Living history at Plimoth Plantation

The Plimoth Plantation is an interactive museum located a bit outside the town of Plymouth in Massachusetts. The museum is made to let the visitors know more about the first successful British colony in the Americas.

You start your visit by going to see a little movie about this old colony which were made by pilgrims arriving on the Mayflower ship leaving behind the old world in search for a new life in the new world where they could enjoy religious freedom. A little surprisingly the pilgrims didn’t actually arrive straight from Britain but had been living in the Netherlands for a while where they could practice their own religion without the authorities interfering with their beliefs.

After you have seen the movie you will go outside into a large area where they have recreated the original colony of Plimoth. Though your first stop on the visit won’t be the recreated colony but a small Wampanoag village. The Wampanoag were the Indians living in the area and they did manage to live fairly peacefully along this little colony. When we got to the Indian village there were a woman dress in traditional clothing of the Wampanoag and another woman of Indian decent telling about the life of the native at the time of the colony and how they have lived along the increasing number of whites arriving in Massachusetts and the other English colonies.

Winter hut

Canoo

Summer hut

Inside summer hut

Traditional dress woman

Inside winter hut

The concept of people dress in traditional clothing telling stories about the life of the individuals in the colony is a theme for the whole museum – they work as actors playing the role of the people of the town. The actors will give you an idea about how their character lived back in the day but won’t give factual information about the village. This will be provided by other staffs who are dress in modern clothing and telling more details about the life inside the colony.

Guns at the fort

The fort

Inside the fort

The fort

We walk down the hill to see the recreated village of the pilgrims. The recreation isn’t located at the original site of the colony since the original site of the colony is still home to modern day Plymouth so you can’t really have some historical recreation at this location.

The first thing we see when we visit the village is a small fort which stand at the top of the village. We get to the top of the fort from where there is a good view of the entire village.

After a quick look around at the fort we walk down to the village go inside the houses and talk with the local inhabitants about their life and how they got to the new world. Some arrived on the Mayflower while others were onboard a smaller fishing boat which should have arrived with the Mayflower but never made it. So those colonizers had to wait for a later ship to bring them over to the new world.

The actors do make it a bit entertaining – some are more fun to listen to than others and some of them just can’t stop talking and go on and on. Fortunately the most talkative of the locals were also the funniest so it didn’t matter too much he kept talking for ages.

After the visit at the village it is time to leave Plimoth Plantation. But before we leave we go to a small barn at the exit. Inside the barn are some old species of animals which used to live inside the colony back four centuries ago.