I was researching online: http://www.powwows.com/gathering/general/469-true-origin-thanksgiving.html
The first settlers were dying from disease and enslaved Squanto. He taught them how to work the land (grow corn and catch fish). He also helped them create a peace treaty with a nearby tribe Wampanoag. In celebration of having their crops produce they had a feast mostly a brew of ale, but that was never called Thanksgiving.
Here is how Thanksgiving got its "official" title: (all documented by government records)
Basically the Puritans thought they were the chosen people and mass murdered hundreds of Natives. They gave thanks to God and celebrated. Here is an account from an article:
In the midst of the Holocaust/Genocide of the Red Man and woman, Governor Dudley declared in 1704 a "General Thanksgiving" not to celebrate the brotherhood of man, but for:
[God's] infinite Goodness to extend His Favors... In defeating and disappointing.... the expeditions of the Enemy [Indians] against us, And the good Success given us against them, by delivering so many of them into our hands...
And as you are eating turkey and giving your praises to God, keep this image in your head
"To see them frying in the fire, and the streams of their blood quenching the same, and the stench was horrible, but the victory seemed a sweet sacrifice to the great delight of the Pilgrims, and they gave praise thereof to God."
6 comments:
Well thanks for making Thanksgiving depressing...JK. Sad but true, I suppose. :(
the truth will set you free. jj
very insightful. i never knew all that. well if i picture that as i'm eating my thanksgiving feast it won't be much different than when brett tells his cadaver stories around the dinner table.
ps you do need to come over again, perhaps a chickflick from the jane austen era would be nice.
Not so uplifting now is it. I am going to stick with my "Attitude of Gratitude" book and try and increase my thankfulness. I will put first on my list that I was not at that first Thanksgiving as either a pilgram or an Indian.
Yeah, what Andrea said. :)
Thanks for posting this. In our family, we celebrate Thanksgiving as a chance to be with family (and eat!), as a way to focus on gratitude, and as a way to remind us of the history and suffering of Native peoples. Our kids will know, before they ever enter the school system, the truth behind the history of their ancestors, including the history of Thanksgiving. The myth behind Thanksgiving begins in elementary school and is often perpetuated through high school and even college because the actual history is often never taught as a counterpoint to the myth. I hope that posts like yours can encourage people to teach their children this part of American history and counteract the mythological story told in K-12 classrooms all over the US.
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