THE REAL STORY OF THANKSGIVING

[not systems]

http://www.altpr.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=530&mode=nocomments&order=0&thold=0

by Susan Bates

Most of us associate the holiday with happy Pilgrims and Indians sitting down to a big feast. And that did happen - once.

...

But as word spread in England about the paradise to be found in the new world, religious zealots called Puritans began arriving by the boat load. Finding no fences around the land, they considered it to be in the public domain. Joined by other British settlers, they seized land, capturing strong young Natives for slaves and killing the rest. But the Pequot Nation had not agreed to the peace treaty Squanto had negotiated and they fought back. The Pequot War was one of the bloodiest Indian wars ever fought.

In 1637 near present day Groton, Connecticut, over 700 men, women and children of the Pequot Tribe had gathered for their annual Green Corn Festival which is our Thanksgiving celebration. In the predawn hours the sleeping Indians were surrounded by English and Dutch mercenaries who ordered them to come outside. Those who came out were shot or clubbed to death while the terrified women and children who huddled inside the longhouse were burned alive. The next day the governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony declared "A Day Of Thanksgiving" because 700 unarmed men, women and children had been murdered.

...

Following an especially successful raid against the Pequot in what is now Stamford, Connecticut, the churches announced a second day of "thanksgiving" to celebrate victory over the heathen savages. During the feasting, the hacked off heads of Natives were kicked through the streets like soccer balls. Even the friendly Wampanoag did not escape the madness. Their chief was beheaded, and his head impaled on a pole in Plymouth, Massachusetts -- where it remained on display for 24 years.

The killings became more and more frenzied, with days of thanksgiving feasts being held after each successful massacre. George Washington finally suggested that only one day of Thanksgiving per year be set aside instead of celebrating each and every massacre. Later Abraham Lincoln decreed Thanksgiving Day to be a legal national holiday during the Civil War -- on the same day he ordered troops to march against the starving Sioux in Minnesota.

...

[TrueAmerican]

1. That's the first time I heard that story

Too bad the author neglected to provide sources for her essay. I would be interested to learn more about this. (if true).

Any resources?

[Deja Q]

2. LINCOLN said that?

He's said a lot of things that are pro-labor and pro-people. I cannot envision him telling troops to exterminate the Sioux.

Though the rest of the story sounds like it's got truth to it. Puritans are notorious for being nice to themselves and vile toward anyone else. (hell, anyone who escapes religious persecution to only in turn persecute has some real problems... and a colony of crackpots is too ghastly to contemplate. Yet it happened.)

If only the Natives had won.

But they didn't have bigger guns.

They didn't even have guns.

And yet our laws and beliefs tell us that good always wins over evil. Why do I find that to be a load of bunk too?

[TrueAmerican]

4. Maybe the Englisht and Dutch thought

they had WMD?

[SemiCharmedQuark]

9. No, he didn't.

In 1862, in minnesota, after the Great Souix uprising, the Minnesota army sentenced 303 Dakota to death for rape and murder. The executions had to be approved by Lincoln. Of couse, Lincoln was under pressure to approve the executions. However he personally reviewed every trial asking the prosecuter to send all records to him.

He was threatened and Minnesota threatened to murder all of the 303 if Lincoln didn't allow it. However, dispite this pressure, he allowed for the executions of 39 out of the 303. That isn't great, to me, because I am against the death penalty in all cases. And I have more sympathy for the indigenous peoples protecting their land. However, it certainly is not the murderous Lincoln portrayed here.

Further, Lincoln's Thanksgiving Proclamation was in 1863, not 1862.

In SPRING of 1863, the Sioux were forced out of their native lands, but this was thanks to Congress, not the actions of one man.


Americans have treated the indigenous peoples so horribly. Spreading untruths only gives ammunition to those who would downplay this.

[Swamp Rat]

36. Yeah, just look how they treated us in New Orleans?

Damn AMERICANS! :eyes:

[AX10]

16. The Puritians were far from pure in the first place.

The Mayflower Madam ring a bell?

Second of all, they did being to colonize North America which led to the genocide of the natives.

[awoke_in_2003]

18. Not to be picky, but

The Pilgrims were on the mayflower, and wanted total separation from the church of England. The Puritans were a separate group (Mass. Bay Company) and thought they could PURIFY the church of England.

[TallahasseeGrannie]

29. The Mayflower Madam?

I thought that was recent. You mean there was an original??

[JDPriestly]

3. Never heard this version.

As for good wining over evil -- That only happens if the good stay smart and fight hard to make it win/win as much as possible for the most people. Good wins when many believe in it. Persuading the many to believe in it is the hard part. On this Thanksgiving day, I thank DU for playing a part in helping good people to stay smart and fight hard. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

[depakid]

5. Some citation to authority would go a long way

How does the author expect anyone to believe something so outrageously at odds with traditional beliefs if he doesn't back up his statements with at least some credible evidence?

