Sometimes, a historical event is all about the branding. And the brand of Plymouth Rock in Plymouth, Massachusetts as the spot where the Mayflower pilgrims first disembarked 400 years ago this year is pretty strong.
The branding is strong enough to override the fact that the Mayflower actually first landed on the other side of Cape Cod, in what is now Provincetown. The Pilgrim Monument and Provincetown Museum commemorates that site. And even within a museum that’s trying to correct an inaccuracy, it has its own to grapple with: the museum used to portray the meetings between the members of the Wampanoag Nation and the Mayflower pilgrims with dehumanizing murals.
In this episode, Courtney Hurst, board president of the Pilgrim Monument and Provincetown Museum, describes how the museum is working to correct these inaccuracies by working closely with the Wampanoag Nation. And as the 400th anniversary of the Mayflower arrival approaches, the museum is in the middle of yet another rebrand. Just as the word pilgrim was reframed by Mayflower passenger William Bradford as a way to tie his journey to stories in the Christian Bible, the museum is reframing the word pilgrim to include recent Provincetown history.
This episode was recorded at the Pilgrim Monument and Provincetown Museum on February 22, 2020.
Topics and Links
00:00 Intro
00:15 Plymouth Rock and Historical Branding
02:00 Courtney Hurst
02:20 Pilgrim Monument and Provincetown Museum (https://www.pilgrim-monument.org)
03:55 Portrayal of the Wampanoag Nation
04:30 Our Story
05:20 Corn Hill
06:00 Provincetown 400 (https://www.pilgrim-monument.org/provincetown-400/)
07:00 Reframing The Word Pilgrim
09:30 Spiritus Pizza Riot of 1990 (https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Spiritus+Pizza+Riot+of+1990)
10:17 Historical Brands are Powerful
11:30 Archipelago At the Movies ?️ (https://www.patreon.com/museumarchipelago)
12:20 Outro/Join Club Archipelago (https://www.patreon.com/museumarchipelago)
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Transcript
Below is a transcript of Museum Archipelago episode 76. Museum Archipelago is produced for the ear, and only the audio of the episode is canonical. For more information on the people and ideas in the episode, refer to the links above.


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Sometimes, a historical event is all about the branding. And the brand of Plymouth Rock as the spot where William Bradford and the Mayflower Pilgrims first disembarked is pretty strong.

In the American tradition that I grew up learning, the Rock symbolized the Pilgrim’s arrival in what is now the United States, and the beginning of their interactions with the Native Nations who lived nearby. Plymouth Rock is an easy visualization tool, a shorthand, something that sticks in your mind.

But, the Mayflower didn’t first land on Plymouth Rock, or even near what is now Plymo