Plymouth and the Pilgrims
Did you know that Plymouth is a colony founded on December 16, 1620? Well it is and without it there might not be present day Massachusetts. This paper will explore Plymouth's history, geography, challenges, and successes.
The Long Ride
The people who arrived in Massachusetts from England are called the Pilgrims. They are called that because they came for religious freedom. Pilgrim is the name for someone who travels for religious reasons. The people who came weren't just Pilgrims, half were merchants, doctors, and other workers. The Pilgrims came to America because they wanted to have a choice to go to the church they wanted or to not be religious at all.
The Pilgrims came on the Mayflower, which was a tiny ship that held one hundred thirty two people. Thirty four of them were children. The journey was long and it was really cramped. There were also two dogs on the Mayflower and one cat to eat the mice on board. The children played some games and everyone read books but they were all adult books. On the Mayflower, everyone sang songs, especially the sailors. 
Land Ahoy
The Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock and that's why the Pilgrims called their settlement Plymouth. Plymouth is located in Massachusetts near Cape Cod Bay. It was rainy and it had lots of trees so the Pilgrims could make their houses out of logs. Because of all this wood, it was a lot easier to survive the cold winters, and keep the strong winds from coming in. 
You think that Plymouth Rock would be huge but it really fits one person sitting on it!
Meeting the Native Neighbors
The Pilgrims lived extremely close to the Wampanoag tribe (Native Americans). The Pilgrims made a peace treaty to not fight with the Wampanoags. This peace treaty was to prevent war between the two tribes. Squanto was the Native American who went to Plymouth to make the treaty.
The Pilgrims taught Native Americans how to shoot guns. The Wampanoags taught the Pilgrims how to farm good corn, get sweet sap from trees, catch fish and use a bow. It seems that the Pilgrims learned so much more from the Wampanoags.
Did you know that even with the treaty a pilgrim took Squanto as a slave?
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The Starving Time
On the Mayflower, before the Pilgrims landed they made a compact (a law) and the Pilgrims called it the Mayflower Compact. It was like the Constitution of the United States. It wasn't easy living in Colonial Times because English people wanted more lands or more money so they would fight each other for it. The Mayflower Compact was made so people wouldn’t rob or do other bad things to each other in the New World.
A challenge the Pilgrims had in Plymouth was harsh winters. When they first arrived, it was too late to plant crops so there was not enough food for all the Pilgrims to eat. It was also a snowy, cold winter so they froze. The first winter, one hundred and two pilgrims died! That winter there were few people strong enough to help build houses for the other Pilgrims. How sad that so many Pilgrims died. This researcher feels like they didn’t expect the cold, snowy ground.
Another hardship is a fisherman got a sickness and it spread and killed all of Squanto's tribe, the Wampanoags. That meant less help from the Wampanoags. This sickness was called the Fisherman Disease.
The next couple of years were great at Plymouth. .In November of 1620, there was Thanksgiving (a big feast) and it lasted three whole days. The Pilgrims actually didn't have enough food so the Wampanoags brought 5 deer. The Pilgrims invited the Wampanoags because of all the help from them over the year.
This researcher thinks the Pilgrims had a crazy and hard life but it must be really cool to make history. This researcher wouldn't have wanted to be there because more than a hundred people died and because there were sickness that they couldn't fix and so much physical work.
The Happy End
So now you know what the life of the Pilgrims was like with all their hardships, geography, history of how they got to Plymouth, and living there. Would you want to live at Plymouth and make history or not?
