Thanksgiving is most often celebrated in Canada and the United States. Historically, Thanksgiving is rooted in religion and culture. But what are the real roots of this holiday? In America, the story of the “first” Thanksgiving has been handed down to schoolchildren as a kind of fairy-tale myth. In school you learn of Squanto, and the Indians and Pilgrims sitting down together to a great feast. But is this really the truth? Is this really what happened? Let’s investigate.
In the Old Testament of the Bible, numerous thanksgiving celebrations are mentioned. There are accounts of Noah, King David, King Hezekiah, Nehemiah, and Daniel. Early Christians also often gave thanks to God for their blessings. In the English tradition, days of thanksgiving and related religious services became important in the time of the English Reformation when Henry VIII was king.
Pilgrims and Puritans who left England for America brought with them these traditions. There were several days of Thanksgiving held in New England that have been thought to be the “first Thanksgiving.” This includes Puritan holidays in Plymouth in 1621 and 1623, and one in Boston in 1631. The earliest Thanksgivings were a mixture of European traditions and those of the American Indians as well, who celebrated the end of the harvest season with a feast.
But throughout American history, many myths about the origins of Thanksgiving have grown. Our images of the Pilgrims and Indians from that time are distorted.
In 1614 English explorers returned to England with a ship filled with Patuxet Indians, for use as slaves. Behind them the English left smallpox, which wiped out most of the Indians. Throughout most of the 17th century, whole Indian nations would almost be destroyed by European diseases. The new English settlers persecuted and massacred the survivors, including women and children.
When the Pilgrims arrived in Massachusetts Bay they found one living Patuxet, named Squanto. He had survived slavery in England and also spoke English. Squanto taught them how to grow corn and fish. He negotiated a peace treaty between the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag Nation. At the end of the first year the Pilgrims had a great feast honoring Squanto and Wampanoags.
But as more Pilgrims and Puritans arrived, they considered the land there to be for theirs. They seized land, took young Indians for slaves, and killed the rest. In 1637, members of the Pequot tribe gathered for their annual Green Corn Festival. They were made up of over 700 men, women and children. In the hours before dawn English and Dutch mercenaries ordered the tribe to come out of the longhouse. Those who did so were shot or clubbed to death. The mercenaries burned alive the terrified women and children who were still inside. The next day, the governor of the Massachusetts Bay colony held a “Day of Thanksgiving,” thanking God for helping them destroy these Indians.
The Pilgrims and the Puritans saw themselves as the “chosen elect” of God. They considered that they were fighting a holy war against Satan. They had to “purify” first themselves and then others who didn’t see the Bible in the same way as they did. In order to achieve this they used lying, torture and genocide. Even though the Indians greatly helped the English settlers to survive in the New World, the settlers were brutal in return. In a Thanksgiving sermon given at the end of 1623, a man named Mather the Elder gave God thanks for the horrible smallpox plague that had destroyed most of the Wampanoag Indians who had helped them so much. He especially gave them thanks for the death of the young men and children.
At the famous Thanksgiving feast with Squanto, the Pilgrims and the Wampanoags, the Pilgrims actually invited the Indians only to negotiate a treaty. With this treaty, they had the goal of securing the lands of Plymouth Plantation for themselves. This was until more English arrived to New England, changing the balance of power. It should also be said, that because of their sense of charity, it was most probably the Indians who ended up bringing most of the food to the feast.
A generation later, most of the Indians and Whites were trying to kill each other in a horrible conflict. At the end of the conflict, most of the New England Indians were either exterminated, or had run up to Canada. Others became slaves in the Carolinas.
The current mixture of myth and history about the first Thanksgiving we learn about as children arose in the late 19th century. This doesn’t mean that there’s something wrong with the idea behind Thanksgiving. But it’s important to present an accurate history to children about what really happened, to know the truth about the past.