Phinehas Pratt

Good News from New England: and Other Writings on the Killings at Weymouth Colony Phinehas Pratt

So you think that you know The Pilgrims of Plimoth Plantation? "Good News From New England and Other Writings on the Killings at Weymouth Colony" (ISBN1-582-18706-1) is a collection of carefully-annotated 17th-century and later American writings on "The Wessagusset Conspiracy" or "Weymouth Massacre" of 1623. It includes an annotated edition of Plimoth Pilgrim Edward Winslow's 1624 "Good News from New England," which is both Plimoth's account of its role in this Massacre and an early ethnological report on Native New England; the first printing since 1912 of Weymouth colonist Phinehas Pratt's account of this tragic foundational episode; plus the studies of other early-American historians (William Bradford, Thomas Morton, C. F. Adams Jr., George Willison, Karen Ordahl Kupperman and more), who reveal both their own interpretations of events and, in modern readers' eyes, the old and the ongoing political struggles that shape the writing of American cultural histories! . A 70-page Introduction by editor Jack Dempsey (Ph. D. Brown University) also brings Native American, oral history, archaeological and other evidences to bear upon the case; and reveals the inexperience, arrogance, and refusals to negotiate that brought Plimoth and Weymouth Colonies to "pre-emptively" strike with murderous effect, until as many as 5 Englishmen and 12 Native people were dead (and a "flag" soaked in Indian blood was hung from the Plimoth fort-and-church). 8 pages of Illustrations including the journal of local historian G. Stinson Lord and photos of the "haunted house" in Weymouth near the site of the colony and Massacre.