Sources: NathanielPhilbrick.com & Paul Revere/Wiki. See References.

The fellow pictured on the left is Nat Philbrick, the author whose book, In The Heart of the Sea, won the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 2000.

The fellow pictured on the right is King Philip, the war chief of the New England Pokanoket Indians. He had changed his name from Metacom to Philip in the spring of 1660, and led the Pokanokets against the English colonists in the bloody 1675-76 war that we now call “King Philip’s War.”

If you were lucky enough, as I was, to grow up with Nat in Pittsburgh, PA, there’s a good chance that you already knew about King Philip. That’s because Nat’s 2006 book – Mayflower – explores both the Pilgrims’ voyage to America as well as their Plymouth Colony settlement.

As Thanksgiving draws near, it’s the perfect time to take another (or first) look at Nat’s Mayflower. His wide-ranging story contains 300-year-old tales of the pitfalls of socialist property ownership as well as the perils of land speculation that hit close to home, particularly today. [1]

PROPERTY OWNERSHIP

The “First Thanksgiving” may have occurred in late September or early October, 1621. The popular Thanksgiving story tells how the colonists would not have survived that first year without Massasoit, the Pokanoket leader (and Metacom’s/King Philip’s father) who provided assistance to the colonists (as Nat puts it on page 120) in the “hope that the Pilgrims would continue to honor their debt to the Pokanokets long after the English settlement had grown into maturity.”

Although the first year had passed, hard times continued. “Debilitating food shortages” plagued Plymouth. As Nat writes on page 165:

• “For the last two planting seasons [prior to 1623], the Pilgrims had grown crops communally – the approach … used at … other English settlements. But as the disastrous harvest of the previous fall had shown, something drastic needed to be done to increase the annual yield” [emphasis added].

These days we have a name for “something drastic”. We (and Nat) call it “capitalism“:

• [William] Bradford [the governor of Plymouth] had decided that each household should be assigned its own plot to cultivate, with the understanding that each family kept whatever it grew.
• The change in attitude was stunning. Families were now willing to work much harder than they had ever worked before…
• Men had [previously] tended the fields while the women tended the children at home. “The women now went willingly into the field,” Bradford wrote, “and took their little ones with them…”
• The Pilgrims had stumbled on the power of capitalism. Although the fortunes of the colony still teetered precariously in the years ahead, the inhabitants never again starved.

Federal control and ownership of the banking system becomes more extensive, and well accepted, with each passing day. Years from now, I expect that we will have a new “banking crisis” which – when properly analyzed – will be seen to be the consequence of today’s interventions and rescues. When that day comes, I hope those of you that read this piece and Nat’s book will remember the lessons of 1623 when everyone searches for “something drastic” to be done.

LAND SPECULATION

If you want to learn how and why Massasoit began selling off land to the colonists, you’ll have to read Mayflower yourself, beginning on page 169.

By 1667, however, Massasoit had died, and his son, Philip, had become the leader of the Pokanokets only to discover for himself the pitfalls of land speculation.

Following rumors of Pokanoket treachery … the English developed a “need for land” as their population grew and filled up the coastal lands. This was matched by Philips’ “growing need for money” [page 213]. As noted in official records:

• Many in our colony are in want of land … all such lands as the Indians can well spare shall be purchased.

Philip began a prodigious and unsustainable “sell-off of Native land”, as the pace of his land sales more than quintupled. Over time, the Pokanokets and the colonists even discovered the joys of home owe-nership. While mortgages had been illegal in the colony, the laws were revised, so that when Philip’s son-in-law could not pay back money “owed on a horse” he “took out a mortgage on a parcel of land.”

To settle subsequent disputes between the Indians and Plymouth, Philip was “forced to sign” [page 218] a treaty in which he agreed to 1) give up all his weapons, 2) pay a stiff fine, and 3) pay recurring annual tributes. To survive as Pokanoket leader, Philip “must now go to war.”

As Nat writes on pages 218 – 219:

• He immediately began to make plans for obtaining more muskets – but to pay for the new weapons, he was going to need [lots of] money…
• Philip … launched into a calculated strategy of selling land for weapons… [and would sell] almost every parcel of land he owned [which would seem to be irrational except that] … it was all to fund a war to win those lands back.
• …English greed [played into Philip's strategy.] Rather than wonder how he [Philip] and his people could possibly survive once they’d … [sold off all of their land], or speculate where all this money was going, the English went ahead and bought more land – even … when it meant that the Pokanokets might no longer be able to feed themselves.

That’s where Nat leaves things on page 219 of his account that will not conclude until page 360. If you want to see how the “arms for land” tale ends, you’ll simply have to read it yourself.

But even without knowing “how the story ends” we can draw some simple conclusions with respect to unsustainable land sales (or home price increases) that were experienced then (and relatively recently).

Most specifically, they ARE unsustainable, and while we don’t know WHEN they will end, end they must. We should NOT be surprised when they end.  The only thing that can be surprising is the timing of the end. If we have built businesses that depend upon perpetual and unsustainable home price increases, we have no one to blame but ourselves.

[1] THANSKGIVING

Those of you that closely read my posts must have noticed an occasional pun or two. If you want to know where it comes from, I’m afraid that you must blame me … AND Nat.

I did NOT talk or write with Nat about the content of this piece before it’s posting. While I may have quoted from his book extensively, all conclusions, set-up, and opinion are mine and mine alone. But the puns…

Years ago, Nat and I walked “uphill both ways” from our homes on Linden to Taylor Allderdice High School – a distance of 1.6 miles each way that seemed longer with our backpacks. In the mid-1970’s, along with everything else to talk about on our walk – we had our puns. Each day was a progression of can-you-top-this wordplay, where we would try to make every word in the sentence have at least two meanings.

I enjoyed it tremendously then, and now. Every day that I write, I hope that something somewhat more numerical will turn up. But, until then, along with everything else that I have to be thankful for, I have my puns and appreciation for wordplay. Thank you, Nat.

Happy Thanksgiving.

 
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I used to work with numbers for a living, but now I walk into them most frequently when I run the “Word Count” routine. Till next time.

REFERENCES

 
I. Artman, Sterling Slivers – No Pace Like Homes, 2 Nov 2008.

 
N. Philbrick -  Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War, Viking, 2006.

 
King Philip: Paul Revere/Wikipedia – Philip, King of Mount Hope, Plate from Benjamin Church’s The Entertaining History of King Philip’s War, 1772.

 
Nathaniel Philbrick.com – Nathaniel Philbrick.

 
Stan Getz, The Artistry of Stan Getz, Volume 2 – Thanks For The Memory,  Rhapsody/Verve Records, 1992.