The Colonial and Revolutionary Periods 29they looked behind them,” all these “poor people” could see there “was the mighty
ocean which they had passed and was now a main bar and gulf to separate them
from all the civil parts of the world.” “What could now sustain them but the Spirit of
God and His Grace?” Bradford asks rhetorically. The survival of the Puritans during
and after the long voyage to the New World is seen as part of the divine plan. For
Bradford, America was no blessed garden originally, but the civilizing mission of
himself and his colony was precisely to make it one: to turn it into evidence of their
election and God’s infinite power and benevolence.
This inclination or need to see history in providential terms sets up interesting
tensions and has powerful consequences, in Bradford’s book and similar Puritan
narratives. Of Plymouth Plantation includes, as it must, many tales of human error
and wickedness, and Bradford often has immense difficulty in explaining just how
they form part of God’s design. He can, of course, and does fall back on the primal
fact of Original Sin. He can see natural disasters issuing from “the mighty hand of
the Lord” as a sign of His displeasure and a test for His people; it is notable that the
Godly weather storms and sickness far better than the Godless do in this book, not
least because, as Bradford tells it, the Godly have a sense of community and faith in
the ultimate benevolence of things to sustain them. Nevertheless, Bradford is hard
put to it to explain to himself and the reader why “sundry notorious sins” break out
so often in the colony. Is it that “the Devil may carry a greater spite against the
churches of Christ and the Gospel here ...?” Bradford wonders. Perhaps it is the case
with evil “as it is with waters when their streams are stopped or dammed up”;
“wickedness being stopped by strict laws,” it flows “with more violence” if and when
it “breaks out.” Perhaps, he suggests, it is simply that “here ... is not more evils in this
kind” but just clearer perception of them; “they are here more discovered and seen
and made public by due search, inquisition and due punishment.” Bradford admits
himself perplexed. And the fact that he does so adds dramatic tension to the
narrative. Like so many great American stories, Of Plymouth Plantation is a search
for meaning. It has a narrator looking for what might lie behind the mask of the
material event: groping, in the narrative present, for the possible significance of
what happened in the past.
Which suggests another pivotal aspect of Bradford’s book and so much Puritan
narrative. According to the Puritan idea of providence at work in history, every
material event does have meaning; and it is up to the recorder of that event to find
out what it is. At times, that may be difficult. At others, it is easy. Bradford has no
problem, for example, in explaining the slaughter of four hundred of the Pequot
tribe, and the burning of their village, by the English. “It was a fearful sight to see
them thus frying in the fire and the streams of blood quenching the same,” Bradford
admits, “... but the victory seemed a sweet sacrifice.” The battle is seen as one in a
long line waged by God’s chosen people, part of the providential plan; and Bradford
regards it as entirely appropriate that, once it is over, the victors should give “the
praise thereof to God, who had wrought so wonderfully for them.” Whether difficult
or not, however, this habit of interpreting events with the help of a providential
vocabulary was to have a profound impact on American writing – just as, for thatGGray_c01.indd 29ray_c 01 .indd 29 8 8/1/2011 7:54:54 AM/ 1 / 2011 7 : 54 : 54 AM