"The Maypole of Merry-Mount," an excerpt from
New English Canaan

Reprinted in Eyewitness to America

Published in 1997

"The setting up of this Maypole was a lamentable spectacle to the precise separatists that lived at new Plymouth."

Since the founding of the Plymouth Colony in 1620, Puritans dominated all aspects of life in New England, the northernmost region of the present-day United States. The Puritans were a Protestant Christian group who advocated radical reform of the Church of England (the official state religion) and stressed strict moral and religious codes. Also they objected to elaborate church rituals that were derived from Roman Catholicism (a Christian religion based in Rome, Italy, and headed by a pope who has absolute authority in all church affairs). Seeking religious freedom, the Puritans...