Wheaton College Professor Robert Tracy McKenzie explores the heroism and weaknesses of the first American Pilgrims:

There is much to admire about the "company of plain Englishmen" who disembarked from the Mayflower almost four centuries ago. They were men and women [who] exhibited enormous courage in the face of unspeakable hardship and loss. They loved their children, they loved the body of Christ, and they abandoned everything that was familiar to them to serve both …. They have [given] us an invaluable Christian example of belief, action, and endurance.

But human frailty is part of the Pilgrims' story as well. They argued among themselves. They were frequently duped both by strangers and purported friends. They were ethnocentric and sometimes self-righteous. They struggled with their finances …. They were frightened by wolves. They got lost in the woods …. A key leader got caught by an Indian deer trap and dangled helplessly upside down …. In years to come, they would have a hard time keeping a pastor … and many of their number would move away in search of larger farms, prompting William Bradford to speak of the Plymouth church as "an ancient mother grown old and forsaken of her children."

Their flaws may shock us, but it wouldn't have shocked the Pilgrims. They seemed to glory in how God could use them despite their weakness and sinfulness. One of their key leaders (Robert Cushman) said, "Our voyage … hath been as full of crosses as ourselves have been of crookedness, but God can do much." Another leader (Edward Winslow) said, "How few, weak, and raw were we at our first beginning, and yet God preserved us." William Bradford gloried in their weaknesses, but his object in doing so is clear: "that their children may see with what difficulties their fathers wrestled in going through these things in their first beginnings; and how God brought them along, notwithstanding all their weaknesses and infirmities."