We all know the tale of the first Thanksgiving celebration. In 1620, the Mayflower set sail from Plymouth, England, and three months later, landed at what would eventually be Massachusetts. The pilgrims arrived in time to experience a harsh New England winter, and by springtime, only half of the crew and passengers remained. In the March of their first spring, they were approached by Native Americans, one of them named Squanto who could speak English because, earlier in his life, he had been a slave in London before escaping and returning to his homeland. Squanto taught the pilgrims how to cultivate corn, extract tree sap, and catch fish in the rivers. He also helped the pilgrims establish and alliance with the local Wampanoag tribe, and when their first corn harvest in November proved successful, William Bradford, the Governor of the colony, organized a celebratory feast and invited the colony's Native American allies including the Wampanoag chief, Massasoit. 200 years later, Thanksgiving was made an official national holiday by Abraham Lincoln and has been celebrated ever since. The holiday, we are made to believe, honors the bond between Native Americans and the settlers that allowed them to survive and prosper in a new land and is seen as a quintessential American holiday. Being so, it is not surprising that the holiday is dogged by quintessential American hypocrisy.
While the story of the Plymouth Rock settlers seems heartwarming: a tale of triumph and survival as well as unexpected friendships, it is actually a myth invented to obscure the darker history of our nation's origins. The 1621 feast that the textbook story of Thanksgiving chronicles was not the first Thanksgiving. It was a three day long harvest festival, not even referred to as a “Thanksgiving” celebration. Those celebrations were usually religious holidays in which church services where held to praise God in honor of a certain event. For the Plymouth settlers, Thanksgivings were holidays strongly connected to food, but they weren't held to celebrate an abundance of it. Thanksgivings were held after periods of fasting when the Plymouth settlers gave thanks to God for providing them with food. The fasts were both religious and practical: the settlers were not able to provide themselves with enough food to support the fledgling colonies, regardless of what the myth taught in Elementary schools across the country dictates. After fasts of necessities, Thanksgivings were held in which the colonists broke the fast to enjoy what food they were able to grow or catch during the fast. However, do not be confused. Not all Thanksgivings were celebrated the breaking of fasts. In fact, some of them were connected to much more violent events, like the 1637 Pequot massacre.
On a day in November, a day we commonly refer to as Thanksgiving, a band of volunteer hunters from the Massachusetts colony returned safely from an expedition in which they murdered 700 Pequot Native Americans. This day, which over 300 years later is commemorated with the carving of a turkey and the sharing of pumpkin pie, was a celebration of slaughter, of inhumane acts of genocide against this country's original inhabitants, and just another day in the history of this country. While the storybook version has settlers and Native Americans breaking bread together as friends and allies, we must remember that such an origin story for the Thanksgiving holiday is a myth manufactured to distract from our real heritage.
Europeans came to this land over 300 years ago, and proceeded to almost completely wipe out the indigenous people who called this country home. They killed without mercy, and the few they let survive were made into second class citizens and confined to reservations. In establishing the US of A, hundreds of thousands died ingloriously at the hands of invaders (referred to historically as our forefathers) who believed in manifest destiny and a land of freedom, but not in common humanity or the value of life. Today, culture dictates that we have a meal with our families and express what we are thankful for on the fourth Thursday of November, and this year, when my stepfather carves Tom the Turkey and says he's thankful for President Trump, I'll be sure to say
“I'm thankful to be alive in a land where my ancestors, both black and Native American, were brutalized and murdered so we could come together today and eat pie.”
Happy Thanksgiving, guys.