Plimoth
Plantation, located in Plymouth, Massachusetts,
is a living history museum dedicated to presenting the history, both shared and
separate, of the English colonists and the Wampanoag natives during the
earliest years of English colonial settlements in the 1620s; to this end, the
museum uses costumed interpreters as guides throughout immersive environments
such as the Wampanoag Homesite and the 17th Century English
Village. In the Village, the guides take
on the roles of actual colonists who lived in Plymouth during that time period,
and interact with Plantation guests in character, whereas the Native costumed
guides at the Homesite (most of whom are from the Wampanoag Nation) do not take
on a character per se, but interact directly with guests as themselves. When combined with additional exhibits both
traditional and interactive, the goal is to help connect modern-day visitors
with the times, places, and people of the past in a way that truly makes
history come alive.
The Plantation
site contains several areas of interest that are linked by pathways through the
grounds. A tour begins at the Visitor
Center, where you can watch a short orientation film and see a handful of
exhibits (I saw reproductions of both Native and English clothing, pottery,
carved wooden chests, a bow and arrows, guns, and the “Mooflower” fiberglass
cow, complete with stockings and buckled shoes); there is also a café, a
year-round movie theater showing first-run and independent films, and a large
gift shop with sections devoted to children and Native goods.
Next, you walk a
short way down the path to the Wampanoag Homesite, which recreates a Native
village during the spring, summer and early fall, when the people were busy
hunting, fishing, and growing crops to tide them over the winter. There will probably be several mat- and
bark-covered houses called wetuash,
in addition to lean-to where people will be engaged in cooking, tanning hides,
making wampum, or burning and scraping a dugout canoe; in warmer weather, the
women will be tending the corn, bean and squash crops as well.
The next stop
along the path is the Craft Center; here you can see joiners, cabinetmakers,
tailors, and potters create the reproduction household goods used in the
Village, while Native artisans make tools, clay pots, headdresses, and other
items for the Homesite. There is also a
smaller gift shop featuring some of the different items used on site
From there you
can walk to the 17th Century English Village, which is a
reproduction of some of the home, storehouses, animal pens, garden and fields,
and other buildings which were in Plymouth during the 1620s. The Village is surrounded by a wooden
palisade, with a fort at one end that also serves as a community center where
church services are held. The cottages
are all made of wattle and daub with thatched roofs made of reeds, and almost
all of them have only one small room; in addition, the windows do not have
glass, only sliding wooden shutters (although I think one house had greased
paper over the windows), and the floors are made of trampled (and very uneven)
earth. (Clearly our ancestors were far tougher
than we are!) All of the homes have
small gardens in which a variety of herbs and some vegetables were grown, with
corn for the village being grown in the fields just outside the palisade. Some of the homes also have animal pens and
shelters, although there also appear to be larger grazing areas that may be for
more communal use; there is also a village forge, a pair of common ovens (many
of the houses only had an open fire, not an oven), and a woodcutting area.
Finally, if you
walk all the way back to the Visitor Center, nearby is Nye Barn, where some of
the rare and heritage breed cows and goats are houses, in addition to the
cattle, sheep, goats and chickens that are kept in the Village.
In addition to
the Plantation, you can also visit the Plimoth Grist Mill (which we did, and
which was interesting; I’ve now seen herring ladders for the first time) and
the Mayflower II (which,
unfortunately, is elsewhere being repaired right now, and I don’t know when
it’ll be back), not to mention Plymouth Rock (not part of the Plimoth
Plantation experience per se), but my
main interest is in the Plantation itself—there’s certainly more than enough
going on there to keep anyone occupied, and, in the words of their current
slogan, “You can’t change history, but it could
change you.”
