Jay Parini calls "Of Plymouth Plantation" a "tale of dispossession," noting its Biblical flavor; Bradford likens the Pilgrims to the wandering Jews cast out of Moses' Egypt. For instance, Bradford speaks of a sailor who curses the Pilgrims on shipboard, only to succumb to unexplained disease and be "the first that was thrown overboard," an act Bradford acclaims as "the just hand of God." The vision of the Pilgrims as being Christian versions of God's Old Testament chosen race continues throughout the journal; triumphs and trials are all ascribed to God's intervention.
Bradford, governor of the Plymouth colony, is remarkably balanced in his reporting. He mentions "Indian baskets filled with corn," an initial positive gift from the local natives, as well as thefts of native seed by colonists, which provoke "a shower of arrows and discharge of muskets." His careful account of the first Thanksgiving, about a third of the way into his history, details how Chief Massasoit organized a three-day feast, with a "great store of wild turkeys," only after natives kidnapped -- and released -- a colonist caught wandering sacred grounds.
Nowhere does the narrative become more powerful than in Bradford's postscript, "scribbled in the margins," notes Parini, after the document's completion, in which the historian governor rails against the younger generation who allow the colony to decline, comparing them to the "subtle serpent" who seeks to "untwist these sacred bonds and ties," and causing Bradford "with grief and sorrow to lament and bewail the same." The poetry and intensity of the passage is extraordinary, as the historian speaks in his own raging voice, producing a cry that could have been written in Lamentations.
Bradford's journal is both a historical document and a narrative text filled with conflicts, not only between Indians and colonists but also between members of separate Puritan sects. It is a step-by-step account of the rise and fall of a founding colony; as such it is a historical document as valuable as the writings of Jefferson or Franklin in capturing the essence of the Colonial age.