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Painting courtesy Smithsonian Institution“The First Thanksgiving,” a painting by J.L.G. Ferris, depicts America’s early settlers and Native Americanscelebrating a bountiful harvest.success was a sign of election. Wealth and status Like most Puritans, they interpreted the Biblewere sought not only for themselves, but as literally. They read and acted on the text of thewelcome reassurances of spiritual health and Second Book of Corinthians — “Come out frompromises of eternal life.among them and be ye separate, saith the Lord.”Moreover, the concept of stewardship encouragedsuccess. The Puritans interpreted all things from within, “Separatists” formed undergroundDespairing of purifying the Church of Englandand events as symbols with deeper spiritual “covenanted” churches that swore loyalty to themeanings, and felt that in advancing their own group instead of the king. Seen as traitors to theprofit and their community’s well-being, they king as well as heretics damned to hell, theywere also furthering God’s plans. They did not were often persecuted. Their separation tookdraw lines of distinction between the secular and them ultimately to the New World.religious spheres: All of life was an expression ofthe divine will — a belief that later resurfaces in William Bradford (1590-1657)Transcendentalism.William Bradford was elected governor ofIn recording ordinary events to reveal their Plymouth in the Massachusetts Bay Colony shortlyafter the Separatists landed. He was a deeplyspiritual meaning, Puritan authors commonlycited the Bible, chapter and verse. History was a pious, self-educated man who had learned severallanguages, including Hebrew, in order to “seesymbolic religious panorama leading to thePuritan triumph over the New World and to God’s with his own eyes the ancient oracles of God inkingdom on Earth.their native beauty.” His participation in theThe first Puritan colonists who settled New migration to Holland and the Mayflower voyageEngland exemplified the seriousness of ReformationChristianity. Known as the “Pilgrims,” him ideally suited to be the first historian of histo Plymouth, and his duties as governor, madethey were a small group of believers who had colony. His history, Of Plymouth Plantationmigrated from England to Holland — even then (1651), is a clear and compelling account of theknown for its religious tolerance — in 1608, duringa time of persecutions.view of America is justlycolony’s beginning. His description of the firstfamous:6