The Translator that Saved Plymouth (part 1)

News flash: Mayflower pilgrims land in Plymouth

It is a gray December day when Governor Carver leaves the Mayflower to step onto the rocky western coast of the Atlantic.  He takes in a deep breath of cold sea air, his hand on his hip and his jacket fluttering in the breeze. With a confidence born of God-given purpose, Carver strides inland and founds the settlement of Plymouth, a name bearing all the Old World gravitas this excursion deserves.

First Scenario at the Fort (without a translator)

It is indeed December, and when the frosts blow in these newcomers quickly realize that the winters they had so loved to complain about back home were merely the feeble grandmothers of the virile young snowstorms now pelting at the badly insulated walls of their houses.  (They are for the most part, after all, pilgrims, not carpenters. )

Half of the camp is dead by February, and the rest are very cold, very sick, very hungry, and very tired of the whole thing. Then one day a group of Wampanoag people charges the camp, and a beautifully knapped arrowhead embeds itself deep in Governor Carver’s skull. Everyone else is so over being pilgrims that they all just roll over and embrace a mercifully swift death. The Wampanoags high five one another and go home to a nice buffalo steak feast in a warm cedar hut.
When the next boat arrives from England they find a shabby collection of frozen boards and nobody in sight. They are thoroughly creeped out and decide to sail straight back. They all die of scurvy. People in England start to wonder why they never hear back from any of the ships that set out for the New World. Legends spring up that what was formerly assumed to be a continent is actually a giant multi-headed kraken that consumes all who approach. They never again send another ship, and the Separatists, rather than shaping the future of the Protestant faith, instead begin a new religion devoted to appeasing the Great Western Kraken. The end.

---

A Different Ending (with a translator)

While multi-headed kraken worshipers may be a little far-fetched, the rest of the story above could easily have been true. Carver and many of the Plymouth settlers in fact survived, but there is no question that they had a rough time. Half of them indeed expired during the first winter, and while the Wampanoags might not have attacked the settlers outright, they probably caused a fair share of mischief. Thus the remaining settlers would surely have followed their brethren to a quick demise were it not for one fateful event that changed everything: Squanto the translator came to the rescue.
In our next issue: The Translator who Saved Plymouth (Part 2)