The First Thanksgiving

Everyone knows about the Pilgrims and the Indians, right? How the two groups gathered peacefully in Plymouth, Mass., to feast on juicy turkeys and colorful pumpkin pies. The trouble is, almost everything we’ve been taught about the first Thanksgiving in 1621 is a myth. The holiday has two distinct histories - the actual one and a romanticized portrayal.

The true history has been a difficult one to uncover. Staff at Plimoth Plantation, which occupies several acres on the outskirts of the city of Plymouth, just north of Cape Cod, have been in the vanguard of researching the event. But a big obstacle remains: Everything historians know today is based on two passages written by colonists.

In a letter to a friend, dated December 1621, Edward Winslow wrote: “Our harvest being gotten in, our Governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a more special manner rejoice together, after we had gathered the fruit 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, among other Recreations, we exercised our Arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and among the rest their greatest King Massasoit, with some 90 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.”

Twenty years later, William Bradford wrote a book that provides a few more hints as to what might have been on that first Thanksgiving table. But his book was stolen by British looters during the Revolutionary War and therefore didn’t have much influence on how Thanksgiving was celebrated until it turned up many years later.

No one is certain whether the Wampanoag and the colonists regularly sat together and shared their food, or if the three-day “thanksgiving” feast Mr. Winslow recorded for posterity was a one-time event.

In the culture of the Wampanoag Indians, who inhabited the area around Cape Cod, “thanksgiving” was an everyday activity.

“We as native people [traditionally] have thanksgivings as a daily, ongoing thing,” says Linda Coombs, associate director of the Wampanoag program at Plimoth Plantation. “Every time anybody went hunting or fishing or picked a plant, they would offer a prayer or acknowledgment.”

But for the 52 colonists - who had experienced a year of disease, hunger, and diminishing hopes - their bountiful harvest was cause for a special celebration to give thanks.

“Neither the English people nor the native people in 1621 knew they were having the first Thanksgiving,” Ms. Coombs says. No one knew that the details would interest coming generations.

“We’re not sure why Massasoit and the 90 men ended up coming to Plimoth,” Coombs says. “There’s an assumption that they were invited, but nowhere in the passage does it say they were. And the idea that they sat down and lived happily ever after is, well, untrue. The relationship between the English and the Wampanoag was very complex.”

Since they did not speak the same language, the extent to which the colonists and Indians intermingled remains a mystery. But a few details of that first Thanksgiving are certain, says Kathleen Curtin, food historian at the Plimoth Plantation.

A NATIVE VIEW

With little mention of the native population, the Wampanoag presence was virtually relegated to the background, and the Pilgrim presence promoted to the fore.

“The Wampanoag, we sometimes forget, were the majority population,” Ms. Brennan says. “In the 19th and 20th centuries, Thanksgiving was really a tool for Americanization amid the great influx of immigration. It was supposed to bind this diverse population into one union.”

And so, over the centuries, that first Thanksgiving took on a shape of mythological proportions. But how Americans celebrate today has little to do with the convergence of two different populations across an enormous cultural divide.

One man who would like people to know more about the actual Thanksgiving is descended from the Wampanoag Indians who were such an essential part of the first Thanksgiving celebration.

He steps out onto the porch in front of the Flume restaurant in Plymouth and looks south. He lifts his face - marked by deep lines and dark, heavy eyes - toward the open sky.

“I’m looking down the river here now, and the sun is bright, and the tide is high, and the wind is blowing,” he says. “My people would say that is the spirit coming from the southwest, where the corn and beans and squash come from. So we thank the spirit world - the fire, the moon, the sky, the sun, the earth.”

This man’s name is Earl Mills Sr., and he is a retired high school teacher and athletic director, the author of two books, and the owner of the restaurant. But Mr. Mills has another name and another job. As Flying Eagle, he is the chief of the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe.

Still, he doesn’t see himself as caught between two cultures. Instead, he embraces both. With equal relish, Mills will spend an afternoon walking in peaceful silence, as his ancestors did, or an evening listening to the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He has always spent a lot of time thinking about the history of his people, however, and the confusion about what really happened back in 1621.

“Things have changed so much,” he says, choosing his words carefully. “Even Thanksgiving has changed. Young people today don’t remember what it was like 50 or 100 years ago. Then, we picked our own cranberries from our own cranberry bogs, and we caught rabbits and hung them outside our garage doors.”

More recently, Coombs remembers that as she was growing up, her family celebrated the holiday as most other Americans did. She went to her grandfather’s house, ate a turkey dinner, and watched the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade on television. It wasn’t until she was in college that she learned her ancestors had observed Thanksgiving in a different manner.

It is not just the eating, but the gathering together, preparing, and thanking that matters, Mills says. “The role of food is important, but it’s gotten to the point where we become gluttons…. We could spend a lot more time really thinking about what’s going on in our world and giving more thanks.”

Source: The Christian Science Monitor

~ by Jill Terry on November 21, 2007.