The History of the U.S. Thanksgiving Holiday The Wampanoags and Patuxets The U.S. Thanksgiving holiday began in 1863 with no reference to America s native people or to English Pilgrims. Moreover, the thanksgiving feast of 1621 didn t turn out so well. Correcting the popular folklore that inaccurately depicts Thanksgiving s historical facts in no way demeans the affirmation of gratitude for life s gifts at a family meal and gathering, but it can help bring about a more productive time of truth and reconciliation for America s indigenous people. The holiday was designated by President Abraham Lincoln as national day of thanksgiving and blessing during the Civil War. As for Massasoit, Squanto, and the Pilgrims, U.S. history was most likely changed because the local indigenous people astutely assisted the starving settlers who later strengthened Plymouth Colony. It was, however, at the cost of the lives and culture of those local tribes. Celebrating a breach of promise is not a gracious act, and celebrating Thanksgiving as connected to a feast in Plymouth is inaccurate. We could raise a glass instead to the hope, respect, and friendship between William Bradford and Massasoit, which was sadly destroyed upon their passing, and to the courage and dignity not only of the white settlers, but of the millions of native people who died in the ensuing struggles. Perhaps we can celebrate it as Lincoln intended, as a day of general blessings and gratitude without connection to a misrepresented historical event. Proclamation of Thanksgiving Washington, D.C. October 3, 1863 By the President of the United States of America. A Proclamation. The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consiousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom. No human counsel hath
Thanksgiving 2 devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union. In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States to be affixed. Done at the City of Washington, this Third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the Unites States the Eighty-eighth. By the President: Abraham Lincoln William H. Seward, Secretary of State From The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln 1832-1870. Ed. Roy Prentice Basler. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1990. A Summary of Plymouth s Thanksgiving There were many feasts of thanksgiving before and after Plymouth where native peoples invited white settlers. The 1621 feast in Plymouth was enjoyed by fifty-two English and ninety native people. After Massasoit (Wampanoag tribe) and Squanto (Patuxet tribe) assured the survival of the colonists, the English took hunting lands from the tribes, forced Christianity upon them with the threat of execution, and in general refused any type of equality for tribal people. To save their land and way of life, Massasoit s son led a war with the English that ended with the parading of his head on a stake through Plymouth. The children of the English 1621 feast-goers grew to be adults who put bounties on the heads of the Wampanoags. The generosity of Massasoit in 1620 resulted in his people s loss of their lives and land, his son s death, and the enslavement of his grandson. Years after 1621, the colonists proclaimed days of thanksgiving for victories over tribal people, including one for the burning of the Pequot fort in 1637 and the victory over
Thanksgiving 3 Massasoit s son Philip in 1676. The first nationwide Thanksgiving occurred when the British won the Battle of Saratoga in 1777. The modern holiday began when in 1846 Sarah Josepha Hale, editor of Godey s Lady s Book, began a campaign for an annual national day of thanks that would unite many local thanksgivings. In 1863, Abraham Lincoln declared two national days of thanks one in August for the Battle of Gettysburg and one in November for general blessings. Soon the November day of thanks was called Thanksgiving Day. The Details English settlers in Plymouth did not invite a few wild Indians over for dinner and it was not the first English/Native Thanksgiving (the first most likely occurred in Jamestown in 1610 and many Spanish/Native Thanksgiving feasts probably occurred in Florida since the 1580s). (Do All Indians Live in Tipis, p. 73). It did not become an annual affair as the Indian and English leaders resolved it to be that autumn in 1621, and the ninety Wampanoag Indians who attended were not particularly thankful for their friendship with whites. Indian and non-indian historians concur that the group of Plymouth Puritans from the 1620 voyage may not have survived without the assistance of a Pawtuxet man known as Tisquantum or Squanto and the Wampanoag leader Massasoit. There was a harvest meal in the autumn of 1621 shared by the fifty-two surviving English people (fifty-two died over the harsh winter), who were led by William Bradford, and by about ninety Wampanoag people, who were led by Massasoit. The village, newly named Plimoth ( Patuxet or Pawtuxet to the Wampanoags) had been abandoned by the tribe shortly before the 1620 English arrival due to devastation of disease from European contact begun in the previous century. Squanto, in fact, was one of many East coast natives who were kidnapped and taken to England or Spain and sold into slavery. After being freed by Spanish priests, he was able to return to his home, the deserted Patuxet, shortly before the arrival of the English colonists of 1620, to find that all of his relatives had died. When Bradford arrived, he mistakenly thought that the continent was largely free of inhabitants. There were, however, millions of people, 500 indigenous cultures, 300 languages, several cities, hundreds of villages, and coast-to-coast trade networks. These were not simple and naïve savages. Like Squanto, Samoset (Pemaquid, Abnaki), also learned English from being kidnapped. He could say Welcome to the colonists when he first noticed them in the spring after their difficult winter and immediately summoned Squanto and Massasoit to the settlement. Squanto then decided to remain on the site of his home to show the settlers the local intricacies of farming, fishing, hunting, and gathering. In the autumn he taught the English about the centuries-old, three-day ceremony of his people at harvest time by inviting the Wampanoag tribe members who brought five deer (no evidence of turkey), corn, and much of the feast.
