When the Pilgrims bought passage to North America, they asked the Virginia Company if they could arrange to settle in America and make their own rules. (Pretty bold, eh?) Surprisingly, the Virginia Company agreed, and the Pilgrims set off on the Mayflower.

Since someone messed up in the navigation department, the Pilgrims ended up much further north than they had originally intended—so far north, in fact, that they were outside the land the Virginia Company controlled. This meant that the promise the Virginia Company made—the whole business about the Pilgrims creating their own Religious Funland, complete with their own rules and regulations—wasn't valid. 

At this point, while still on the ship, 41 of the men aboard created and signed the Mayflower Compact, which stated that once they landed, the men could work together to create laws that would work for the whole society. Seems pretty smart, right?

So, when they arrived on the new continent, it wasn't simply the vast forests or lack of densely-populated areas and developed commercial markets that made it a land of opportunity and rebirth. The New World represented a chance to start anew, to build a society from the ground up on firmly pious principles.

Native Americans' contact with these newcomers was a startling encounter across a vast cultural and spiritual divide. Not only did European settlement encroach upon their lands, but it brought devastating plagues of diseases never before encountered in North America, which soon decimated Native-American populations. Both the English and the Native Americans survived the setbacks and the ravages of disease and death, and in their first half century on the new continent, the English settlers learned from, interacted with, and of course, battled against the Native American nations of New England.

The Pilgrims also developed the institutions for which they would be forever remembered: the town meeting, the Congregational church, the hard-scrabble farming life of New Englanders, and the Protestant work ethic, which influenced the character and composition of subsequent American societies.

After the Pilgrims managed to not completely die, they inspired other religious groups in England to come over and sort of survive as well.

From 1630 to 1700, waves of settlers came to New England to escape religious persecution. These settlers were mostly from hardline Calvinist churches, derogatively called "Puritan churches" because people were upset at their "we're so pure and holy" attitude. 

The Puritans shared many beliefs with the Pilgrims—in fact, we could say that the Pilgrims were an extreme section of Puritanism—but the Puritans were a little more relaxed. That means their skirts could hit at the ankle instead of having to be one inch below. Scandalous. 

No, but seriously, the Puritans were a pretty strict bunch who were concerned with pleasing God, living according to his will, and working hard. They also weren't technically Separatists, because they didn't want to separate from the Church of England: they just wanted to make everyone within the church as pure as they were. They didn't succeed, probably because most people weren't quite as uh, dedicated as they were.

So, after the Pilgrims, the Puritans came to Massachusetts and settled in Boston. They called their colony by the ingenious name of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. With Plymouth Colony right down the road, Massachusetts basically became a Calvinist wonderland.

Big picture question: How have these earliest settlements influenced modern American society, culture, and politics?

Well for one, the story of America's earliest New England settlements can help debunk a few myths that are still floating around, including: 

• there were no slaves in New England (few of them, yes, but slavery existed there and was permitted by law)
• that this region was entirely consumed by religion (hey, people made some good money in the port towns, and just wait until you get a load of the section on sex crimes)
• that the Puritans were stuffy, prudish, boring old fuddy-duddies (sure, they seem conservative by modern standards, but these people wouldn't have passed laws against intoxication if there wasn't some cause for it)

Second, and besides, we should respect these men and women for their courage and their commitment. They traveled for three months on stormy seas with undoubtedly awful food and plenty of seasickness (and other kinds of sickness). They fled persecution in their native England to another continent so far away and so foreign to Europeans that it was commonly referred to as "the New World." 

When they got here, half of them died of disease, cold, or starvation. Instead of freaking out and sailing back with the ship, the rest of them stayed on. All for the sake of starting anew and adhering to the tenets of their cherished faith. 

Even if you aren't religious, that's pretty impressive.

If you come from a Native American background, if that's part of your ancestry, or if you're smart enough to be curious about the people who were here when the Europeans arrived, then this is the chapter of history for you. The "United States" was still a long way off when the Pilgrims arrived at Plymouth in 1620, but the origins of American society are here. 

It would be misleading to draw any direct lines from 1620 to 1776, but the point is, this country wasn't simply a transplanted version of Europe. There were important reasons why the New England settlers came across the Atlantic ocean. They had substantial differences with the church and government in their homeland.

And after their arrival, this society was inevitably formed not purely from their acts and beliefs alone, but as a result of their interactions—both violent and peaceful—with the indigenous people of the region as well as the dissenters and other groups that they would come across over time. 

Colonial America was, from its beginning, a complex mixture of widely different societies, and its history is the essence of their intertwining stories.