Storytelling Along the Way

I just ran across a fascinating reference in Nathaniel Philbrick's Mayflower (2006, Viking, New York, p. 105). Philbrick says on one of their first trips inland from the Plymouth settlement in July of 1621, the Pilgrims ran across a group of local Indians who had been gathering lobsters in the harbor. The natives explained the circular, foot-deep holes that could be seen all along the trail they were following.

The holes commemorated "any remarkable act" and it was the duty of person's traveling the path to keep them in repair and further to tell others what had happened there with the hoped for result that "many things of great antiquity are fresh in memory."

Philbrick goes on to quote (italics) from Edward Winslow's account of Plymouth Settlement about what he felt were the reasons for this. He notes that he and hyis companion on the inland journey, Stephen Hopkins, "began to see that they were traversing a mythic land, where a sense of community extended far into the distant past. 'So that as a man travelleth...his journey will be less tedious, by reason of the many historical discourses [that] will be related unto him.'"
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