December 21, 1620. The Mayflower Passengers Land.

 That is, exactly 400 years ago.

The landing was partially precipitated by the fact that the Mayflower had run out of beer, which was a more important matter than it might sound.  The English were overall used to drinking beer, but the reason was that beer, because of the way that it was made, was safe to drink. Running out of things to drink is bad anyway you look at it.

In modern times its become common to levy all sort of criticism and virtue signaling on this event, noting how "horrible" Europeans were for colonizing North America.  All of that views the world from was the comfortable late 20th and early 21st Century prospective which has only been shook up a little by the visitation of a plague upon is, something that people in the 17th Century regarded as one of life's norms.  It is true, of course, that the Mayflower passengers were essentially landing where they weren't invited to take land that wasn't theirs, but they didn't see it that way. And its important to remember that the native residents of the land that they were essentially if unknowingly invading viewed the world much differently than anyone in North America does today, through eyes that tended to regard their own tribes as "the people" with everyone else being some sort of alien people.

Indeed, the Mayflower passengers were only in possession of marginally technically superior implements than their unwilling hosts, who themselves were a more or less constant state of war, near war, or soon to be war, with their neighbors.  It's not true, as some have suggested as a reactionary counterfactual, that the Europeans were regarded as one more tribe. They were definitely different. But early on the technological advantage that's so often assumed to be there simply wasn't.  In warfare the natives were every bit the equals, and maybe the superiors in every sense to the new arrivals.

And none of this is to suggest the old grade school version of the "pilgrims" either. They were religious bigots whose situation was brought about by the fact that they couldn't get along at all with the Church of England or darned near anyone else.  They would have regarded Catholics, which all the British had been less than a century ago, as heretics and they didn't view the Church of England cheerfully.  They had adopted very rigorous concepts of Calvinism and regarded most people damned by God to Hell from the moment of their conception, a novelty that no  Christian had held before the Reformation.  Our concept of them and what they approved of and didn't approve of is accordingly massively off the mark.  They approved of piety, but because it was temporal proof of their predestination. As noted, unlike many who look back to them now as religious ancestors, they approved of alcohol as well.  They were also huge supporters of marital sex, which is something we don't associate their piety with.

They disapproved of most forms of entertainment, which was another thing that had gotten them in trouble in Europe.  They required church attendance on Sunday by law, but then that was also a legal norm in much of Europe. They'd approved of the Calvinist ban of sports on Sunday in England during the Cromwell era.

Not everyone on board the Mayflower was a member of their group by any means.  Indeed, the "pilgrim" passengers.  The ship held 102 passengers but some were just that, not religious dissenters.  Be that as it may, the puritans dominated the ship in culture and conduct, and as colonist.

Their journey was no doubt arduous, and coming in winter, risky in more ways than one.  One person died on the way, and another was born.

I personally have no known connection with them.  The first of my ancestors to set sail across the Atlantic for the New World left from Normandy, not Holland, and arrived in Quebec, not New England.  I'm completely comfortable with that.  But my much more American by ancestry wife has a demonstrated ancestral connection with the 102 passengers of the Mayflower but, as her curiosity on historical matters is much lower than mine, if I asked her right now who it was, she wouldn't recall, and wouldn't be interested in looking it up. Still, that means my two children likewise have ancestors who landed at Plymouth Rock in 1620.

And its important to note, that really was something, no matter how human or failed those people may have been.  I can't say, as I look around, that people are doing much better in any segment of human conduct today.