“My country, ’tis of thee,
Sweet land of liberty,
– “America: My Country 'Tis of Thee” by Samuel Francis Smith, 1832
America – land where “my fathers died.” Which “American” fathers made the ultimate sacrifice for freedom? It is a legitimate question in a land of immigrants. Before we mindlessly mouth this well-known anthem, perhaps we should understand the “pilgrims' pride.” What is the lesson of that pride in our “sweet land” today?
o successful relationships lies solely in our ability to take the perspective of another. Originally credited to Native Americans, the idiom “Before you judge a man, walk a mile in his shoes (moccasins)” is a reminder to practice empathy. If a person cannot take the perspective of opponents, then his or her understanding of the issue is limited and incomplete.
It's Thanksgiving in America once more. This national holiday commemorates a harvest festival celebrated by the Pilgrims in 1621 and a time of remembrance to consider the many wonderful blessings we still enjoy. In fact, we were raised and educated to observe Thanksgiving in the same heartfelt, sincere manner that the Pilgrims did on the first Thanksgiving in North America.
The mainstream version of the Thanksgiving story paints a picture of courageous, Christian settlers, braving the perils of the New World and with the help of some friendly Natives, finding a way to make a new life for themselves. In the days around Thanksgiving, many teachers focus in on this happy story, helping students make American Indian headdresses out of construction paper and holding Thanksgiving reenactments in their classrooms.
Therein lies a different perspective – a perspective of the first inhabitants of America. This perspective, or lack of it, raises important considerations on the holiday. Thanksgiving is perpetuated in myth as a happy celebration of camaraderie and partnership, but it was, most certainly, a tense affair, fraught with political implications.
Questions about celebrating the holiday continue. Do students properly recognize the diversity of Native American tribes? Without a thorough understanding of the spiritual and cultural significance of indigenous people, do they mimic Native Americans? But much more important: Are they taught the truth about the meaning of Thanksgiving as an event that resonated throughout U.S. history – a factual, accurate picture of what happened in Plymouth in 1621?
The Pilgrim Perspective
With the help of the indigenous "Indians" in the region, the summer of 1621 was productive as recorded by William Bradford, Governor of the Plymouth Colony intermittently for about 30 years between 1621 and 1657. In his diary, Bradford wrote …
“They begane now to gather in ye small harvest they had, and to fitte up their houses and dwellings against winter, being all well recovered in health & strenght, and had all things in good plenty; for as some were thus imployed in affairs abroad, others were excersised in fishing, aboute codd, & bass, & other fish, of which yey tooke good store, of which every family had their portion. All ye soūer ther was no wante. And now begane to come in store of foule, as winter aproached, of which this place did abound when they came first (but afterward decreased by degrees).
“And besids water foule, ther was great store of wild Turkies, of which they tooke many, besids venison, &c. Besids they had aboute a peck a meale a weeke to a person, or now since harvest, Indean come to yt proportion. Which made many afterwards write so largly of their plenty hear to their freinds in England, which were not fained, but true reports.”
– William Bradford, excerpts are from his text Of Plymouth Plantation, which recounts the history of the colony from 1620-1647.
Another brief account was written by Edward Winslow – diplomat, printer, author, trader and politician – who was also described as the designated defender of New England's reputation. According to Winslow, in addition to their regular expressions of reverence and thanksgiving to God, by the Autumn of 1621 the surviving 53 Pilgrims had enough produce to hold a three day "harvest feast." That feast was described in the journal of Edward Winslow:
"Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a special manner rejoice together, after we had gathered the fruits of our labors; they four in one day killed as much fowl, as with a little help beside, served the Company almost a week, at which time amongst other Recreations, we exercised our Arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and amongst the rest their greatest king Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five Deer, which they brought to the Plantation and bestowed on our Governor, and upon the Captain and others. And although it be not always so plentiful, as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want, that we often wish you partakers of our plenty."
–Edward Winslow, booklet Mourt's Relation (full title: A Relation or Journal of the Beginning and Proceedings of the English Plantation Settled at Plimoth in New England), December, 1621
As far as we know, these are the only first-hand written descriptions of the First Thanksgiving, which probably should be called the 1621 Harvest Feast instead. It was a singular event, one which happened only, as far as we know, that one fall in 1621 and also one which, if we trust Bradford, was not of great import. Bradford’s chronicle of the Plimoth Colony, Of Plimoth Plantation, does not even mention any Native involvement at all.
