of the real roots of Thanksgiving. It's open from April until November and hosts numerous special events and workshops as well as its authentic recreation of life in the early 17th century. Call Plimoth Plantation at 508-746-1622 for further information, or visit their informative Web site for directions, admission costs, and to look at their new interactive features.

Article provided by Homesteader