The Wages of the Covenant - The Children of the Peace

American Political History · Apr 30, 2021 · 15m

The forty-year peace was a friendship.

The treaty signed in 1621 between Massasoit and the Plymouth Pilgrims was a transactional document at the moment of signing — both sides had reasons that made sense in their own world. What grew up around the document, across the four decades that followed, was something neither side could have predicted. Edward Winslow walked forty miles to nurse Massasoit through illness in 1623. Massasoit warned Plymouth of attacks that might have destroyed it. Bradford and Massasoit hosted each other. The two leaders worked the alliance across decades of land…