Peter C. Mancall

Pence invoked them at the Republican debates, but a true reckoning with their history provides a different vision of the nation’s future.

English colonists claimed they wanted to make peace with the Powhatans, then offered them tainted wine.

How a massacre on March 22, 1622 irrevocably shaped relations between Indigenous Americans and English colonists.

What happened in Virginia four months later mattered much more.

The Puritans had little tolerance for those who didn't conform to their vision of the world.

The word “Plymouth” may conjure up visions of Pilgrims in search of religious freedom, but that vision does not reflect reality.

It was less about their asceticism and more about rejecting the world they had fled.

Descendants of the Pilgrims have highlighted their ancestors’ role in the country’s founding. But their sanitized version of events is only now starting to be told in full.

Columbus wasn't unique in his belief that bizarre, monstrous humanoids inhabited the far reaches of the world.