Thanksgiving 4 The thanksgiving part of the harvest ceremony was a Wampanoag daily tradition. Tall Oak (Wampanoag), explains, We believe that everything given to us was a gift from the creator and because it was a gift we remembered to give thanks and we did this in all the ways we could. This was the basis of all our ceremonial life, and because this was a gift we realized there s an obligation that comes with a gift, and that obligation was to share, because if we didn t share there was no reason for the creator to continue to give us those gifts (500 Nations). In addition, today s Wampanoag tribe members deduce that reasons for the feast involved a political move on the part of tribal leaders. According to Nanepashemet (Wampanoag), the Narraganset were their enemies with whom they wanted to remain at peace. Since the Wampanoags didn t want English enemies and since the English had unusual weapons but brought their women, indicating peaceful intentions, we wanted them on our side (500 Nations). What began as a mutual respect, at least on the surface, between the English and the native people, was an extremely uncomfortable peace that lasted for nearly fifty years. Although the promise to have a yearly shared harvest ceremony did not occur, Massasoit was invited to William Bradford s wedding. Until his death in 1660, Massasoit was a strong leader and respected friend of Bradford who assiduously avoided battle with the English (most of whom did not consider native people to be fully human). What occurred during the remainder of their lives and particularly after the deaths of Bradford and Massasoit was far from the peaceful coexistence of the 1621 harvest ceremony. The new generation of New England colonists did not share the earlier generation s debt of gratitude to Massasoit s people. Massasoit s son, Metacom (or Metacomet ), better known by the English as King Phillip, said that his father had been restraining all Indian tribes from retaliation for deaths and damages by massacring the English, but he would no longer restrain them if the injustices to his people were continued. He pointed out that his father gave them a hundred times more land than I now have for my people. His tribal lands were surrounded on three sides by expanding English settlements and adamant Puritans trying to convert Indian people by all means possible. While many Wampanoags made moves away from strictly traditional ways and worked for the English as laborers and servants in the midst of ongoing tensions about the remaining Wampanoag land, most upsetting to Phillip were the arrests and executions by Puritans of Indians who violated the Puritans Code of Ethics (Blue Laws) and the lack of arrests for colonists who ruined Indian cornfields with their roaming livestock. Native people who did not choose Christianity were prosecuted for hunting and fishing on the Sabbath, using Indian medicines, and for entering into non-christian marriages. As Tall Oak (Wampanoag) sees it, Pray or be shot was the method of conversion. That s how the first Christian Indians had Christianity brought to them (500 Nations). Some tribal people chose to fight on the side of the English, who were their employers and their leaders in Christianity. King Phillip announced to his people, You see these great lands the creator gave us... you now see the foe before you. They have grown insolent and bold. Our ancient customs are disregarded. Treaties made by our fathers are broken. Our brothers are murdered before our
Thanksgiving 5 eyes.... Our ancestors spirits cry to us for revenge. These people from an unknown world will cut down our groves, spoil our hunting and planting grounds, and drive us and our children from the graves of our fathers. (500 Nations) King Phillip s War, 1675-1676, bloody, devastating, and costly to both the English and the native people, was sparked by the colonists murder of Sassamon, the liaison between the two sides. Finally, the Great Swamp Massacre killed hundreds of native men, women, and children and wiped out Indian crops. An English attack on the camp of the remaining Indians took Phillip s wife and son (Massasoit s grandson) who were sold into slavery in Bermuda. Phillip s response was to return to the camp and become the easy target of English gunfire. He was known to have said, My heart breaks; now I am ready to die (500 Nations). Phillip s body was drawn and quartered and his head paraded in Plymouth. Most of the Natives who fought with Phillip were sold into slavery or forced to become servants of the colonists. The Wampanoag and other local Native communities adapted aspects of colonial culture in order to survive. From 1694-1704 the Massachusetts colony offered bounties for killing Indians or taking them prisoner. Scalps of young Indian men were worth 100 pounds. Years after 1621, the colonists proclaimed days of thanksgiving for victories over tribal people, including one for the burning of the Pequot fort in 1637 and the victory over Massasoit s son Philip in 1676. The first nationwide Thanksgiving occurred when the British won the Battle of Saratoga in 1777. The modern holiday began in the1840s when the written passage about the 1621 harvest festival was recovered by historians. In 1846 Sarah Josepha Hale, editor of Godey s Lady s Book, began a campaign for an annual holiday. In 1863, Abraham Lincoln declared two national days of thanks one in August for the Battle of Gettysburg and one in November for general blessings without official connection to the Plymouth history. Soon the November day of thanks became Thanksgiving Day, connected by magazines and journals to the Plymouth feast of 1621. For many people, a holiday descending from colonial gratitude for winning battles over Indians, while being proclaimed as a celebration of friendship and respect, remains unsavory (1621 A New Look, p. 40). Today, on Thanksgiving Day, while most Native people are sitting down to turkey dinners, some prefer to observe the day as one of mourning for what happened to the millions of Indians who lived on the North and South American continents before the arrival of the Europeans (Liz Hill, What Do Indians Do for Thanksgiving, in Do All Indians Live in Tipis, p. 75). Many prefer to see it as Lincoln intended, a day of general blessings and gratitude without connection to a misinterpreted historical event. Rachela Permenter Professor of English Slippery Rock University
Thanksgiving 6 First-stop sources for further information (academic sources available upon request): 1621: A New Look at Thanksgiving. Catherine O Neill Grace (Washington, DC: National Geographic, 2004). 500 Nations. John Pohl & W. T. Morgan. Warner Home Video, 2004. Do All Indians Live in Tipis?: Questions and Answers from the National Museum of the American Indian (National Museum of the American Indian. NY: Collins, 2007).