As a settler in Plymouth, Massachusetts, and part of a colony, since we arrived in 1620, escaping religious persecution in England due to our strict beliefs and stringent behavior, we have faced both improvements and also hardships.
To begin with, we must remember that we arrived in a new land, a new land filled with vegetation, fauna and a landscape that are very different from what we had in England. As such, we became dependent, because we almost starved, from the production given to us by the Native peoples who inhabited this land before us. Many conflicts have arisen from this interaction and many times we have been on the brink of wars with these natives because their way of seeing life and ours is completely different. It is necessary for us to seek better ways to communicate with these natives while England sends reinforcements so that we are not so few in the face of so many native peoples.
Second, there is the issue of law and what will be the framework under which we will organize ourselves as a new town. Will our rules be those of England, the Bible alone? God? Some of us, though all Puritans, are more flexible in our beliefs than others. As such, we need common ground so that our community does not face division in the face of issues such as marriage, inheritance of land, and chains of command. We also need to ensure that the law is the same for all and that it punishes those who are not putting in the effort and awards those who are.
Third, we need to come together as a community to ensure that our town faces better conditions, especially given the difficulty of the weather and the harsh terrain where we live. This land is capable of producing food, maintaining livestock and feeding all of us, but we need to bring from England better technology and strategies to organize the land, prevent the fights that we have faced because of unfair division of land and land production, as well as taxes and duties owed to our governors and to our soldiers. We need better protection against the savages that threaten us. We also need to bring in our animals to begin growing livestock. We need to learn how to build better and more efficiently given the terrain and weather that we face.
Our education, our social structure, derives from our customs and traditions, brought with us from England and that will not change. Our beliefs and customs remain the same and must not become mixed with those savages.
Everyone must put in their own two cents to be able to help the community survive. It is a time for union and not division. Not of a politicial, nor a religious nature. We are all Pilgrims, all Puritans who faced displacement for our beliefs and customs. This is the time for us to pull together and not come apart.