Winslow's writing (Mourt’s Relation), on the other hand, has a much more detailed description of the 1621 Harvest Feast. Winslow chronologically lays out the events of the Feast:
1- the harvest was gotten in
2- the Governor sent out men fowling, shooting enough fowl to last them a week
3- at the same time, they exercised their arms among other things
4- and many of the Indians came among them, including their greatest King
Massasoit, with some ninety men who feasted and were entertained by the
colonists for three days
5- the Natives went out and killed five deer, which they brought to the plantation
and bestowed on our governor, and upon the captain, and others
The description’s final sentence sums up one of the purposes of the work overall “And although it be not always so plentiful as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want that we often wish you partakers of our plenty.” It basically says “Having a great time, wish you were here.” Mourt’s Relation was written as a propaganda and informational tract.
The booklet has a tendency to overlook some of the troubles and deaths of the first winter and emphasizes the relations with the natives and the bounty of the land- generally sending the message back to England that New England is a wonderful and bountiful place full of Indians who can be negotiated and dealt with to the advantage of the English.
(Craig Chartier. “History of Thanksgiving.” Plymouth Archelogical Rediscovery Project.)
Massasoit, Wampanoag Indian chief
The Native American Perspective
Charles C. Mann, author of 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus – which which won the National Academies’ Keck Award for best book of the year in 2006 – describes a different Thanksgiving.
According to Mann, “Despite European guns, the Indians’ greater numbers, entrenched positions, knowledge of the terrain and superb archery made them formidable adversaries.” Pilgrims’ accounts of indigenous leaders repeatedly describe them as mythically robust, striking of countenance, and extremely healthy.
The settlers, by contrast, were often malnourished, deficient in hygiene, and – as a population largely made up of common citizens seeking religious independence, with little knowledge of European farming practices – resistant to teaching. The settlers were “utterly dependent,” Mann documents, upon Indigenous charity and good faith.
(Alison Cagle. “Celebrate Indigenous History This Thanksgiving.” Sierra. November 20, 2018.)
Still, Mann finds the first Thanksgiving wasn’t actually that big of a deal. Likely, it was just a routine English harvest celebration. More significant—and less remembered—was the peace treaty that the parties established seven months earlier, which lasted for 50 years.
The leaders of the Plymouth colonists, acting on behalf of King James I, made a defensive alliance with Massasoit, chief of the Wampanoags. The agreement, in which both parties promised to not “doe hurt” to one another, was the first treaty between a Native American tribe and a group of American colonists. According to the treaty, if a Wampanoag broke the peace, he would be sent to Plymouth for punishment; if a colonist broke the law, he would likewise be sent to the Wampanoags.
(“The Pilgrim-Wampanoag peace treaty.” History A&E.February 09, 2010.)
The reader must understand the background. A year before the first Thanksgiving, the pilgrims raided Native American graves. When the pilgrims arrived in Cape Cod, they were incredibly unprepared. They showed up six weeks before winter with practically no food. And, in a desperate state, the pilgrims robbed corn from Native Americans graves and storehouses soon after they arrived.
To learn how to farm sustainably, the pilgrims eventually required help from Tisquantum, an English-speaking Native American who had been staying with the Wampanoag.
The pilgrims could have actually only settled at Plymouth because thousands of Native Americans, including many Wampanoag, had been killed by disease. If the pilgrims had arrived in Cape Cod three years earlier, they might not have found those abandoned graves and storehouses … in fact, they might not have had space to land. Plymouth was established on top of a village that had been deserted by disease. The pilgrims didn’t know it, but they were moving into a cemetery.
(Becky Little. “A few things you (probably) don’t know about Thanksgiving.” National Geographic. November 20, 2018.)
The Pilgrim-centric narrative of the first Thanksgiving focuses a great deal on the colonists' weakness and troubled arrival in North America – since the winter of 1620 half of them had died. The help from the Wampanoag, and the peace with them, was crucial to the colonists' survival.
The Wampanoag had very recently become incredibly weakened themselves. Just five years earlier, there had been 20,000 or so Wampanoag subjects – but after an unimaginably rapid and horrific spread of infectious disease (inadvertently brought by Europeans), all but a thousand or so had died by 1621.
The disease was likely viral hepatitis, according to a study by Arthur E. Speiss, of the Maine Historic Preservation Commission, and Bruce D. Spiess, of the Medical College of Virginia. Beginning in 1616, the pestilence took at least three years to exhaust itself and killed as much as 90 percent of the people in coastal New England.
So when Massasoit and his group of about 90 Wampanoag came to feast with the Plymouth Bay colonists, they were actually bringing a fair portion of their remaining strength. They still outnumbered the Plymouth colonists, about 50 of whom had survived that first winter. But far from being in a position of security and power, the Wampanoag were instead reeling from a recent dreadful catastrophe.
(Andrew Proko. “What they didn't teach you about the first Thanksgiving in school.” Vox. November 26, 2015.)
“Governor Bradford is said to have attributed the plague to “the good hand of God,” which “favored our beginnings” by “sweeping away great multitudes of the natives …that he might make room for us.”
