Need A Good Online Source for The First Thanksgiving

[Plaid Adder]

Anyone know of a good online source out there that does an actual historical investigation of the story behind the myth of the first thanksgiving?

If I use your source, you get an acknowledgment in next week's column...you know you want it!

Thanks,

The Plaid Adder

[Maddy McCall]

1. Your best bet is James Loewen's "Lies My Teacher Told Me" (EDITED)

It's a book. Perhaps a google search on +Loewen +Thanksgiving +myth will be your best bet.

On edit: Here's some info:


"When was the country we know as the United States settled?"
|
| From the back, a soft voice answers, "1620?"
|
| "Many students say that," Loewen responds, "because their
| heads have been filled with America's original myth, the story of
| the first Thanksgiving.
|
| "What about native settlers, the American Indians? Or Hispanic
| Americans who lived here long before the first ancestor of the
| Daughters of the American Revolution? Or the Dutch who were
| living in what is now Albany by 1614? The year 1620 is not even
| the date of the first British settlers, the London Company having
| sent Colonists to Jamestown in 1607."
|
| "Well, one reason for preferring Plymouth is that Jamestown was
| nastier. Settlers survived by disinterring deceased Indians and
| eating them. Imagine what that would do to Thanksgiving."
|
| The students laugh politely.
|
| "See, Thanksgiving was invented by Abraham Lincoln in 1863, and
| there would be no reason for him to credit Virginia in the midst
| of a rebellion. Even the word `Pilgrim' suggests they are nicer
| guys, and why? Unlike those nasty plantation owners in Virginia,
| Pilgrims didn't come here to make a buck. They came for religious
| reasons. A great country deserves a great beginning, right? So
| let's choose the beginning we want. It's part of the
| exceptionalism myth conveyed by history books.
|
| "Neglecting to teach about the plague that decimated New England
| Indians denies students what some say is among the most important
| events in history," Loewen says. "Because of advances in
| military and social technology, Europeans might have dominated
| America as they dominated China, India and Africa, but without
| the plague, they might not have colonized America."

from http://homepages.cs.ncl.ac.uk/chris.holt/home.informal/bar/politics/history.1995


Also see: http://escribe.com/culture/native_news/m20675.html

TRUTH SHOULD BE HELD SACRED, AT WHATEVER COST"

Should we teach these truths about Thanksgiving? Or, like our textbooks, should we look the
other way? Again quoting LAND OF PROMISE. "By the fall of 1621, colonists and Indians could
sit down to several days of feast and thanksgiving to God (later celebrated as the first Thanksgiving)."
Throughout the nation, elementary school children still enact Thanksgiving every fall as our
national origin myth, complete with Pilgrim hats made of construction paper and Indian braves
with feathers in their hair. An early Massachusetts colonist, Colonel Thomas Aspinwall, advises
us not to settle for this whitwash of feel - good - history. "It is painful to advert to these
things. But our forefathers, though wise, pious, and sincere, were nevertheless, in respect
to Christian charity, under a cloud; and, in history, truth should be held sacred, at whatever
cost."


Thanksgiving is full of embarrassing facts. The Pilgrims did not introduce the Native Americans
to the tradition; Eastern Indians had observed autumnal harvest celebrations for centuries.
Our modern celebrations date back only to 1863; not until the 1890s did the Pilgrims get included
in the tradition; no one even called them "Pilgrims" until the 1870s. Plymouth Rock achieved
ichnographic status only in the nineteenth century, when some enterprising residents of the
town moved it down to the water so its significance as the "holy soil" the Pilgrims first touched
might seem more plausible. The Rock has become a shrine, the Mayflower Compact a sacred text,
and our textbooks play the same function as the Anglican BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER, teaching us
the rudiments of the civil religion of Thanksgiving.


Indians are marginalized in this civic ritual. Our archetypal image of the first Thanksgiving
portrays the groaning boards in the woods, with the Pilgrims in their starched Sunday best
and the almost naked Indian guests. Thanksgiving silliness reaches some sort of zenith in the
handouts that school children have carried home for decades, with captions like, "They served
pumpkins and turkeys and corn and squash. The Indians had never seen such a feast!" When his
son brought home this "information" from his New Hampshire elementary school, Native American
novelist Michael Dorris pointed out "the Pilgrims had literally never seen `such a feast,'
since all foods mentioned are exclusively indigenous to the Americas and had been provided
by the local tribe."

[proud patriot]

2. link to first Thanksgiving

I bet it's not what you think it is .
http://www.pbs.org/georgewashington/milestones/thanksgiving_read.html

George Washington

City of New York, October 3, 1789

Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor, and whereas both Houses of Congress have by their joint Committee requested me "to recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness."

Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be. That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks, for his kind care and protection of the People of this Country previous to their becoming a Nation, for the signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of his providence, which we experienced in the course and conclusion of the late war, for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty, which we have since enjoyed, for the peaceable and rational manner, in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national One now lately instituted, for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed; and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and in general for all the great and various favors which he hath been pleased to confer upon us.

(snip)
http://www.pbs.org/georgewashington/milestones/thanksgiving_read.html

[haele]

3. Check with the LOC online

Here's the query page for the American Memory Collections section, I'm not sure if you should type in Plymouth Colony or the year.

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/mdbquery.html

You might also want to check the government papers collections area of the site (you'll have to go back to http://www.loc.gov/ to check around)

Haele

[Maple]

4. Harvest festivals

were common in Europe...and just transferred.

[Maddy McCall]

5. Not the case with the so-called first thanksgiving...

It was actually a Green Corn Festival celebrated by all southeast Indians, and the colonists crashed the party.

[Maple]

6. Oh very likely

however the whole idea of 'American' thanksgiving is not unique to the US as a country.

The Europeans did it, and the 'First Nations' did it.

PS...First Nations is what 'Indians' are called in Canada.

[Maddy McCall]

8. But I believe we are talking specifically about the origin myth in the US

and not about canada.

And, as for European harvest celebrations--it doesn't apply to what happened in this specific incident because they had no harvest to celebrate--no harvest. The colonists would not have eaten had it not been for complete reliance on Wampanoag benevolence.

As for your PS, not all indian groups were nations, so it is better to refer to them by tribal affiliation than by the Eurocentric titles that white people apply. "First Nations" is fine if you are talking about the Iroqouis confederation, but when you are talking about American Indians on a more local level, we prefer to have our tribal name applied. Ani-yun Wiyah.

[SpiralHawk]

7. Thanksgiving background

Below I have pasted in the text from a letter to the editor that I sent to the Baltimore Sun back in 1998. They ignored the letter.

While the letter does not directly address the story of the first Thanksgiving, it does offer some context that may be of service to you in you inquiry. Good luck.

11/26/98

Dear Editor,
The collection of historical proclamations in the Baltimore Sun on Thanksgiving Day (page 2, Nov. 26, 1998) was dangerously flawed by a major omission. The journal begins with a 1675 proclamation that relates a wee bit of the story of King Philip’s War, wherein Native American "heathens" are damned for laying waste to several colonial settlements. The native people of the continent are condemned for killing the people who have stolen their hunting grounds. But no mention is made of an earlier Thanksgiving Proclamation in 1637. That information is essential to understanding the events and proclamations of 1675.

The 1637 Thanksgiving proclamation was issued by Massachusetts Bay Colony Governor William Bradford, and it celebrates an incident now known as the Pequot Massacre.

Here is a synopsis of the story. The beginning of English settlement in Quinnehtukqut (Connecticut) provoked a series of confrontations -- raids by settlers and counter raids by the Pequot (one of 84 Algonquin Indian nations).

Then during the summer of 1636 a Boston trader named John Oldham was killed near Block Island, RI. From his pulpit in Boston, preacher Richard Mather blamed the Pequot for the death and denounced them as the "accursed seeds of Canaan." His rhetoric helped elevate the ensuing confrontation into a "holy war" -- the Puritans against the "forces of darkness." (sound familiar).

To avenge the murder and other raids blamed on the Pequot, Captain John Mason led an expedition of nearly 400 armed men to attack the Pequot's main fortified village, located near present-day Mystic, Connecticut.

In the dark of night the colonial war party surrounded the village, which was filled with women, children, and elders; virtually all the men were away. Then as the sun was rising on the morning of May 26, 1937, the immigrant war party ignited torches and set the wigwams and surrounding fortifications ablaze. As the Pequot people fled from the village, the colonists shot them down. The rest were roasted alive in confusion amid the wild flames. An estimated 700 native people died that day, most of them women, children, and elders.

Governor Bradford later described the scene this way: "It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fire and the streams of blood quenching the same, and horrible was the stink and scent thereof; but the victory seemed a sweet sacrifice, and they (the colonists) gave praise therof to God, who had wrought so wonderfully…"

The Pequot massacre led directly to the 1637 Thanksgiving celebration in Plymouth. According to the proclamation, Governor Bradford designated the first "official" Day of Thanksgiving to celebrate the safe return to Plymouth of men who had gone to Mystic to participate in the Pequot massacre.

This is a deeply tragic story. I relate it now neither to condemn nor to assess blame, but rather to correct the record. Thanksgiving is an important and worthy national holiday, but its origins ought not to be romanticized with distortion or omission. Only acknowledgement of the truth can lead to deliberate free-will acts of forgiveness, and thereby establish a basis for right relationship. From this can come a shared and true Thanksgiving celebration for all Americans, including the peoples who first inhabited this land.

Sincerely, Soaring Hawk