When the Mayflower Pilgrims arrived in Plymouth in the early 17th century, they didn鈥檛 smell terrific, according to Native American . , these Europeans didn鈥檛 bathe regularly. A surviving member of the Patuxet nation named Tisquantum (or 鈥淪quanto鈥) even to convince them to start washing themselves, according to a .
鈥淏athing as you and I know it was very, very uncommon [among western Europeans] until the later part of the 18th century,鈥 says , a professor emeritus of history at the University of British Columbia and author of the new book .
This went for people of all social classes. Louis XIV, a 17th-century king of France, is said to have only taken three baths in his entire life. Both rich and poor might wash their faces and hands on a daily or weekly basis, but almost no one in western Europe washed their whole body with any regularity, says Ward. The Separatist Pilgrims and the Puritans who followed them may have even thought that submerging their whole body in water was unhealthy, and that taking all of their clothes off to do so was immodest.
鈥淭he idea of being clean wasn鈥檛 closely associated with water in the 17th century anywhere in the western world,鈥 Ward says.
Although bathhouses did exist in the colonies, they were not for bathing in the modern sense. Rather, bathhouses were thought of as a kind of medicinal cure, or else a place for wealthy people to relax. In the 1770s, the royal governor of the Colony of Virginia used his bathhouse on a particularly hot day. And the handful of baths Louis XIV took? Those were on the advice of a doctor, to treat his convulsions.
鈥淐leanliness, to the extent that people thought about it in the 17th century, had much more to do with what we now call underwear than anything else,鈥 Ward says. Colonists kept themselves 鈥渃lean鈥 by changing the white linens under their clothes. The cleaner and whiter the linens, the cleaner the person鈥攐r so the thinking went.
鈥淚t was thought that the linen underwear was what really kept the body clean鈥ecause it was assumed that the underwear itself was the agent that cleaned the body; that it absorbed the body鈥檚 impurities and and the dirt and the sweat and so on,鈥 he says.
These linens were supposed to be a little visible around the collar, so that others could see how clean and morally pure the person wearing them was. A Puritan 鈥渕inister鈥檚 distinctive display of white linen marked him as not only a man of God but also a gentleman,鈥 writes , a professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania, in .
鈥淚n an age not characterized by regular full-body bathing,鈥 , 鈥渘o gentleman wearing white linen at the neck could neglect to change it regularly, for a collar worn for too many days would display his skin鈥檚 effusions to the world.鈥
Puritans also thought that keeping their bed linens clean was a way of keeping their bodies clean. Going to bed without taking off one鈥檚 outer clothes was considered unhygienic and immoral. In a letter from 1639, a colonist in Maine accused his maid of being 鈥渟luttish鈥 for going 鈥渂eed with her Cloth & stockins,鈥 thus dirtying her bed linens.
The Native Americans that colonists encountered had different priorities in terms of hygiene. Like the Wampanoag, most Native Americans . And they also for Europeans to carry their own mucus around in handkerchiefs.
Most Native people鈥檚 teeth were also in than Europeans鈥. Native people cleaned their mouths using a variety of methods, including brushing their teeth with wooden chew sticks, chewing on fresh herbs like mint to freshen their breath and rubbing charcoal on their teeth to whiten them. In contrast, most Europeans who came over may not have brushed their teeth at all, and had a diet that was generally worse for their oral health.
The colonists鈥 lack of hygiene was more than just a smelly inconvenience to the Native Americans they encountered. It also posed a very real danger. Unwashed colonists passed along microbes to which Native Americans had no prior exposure, and therefore no immunity.
Historians that European diseases wiped out more than 90 percent of the Native people in coastal New England before 1620, the year the Pilgrims arrived. Over the next few decades, European diseases would wipe out millions more.
