Mayflower transported English Separatists and other colonists from Plymouth to Cape Cod in 1620. Its passengers established Plymouth Colony after signing the Mayflower Compact aboard the ship. Their settlement became central to later United States origin stories, despite the grave consequences of colonisation for Indigenous communities.

Felicia Hemans's The Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers helped establish the voyage as a foundational poetic legend. Longfellow's The Courtship of Miles Standish extended that mythology, while Indigenous poets have since challenged its silences and celebratory assumptions.