The True Nature of Thanksgiving
Long before the Pilgrims ever arrived in the New World, Indigenous people were celebrating their relationship to nature and what the Earth provided for them.
Of Puritans and Pilgrims
The Puritans were, by and large, believers in reforming the Church of England from within according to their interpretation of the Bible. While their belief structure was what we might call today more conservative or fundamentalist compared to mainstream Christians of the time, they also believed in working with the institution to advance the changes they thought necessary.
The Pilgrims, on the other hand, were a group of Separatist Puritans, a group so radical in their beliefs that they saw no option but to cut ties with the Church of England and settle elsewhere. Even non-separatist Puritans of the time found the Separatists’ beliefs and demands too outlandish. As comedian Robin Williams put it, “Ah, the Puritans. Our Ancestors. People so uptight, even the English kicked them out.”
Without finding what they felt was a suitably hospitable population in Europe, the Separatists decided to set sail for the New World. Hoping to build a fundamentalist Christian society from scratch, they become what we refer to as the Pilgrims.
American’s ritualistic teaching of Pilgrim history and Thanksgiving, particularly to children in grade school, is dangerously biased in favor of European settlers. It’s not hard to imagine why. Many American families, throughout New England and beyond, can trace their ancestry back to the Pilgrims on the Mayflower. On a plaque in Bas Relief Park in Provincetown, Massachusetts, my wife quickly identified two names of Mayflower passengers that are roots in her family tree. Countless politicians, celebrities, and people that have framed or guided the cultural development of the United States can also trace their lineage back to the Mayflower. Traditions handed down through generations, even through open-minded descendants, endure.
Signs of a More Complete History
When I first visited Plymouth Harbor, I was surprised by a couple things: 1) Plymouth Rock is perhaps the most overrated, over-hyped attraction in the country. It’s just a medium-sized rock on a beach, seriously, that’s all it is, and 2) it’s immediately obvious there is plenty of history here that is pushed aside in favor of holding placing the Pilgrim’s story on a pedestal.
In more recent decades, locals and Native American advocates have made efforts to correct this imbalance. A modest statue of Massasoit Sachem of the Wampanoag people stands vigilant on Coles Hill near a Mayflower replica.
There is some explanation nearby of what Massasoit means to Indigenous peoples across the country. Every year on Thanksgiving, Native Americans and supporters gather for a National Day of Mourning. Near Massasoit’s statue, they reflect, pray, and denounce centuries of racism and mistreatment of Indigenous people.
Indigenous People and the True Nature of Thanksgiving
As described in this article from Smithsonian Magazine, the story of Massasoit and of the Indigenous people of New England is the more compelling Thanksgiving history we should all understand.
The Wampanoag were a nation of villages throughout present-day Rhode Island and Massachusetts. They were skilled stewards of the land and wildlife. Their symbiotic relationship to nature is what allowed them to survive. They believed that as long as they respected nature and gave back to the natural world, it would continue to provide bounty for their people. They held frequent Thanksgiving-style celebrations over plentiful feasts. Long before the Pilgrims ever arrived, Indigenous people were celebrating their relationship to the ecosystem and what the Earth provided for them. That is the true story of Thanksgiving.
An Alliance of Necessity
Counter to the happy, sing-along grade school accounts of the Pilgrims’ first Thanksgiving, the Pilgrims were not welcomed with open arms by most Native Americans, or even by settlers already on Cape Cod and elsewhere. Indeed, many were right to view them skeptically.
By the time the Mayflower made it’s journey, European slavers had already landed at the settlement of the Patuxet people, the lands the settlers called Plymouth. Native Americans were raped, murdered, and abducted as slaves by the European predecessors to the Pilgrims. There are even accounts on plaques scattered across Cape Cod that tell the story of how other settlers, likely slavers, refused to let the Pilgrims’ settle with them because they found the Pilgrims’ religious beliefs too extreme.
The Mayflower did not transport slaves, and it as far as we know, the original Mayflower settlers did not engage in the slave trade, but many Native Americans likely suspected they might if given the chance.
Why then, did some Native Americans ally with the Pilgrims? The short answer is that it was an alignment of mutual interest. It was strategic, and to both parties, probably critical to their survival. The Wampanoag were losing entire villages to disease and violent conflict from other Indigenous peoples (and later, settlers). When the Pilgrims arrived, the Wampanoag were outnumbered by the rival Narragansett people and losing territory.
When the Pilgrims landed in New England, they initially tried and failed to reach the milder mouth of the Hudson River. They were dying, rapidly, had little food, and no knowledge of how to cultivate the new land. The Wampanoag proposed an alliance: the Pilgrims would provide European weaponry in exchange for Wampanoag guidance and food. The Pilgrims produced a bountiful supply of food during the following growing season, and the Wampanoag defended themselves against the Narragansett with the aid of European weaponry and technology.1
In October 1621, after a successful alliance, the Wampanoag included Pilgrims in a one of their Thanksgiving celebrations, made notable by the temporary, peaceful coexistence of the two groups. That relatively rare moment in time, when the needs of an outcast group of extremist European settlers intersected with the needs of a nation of imperiled Indigenous people, is what spawned the traditional Thanksgiving myth in the United States. That account, while rooted in a small sliver of fleeting truth, does us all disservice. It misses the broader historical context, the complexity of Indigenous heritage, and leaves out the real cause for the celebration of bountiful harvest.
We must educate ourselves of the complete history of all peoples. We must celebrate what the Earth provides for us, and what we can do to keep the ecosystem we are all apart of healthy. Happy Thanksgiving.
Sections of this essay were originally posted online in November of 2017.
A key historical figure in this alliance of the Wampanoag and Pilgrims was an English-speaking Patuxet Native American named Tisquantum (imprecisely referred to as “Squanto” by many sources), who spoke English after being previously kidnapped and sold in the European slave trade before making his way back to the New World.
Tisquatum’s story is a dynamic tale of intrigue, resilience, and betrayal. He used his unique English skills to advance his own standing and protect his own interests, sometimes to at the expense of Massasoit. Some accounts suggest Tisquantum was trying to overthrow Massasoit and take power for himself. Regardless, when Massasoit learned that Tisquantum’s was abusing his position and lying, he ordered the Pilgrims to turn him over to be executed. By a previous peace treaty, the Pilgrims were obligated to do so. They delayed, knowing Tisquatum’s value. In what seems to be a movie-style example of the cavalry arriving in the nick of time, Tisquatum was saved by the arrival of another ship, the Fortune, in dire need of food and aid. Tisquantum immediately became valuable as a translator, prolonging his life. This sort of convenient need for Tisquantum kept happening through the following seasons, and Massasoit eventually abandoned calls for Tisquatum’s life.