100 books like Pilgrim Voices

No book captures more clearly and compellingly the horrific, inspiring, and vital histories and stories of Native Americans than Brown’s.

I love the ways that Brown offers a profoundly new perspective on the American West, on the foundational myths that too often limit the way we see ourselves and the realities with which we must grapple instead, and on Indigenous communities as an essential part of the American story at every stage.

Revisionist Westerns are one of my very favorite genres, and this is the best one I know.  

I was quite taken with Thom’s meticulous evocation of the great Tecumseh, an American much of whose life is unknown but whose formidable effort to form a Native American confederacy came at a time when the British and Americans were engaged in the War of 1812. With convincing detail, Thom gives us a Native American perspective on those turbulent times and shows us a Tecumseh who was not only a warrior but also a political strategist and a diplomat.

Creation’s Journey ties actual native stories and beliefs with genuine artifacts from the vast collections of the National Museum of the American Indian. It provides a refreshing approach to our understanding of indigenous people’s utilitarian objects and how important they are in their daily lives. The photos in this book show the care for detail and craftsmanship that was pervasive in everyday Native American objects and clothing. It inspired me to commission native Americans to hand make the various costumes shown in my book.

Women and Warriors of the Plains is about the frontier adventures of a newly-married young woman and her camera in the early 20th Century. Settling on the Northern Cheyenne Indian reservation in Montana, Julia Tuell went on to capture portraits and photojournalistic depictions of Native Americans living off the land and going about their everyday lives, including the Northern Cheyenne and the Rosebud Sioux Tribe of the Lakota nation. Many of Tuell’s photos taught me to compose my paintings in a more natural way.

Sub-titled “A Journal of the Pilgrims at Plymouth,” this first-person account of the Pilgrims' early years includes detail not found in Bradford's account. As Winslow's purpose was to attract new immigrants to support Plymouth Plantation, he tends to paint a much rosier picture than the more straightforward Bradford. This book's advantage is that it was written contemporaneously.

Children of the 17th and 18th centuries were raised far more strictly than today. In the 17th century, initially without schools, they would likely be uneducated. Encouraged to walk as soon as possible, children would be incorporated into the work of the family at an early age, to ensure the survival of the community. Alice Morse Earl conducted years of research, based on letters, official records, diaries, and other accounts to create and detailed portrait of a child’s world of that time. For me, it answered questions, such as: Did the children work? How were they educated? How did parents teach respect, manners, and religion? How were children disciplined? Were children allowed to play and what toys or games did they have? I found her book to be enormously helpful in creating the life of Mary Allerton as a child in the Plymouth Colony and the home life of the… show more.

With an introduction by Samuel Eliot Morison, this is the definitive edition of an American classic. In it, the printed text of Bradford’s remarkable history of the colony that he governed for many years is compared with the original manuscript, presenting his text in a contemporary, readable form. This wonderful story of the early years of the colony told in Bradford’s own words and illuminated with his personality is a must-read for anyone interested in colonial Plymouth. 

The best source of information about the Pilgrim journey from their origin as Puritan/Dissenters in Scrooby, England. Bradford, who would serve multiple terms as governor of Plymouth Plantation, gives the lie to many of our commonly held beliefs about the Pilgrims and their experiences fleeing England, living in Holland, and coming to New England. He is detailed, candid, and very readable. Seeing the story from his first-person point of view helped me to see the Pilgrims as flawed individuals, whether appropriating a tribe's entire cache of seed corn on their first day on Cape Cod, Bradford's being upended in a snare set to trap animals, or their first Indian guest entering the settlement and asking for beer, it is not, ironically, the traditional Pilgrim story.

Former Historian General of the General Society of Mayflower Descendants, Stratton writes a complete treatment of the history and genealogy of the Plymouth Colony. While the book contains verbatim transcriptions of important documents and an annotated bibliography, which are manna to the writer of historical fiction, it also has informative chapters on law and order, inheritance, morality and sex, everyday life and manners, freemen and servants, and the diaspora of Pilgrim families to other towns in the colony. Thus, along with other books listed here, the research done by the author helped me to create the real world of the Plymouth Colony and allowed me to reinforce the concept that the Pilgrims were not so different from their millions of descendants four centuries later.

James Deetz was an American anthropologist and his wife, a cultural historian. Their book was the result of studying Plymouth Colony court transcripts, wills, probate listings, and rare firsthand accounts, and then combining the facts with archeological evidence from various sites in Plymouth. This book shows a reality of the Pilgrims and Pilgrim life very different from the straight-laced, nearly mythical images from the 18th and 19th centuries: an all too human group who wore bright clothing, drank, believed in witches, had premarital sex and adulterous affairs, and committed petty and serious crimes. This book is informative and eye-opening.