– Charles C. Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
Charles Mann makes the point that the strategies Native Americans first pursued when encountering European colonists often had much more to do with counterbalancing their own longtime rivals, who were known and consistent threats, than the Europeans themselves. A powerful rival people to the west, the Narragansett, had been basically untouched by the disease. This created a political crisis" for the Wampanoag.
"Because the hostility between the Wampanoag and the neighboring Narragansett had restricted contact between them, the disease had not spread to the latter. Massasoit's people were not only beset by loss, they were in danger of subjugation," Mann writes.
This provides the context for the alliance between Massasoit and the Plymouth colonists. Massasoit agreed to ally with the Plymouth colonists explicitly in hopes of using them against the Narragansett. The alliance was agreed to in March 1621, and the "first Thanksgiving" occurred that fall.
One must also consider that Europeans were valuable trading partners for the Wampanoag and other Native Americans in the area because they traded steel knives and axes for beaver pelts—something that, in the beaver-rich New England area, the Wampanoag considered essentially worthless.
“It’s a little like somebody comes to your door, and says I’ll give you gold if you give me a rock. The Wampanoag thought: if we tie ourselves to these guys, everybody else will be hesitant to attack us, because they could drive away these people who are willing to pay gold for rocks.”
– Charles C. Mann
The depletion of Wampanoag territory presented an opportunity for European colonizers – they pounced on the newly available and formerly hostile land. Who were these pilgrims, exactly? An expedition of British colonists, seeking to escape King James’s rule by sailing to the area of Cape Cod, which was granted to them via the Virginia Company of Plymouth.
The peace brought about by that alliance lasted 50 years, but from the perspective of the increasingly threatened tribes, it was borrowed time. Emboldened by the success of the Plymouth Pilgrims’ survival, tens of thousands of European settlers descended on New England, colonizing the emptied Wampanoag territory and taking advantage of similar alliances borne from tribal rivalries.
By 1675, the pact with the pilgrims at Plymouth had all but disintegrated. The Europeans gained enough numbers in New England to establish a military foothold, and the northeastern Algonquin tribes were nearly wholly eliminated by war, disease, or enslavement.
In 1675, one of Massasoit's sons, angered by the colonists’ laws, launched what was perhaps an inevitable attack. Indians from dozens of groups joined in. The conflict, brutal and sad, tore through New England.
And, as we know, the Europeans won. Historians attribute part of the victory to Indian unwillingness to match the European tactic of massacring whole villages. Another reason was manpower—by then the colonists outnumbered the Natives.
Groups like the Narragansett, that had been spared by the epidemic of 1616, were crushed by a smallpox epidemic in 1633. A third to half of the remaining Indians in New England died of European diseases. The People of the First Light could avoid or adapt to European technology but not to European germs. Their societies were destroyed by weapons their opponents could not control and did not even know they possessed.
(Charles C. Mann. “Native Intelligence.” Smithsonian Magazine. December 20. 2005.)
What really happened at the first Thanksgiving? Historians argue the question to this day. History also raises this question: “Why should Native people celebrate Thanksgiving?” Many Natives particularly in the New England area remember this attempted genocide as a factual part of their history and are reminded each year during the modern Thanksgiving.
The United American Indians of New England meet each year at Plymouth Rock on Cole’s Hill for a Day of Mourning. They gather at the feet of a statue of Grand Sachem Massasoit of the Wampanoag to remember and reflect in the hope that America will never forget
(Dennis Zotigh. “Do American Indians celebrate Thanksgiving?” Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian. November 26, 2019,)
Allow me to end this entry by walking in the moccasins of one American Native,
Sean Sherman was born and raised on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota in the 1970s, and he is a member of the Oglala Lakota Sioux Tribe.
Sherman is the founder and CEO of “The Sioux Chef” and the author of The Sioux Chef’s Indigenous Kitchen, which won the 2018 James Beard Award for best American cookbook.
“Many of my indigenous brothers and sisters refuse to celebrate Thanksgiving, protesting the whitewashing of the horrors our ancestors went through, and I don’t blame them. But I have not abandoned the holiday. I have just changed how I practice it.
“The thing is, we do not need the poisonous “pilgrims and Indians” narrative. We do not need that illusion of past unity to actually unite people today. Instead, we can focus simply on values that apply to everybody: togetherness, generosity and gratitude. And we can make the day about what everybody wants to talk and think about anyway: the food.
“People may not realize it, but what every person in this country shares, and the very history of this nation, has been in front of us the whole time. Most of our Thanksgiving recipes are made with indigenous foods: turkey, corn, beans, pumpkins, maple, wild rice and the like. We should embrace this.”
– Sean Sherman, Time, November 11, 2019
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