“Thanksgiving was the third and most exalted of Plymouth’s trinity, holier even than the Mayflower and the Rock.  It carried the story of America’s founding out of Plymouth and into millions of homes, renewing memory of the Pilgrims each autumn over turkey, sweet potato, and pumpkin pie.

The only people who might be surprised by this would be the Pilgrims themselves.  They wrote thousands of words about the colony’s first years, and all of two paragraphs about their famous repast.  They didn’t record its date or call it a thanksgiving, which to Calvinists signified a solemn religious observance.  They didn’t even specify turkey as one of the dishes served….Nor did Pilgrims initially intend for Indians to share in the bounty.  Massasoit and ninety men turned up unannounced, almost tripling the number of mouths to feed.  The Indians went out and hunted deer, adding venison to the menu for the three days of feasting that followed.

…Like Plymouth Rock, the Pilgrim feast was also forgotten for many generations.  New Englanders continued to hold harvest feasts and days of religious thanksgiving – to mark, among other events, their bloody victories over Indians.  But it wasn’t until the early nineteenth century that writers rediscovered the 1621 meal, recasting it as the ‘first Thanksgiving,’ an antecedent to what had become a Yankee tradition of homecoming feasts, with turkey often served as the centerpiece.” – L&S (emphasis mine)

Why do we remember the things we do?  How do we remember our past?  What do we choose to represent and honor?  Why?   What does that say to other people?

Norman Rockwell became the iconic Thanksgiving symbol.  We strive for that, and we’re disappointed if we don’t reach it.  We think this mythic imagery is real.  We think the Pilgrims and Indians celebrating together in genuine friendship is true.  We want an easy history, a simple story.  We want it to be real.

“For most people, the myth has become real and a preferred substitute for ethnographic reality.” –DL

But what if we accepted the messiness, awkwardness, scariness of life?  If we can embrace the tension of the past, maybe we can engage with the tension of the present.

 “As it happened, the men ashore had found something.  They had discovered thirty-six ears of corn buried in a large iron pot.” -L&G

The Pilgrims might not have known what they found, but through the lens of history we do.  As it happened, they took some corn from the Indians’ pantry, and understandably, this did not sit well with the locals.  We have to reframe and challenge the way we tell our histories.

The Pilgrims saw the bones of the Wampanoag, dead from smallpox.

“Upon seeing thousands of dead Natives, the Governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony, John Winthrop, called the plague “miraculous.” In 1634, he wrote to a friend in England:

“But for the natives in these parts, God hath so pursued them, as for 300 miles space the greatest part of them are swept away by the small pox which still continues among them. So as God hath thereby cleared our title to this place, those who remain in these parts, being in all not fifty, have put themselves under our protect…”

“Native peoples are a permanent ‘present absence’ in the US colonial imagination, an ‘absence’ that reinforces at every turn, the conviction that Native peoples are indeed vanishing and that the conquest of Native lands is justified.” – Andrea Smith

When the Pilgrims landed, they discovered cleared land and credited God’s provision.  As they came to find out, it was actually because a smallpox epidemic wiped out the tribe who lived there, and yet the Puritan settlers would continue to view deaths like this as from the hand of God for their own benefit.

One of our thanksgiving symbols is the cornucopia.  But this story of the corn and the empty land reminds us that sometimes (often?) ‘God’s provision’ comes at the expense of other people.

  “The colonial end game becomes a world where Indigenous peoples are thought of as always dead, dying or inexplicably disappeared.” – Sium

 “Dozens of arrows showered the camp.  The men fired two muskets from behind the barricade.  More arrows flew in, accompanied by whooping and hollering.  Several Pilgrims rushed from behind the barricade and discharged their muskets.  The Indians shrieked and quickly scattered.  The relieved explorers gathered to thank God for safely delivering them.” – L&G

How is trying to kill people and scaring them away deliverance from God?  Phrasing it as them and God vs. Indians turns the native peoples into the enemy.  Continuing that language now keeps that dichotomy alive and helps fuel a continued racism.

Eventually the Puritan settlers undertake two wars against the local tribes.  One of the harmful effects of the myth of the First Thanksgiving is that it puts the Pilgrims and Indians on equal footing.  Which makes it easier to skim past the devastating wars, because the story is set up as two equal nations fighting.  Struggling Pilgrims, yes they have guns, but they’re up against an established Indian nation who knows the land.  When we frame the story this way, we ignore the structural inequalities that are at the root of America. 

“It might be said that as the century matured and commerce prospered, Puritan society suffered from a corruption of intensity……Much as they admired the Puritans, historians of the nineteenth century had to recognize that these people had made enemies of the world.” – RK

What if we have made idols out of the Pilgrims?  The ‘Protestant work ethic’ that undergirds so much of American society is built on the shoulders of the Puritans.  Is it possible we are still and have always made enemies of the world?

“’the Puritans chose to interpret the word [occupy] in terms of a settled agricultural people and to deny Indians ownership of areas over which they merely hunted or fished’….Because so many areas of New England had been ‘providentially’ cleared of occupants by diseases or by raids, it seemed perfectly justifiable to move in and improve and organize the land.  Thus the United Colonies of New England came into being, without native representation.”  – RK

What if they had included native representatives?  The United Colonies left out places like Rhode Island because they disagreed with the Puritan way of things.  What are the dangers of ‘my way or the highway’ – of power without difference of opinion?  Of exclusion and consolidation?  Is there a better way to run a society?

When this is the base we build our country on, when this is what we uphold and strive towards – how does that affect us now?

Part 1 – The First Thanksgiving and the Myth of America
Part 2 – The Myth of America – Columbus, Christ-Bearer
Part 3 – The Myth of America – Jamestown – The Wrong Story To Tell
Part 4 – Pilgrims – God’s Provision at the Expense of Other People
Part 5 – Myth of America – Biased History Lesson
Part 6 – The Mayflower Compact – for God and King and White America
Part 7 – The First Thanksgiving – for a Massacre
Part 8 – The First Thanksgiving – Fears, Power, and Privilege
Part 9 – Colonialism – A History Lesson with Skittles
Part 10 – Myth of the First Thanksgiving – Other Festivals and Thanksgiving
Part 11 – Myth of America – The Clash of Spiritualities
Part 12 – The First Thanksgiving – A Day of Mourning
Part 13 – Resources

Books/Resources

A Voyage Long and Strange: On the Trail of Vikings, Conquistadors, Lost Colonists, and Other Adventurers in Early America(L&S)
The Light and the Glory for Children : Discovering God’s Plan for America from Christopher Columbus to George Washington(L&G)
A People’s History of the United States(Zinn)

The Red King’s Rebellion: Racial Politics in New England 1675-1678
(RK)
Daily Life of Native Americans from Post-Columbian through Nineteenth-Century America (Daily Life Through History)
(DL)
Stories of the Pilgrims
Eating the Plates
Pilgrims: New World Settlers and the Call of Home
Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War

This series is available as a 40 page pdf, giving an introductory look at settler colonialism as it relates to the founding of America.  Discusses Columbus, Jamestown, Pilgrims and Native Americans and includes 4 lessons to teach the topics to kids.
Buy now

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