Thanksgiving Day is next week and I’m sure all of us in the U.S. have seen the depictions of Pilgrims in their buckled hats.
Did the Pilgrims really wear hats with buckles on them? If so, what was the function of the buckle?
Damn you for your diabolical questions Johnny L.A.! Now I can’t rest until the buckle question is answered.
This site, which seems to know a lot about hats, implies that it was only for decoration.
Thanks, tanstaafl! Now astro can rest! 
One thing to recall is that the Pilgrims (who were not called pilgrims until about 150 - 200 years after the landing at Plymouth Rock) were separatists, but not Puritans. (Bradford worked very hard throughout his life to keep the Puritans at Boston from absorbing the Plymouth colony.)
The tall black hats with the prominent buckle were actually a later fashion that was retroactively applied to the Pilgrims by later painters, based on the fashions of the Puritans a decade or two after the Plymouth landing.
The Plimouth Plantation folks in Massachusetts have a web site that includes PILGRIM CLOTHING: DRESS IN EARLY NEW ENGLAND, 17TH CENTURY ENGLISH MEN’S CLOTHING, and an illustration.
Why, naturally. A pop culture representation that doesn’t actually represent what was reality.
Why am I not surprised? I am enlightened, though, so thanks, tomndebb!
The Plymouth party actually wore little sweaters with the arms tied around their hats.