Editorial: A harvest of food and spirit

Wednesday, Nov. 27, 2002 | 9:18 a.m.

The pilgrims who left Plymouth, England, on Sept. 6, 1620, would have no doubt preferred a modern-day cruise ship, even one of the few of late that have been contaminated by the Norwalk-like virus. Exchanging their cramped and Spartan quarters aboard the Mayflower for the luxury of private rooms, hot meals, and nonstop entertainment would have been well worth the risk of a few days of gastrointestinal upheavals. But hardship was their fate -- a fate inextricably linked to America's future generations.

Winter on the Atlantic was hard enough, as can be imagined from the fact that they had set sail for Virginia and were blown north to Massachusetts. Winter in New England was to be much harder, with human nature as difficult as Mother Nature. Long before arriving at Provincetown Harbor, the freedom seekers had split into factions and even while anchored they argued strenuously about how to live once upon land. This led to the Mayflower Compact, signed in the ship's cabin by most of the male adults aboard. It bound all of them together under a set of written rules. Central to the compact was that it would change as necessity dictated, and that the changes would come from among them -- a bold new concept in an age of monarchies. The compact was the birth of democracy in America, the root from which sprang the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

After the winter of 1620-21, the surviving pilgrims -- about half of them didn't make it through -- were saved by Indians, who taught them how to forage, fertilize the ground and plant seeds. The following fall harvest turned into a horn of plenty, and their celebration with the Indians was the birth of traditional Thanksgiving in America. Part of our celebration Thursday should be a toast to the overcoming of hardship and strife, which not only brought forth the food on our tables but our whole way of life.