More Than Stiff Collars, Funny Hats Pilgrim Life

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At Thanksgiving time in the waning autumnal months, the Pilgrims get their annual 15 minutes of fame.

Indeed, Americans have a sentimental spot for the idea of Indians and Puritans shaking hands at Plymouth Plantation in 1629. It was a "feast day," called after surviving the agonizing first Pilgrim winter in the new world - a world the Mayflower travelers identified as a New Jerusalem, with themselves as latter-day children of Israel come to build a model Christian community.

Yet these Puritans, who exist in the public mind as set-piece images in quaint white collars and tall black hats, were not what most Americans think they were. In some ways, scholars say, the …