Seems to me, he actually hurts his own case- and makes others who hear similar things even more resistent to believing them.

[HamstersFromHell]

6. Think this one is ready for Snopes...

I've now seen it in quite a few "versions" in the last two days. Snopes says nothing about it, but I suspect it'll be part of the collection there soon.

One thing that oughta make you think it's a fabrication:

In one version I saw, the Native Americans (all men, no women or children, but still 700 of them) were all in a meeting house, where they were ordered to come out, then shot. Those who refused were burnt alive in the house.

Damn nice builders, those pilgrims, to have a meeting house that would hold 700 people, much less to have one they would willingly burn down.

[Clara T]

7. Thanksgiving is much more than a lie

Thanksgiving is much more than a lie – if it were that simple, an historical correction of the record of events in 1600s Massachusetts would suffice to purge the “flaw” in the national mythology. But Thanksgiving is not just a twisted fable, and the mythology it nurtures is itself inherently evil. The real-life events – subsequently revised – were perfectly understood at the time as the first, definitive triumphs of the genocidal European project in New England. The near-erasure of Native Americans in Massachusetts and, soon thereafter, from most of the remainder of the northern English colonial seaboard was the true mission of the Pilgrim enterprise – Act One of the American Dream. African Slavery commenced contemporaneously – an overlapping and ultimately inseparable Act Two.

<snip>

Celebrating the unspeakable

White America embraced Thanksgiving because a majority of that population glories in the fruits, if not the unpleasant details, of genocide and slavery and feels, on the whole, good about their heritage: a cornucopia of privilege and national power. Children are taught to identify with the good fortune of the Pilgrims. It does not much matter that the Native American and African holocausts that flowed from the feast at Plymouth are hidden from the children’s version of the story – kids learn soon enough that Indians were made scarce and Africans became enslaved. But they will also never forget the core message of the holiday: that the Pilgrims were good people, who could not have purposely set such evil in motion. Just as the first Thanksgivings marked the consolidation of the English toehold in what became the United States, the core ideological content of the holiday serves to validate all that has since occurred on these shores – a national consecration of the unspeakable, a balm and benediction for the victors, a blessing of the fruits of murder and kidnapping, and an implicit obligation to continue the seamless historical project in the present day.

The Thanksgiving story is an absolution of the Pilgrims, whose brutal quest for absolute power in the New World is made to seem both religiously motivated and eminently human. Most importantly, the Pilgrims are depicted as victims – of harsh weather and their own naïve yet wholesome visions of a new beginning. In light of this carefully nurtured fable, whatever happened to the Indians, from Plymouth to California and beyond, in the aftermath of the 1621 dinner must be considered a mistake, the result of misunderstandings – at worst, a series of lamentable tragedies. The story provides the essential first frame of the American saga. It is unalloyed racist propaganda, a tale that endures because it served the purposes of a succession of the Pilgrims’ political heirs, in much the same way that Nazi-enhanced mythology of a glorious Aryan/German past advanced another murderous, expansionist mission.

Thanksgiving is quite dangerous – as were the Pilgrims.

<snip>

It is much more likely that Chief Massasoit either crashed the party, or brought enough men to ensure that he was not kidnapped or harmed by the Pilgrims. Dr. Tingba Apidta, in his “Black Folks’ Guide to Understanding Thanksgiving,” surmises that the settlers “brandished their weaponry” early and got drunk soon thereafter. He notes that “each Pilgrim drank at least a half gallon of beer a day, which they preferred even to water. This daily inebriation led their governor, William Bradford, to comment on his people's ‘notorious sin,’ which included their ‘drunkenness and uncleanliness’ and rampant ‘sodomy.’”

More at this excellent article:

http://www.blackcommentator.com/66/66_cover_thanksgiving_pf.html

[Poppyseedman]

8. I have done research over the last 20 years

from this time frame in history up until the revolutionary war period

As with all propaganda, this is only one side of the story, this article serves an agenda, to what means is only know to the author.

BTW, it has several obvious non factual elements. If they want to promote a political agenda, they should at least be accurate and support the article with linked sources

"rolling eyes"

[aquart]

10. 700 people in one longhouse?

How efficient of us to do a head count even of burned bodies. And keep the records.

<http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h580.html>

The story is nasty enough as it is, with only estimated numbers of 400 to 700. The stunned survivors, and there were survivors, were sold as slaves.

it was mass murder. we did it.

But let's not fall into the noble savages living great and peaceful lives before we rotters came and ruined everything. That's a crock and always has been.

We chart four successive waves of linguistic immigration among the amerindians. Let's not pretend they were peaceful and jolly. Not with the fortified cities on the Mississippi and the arrowheads in the ancient skulls out near the pueblos.

Even in the East, where the Pequot massacre occurred, our settlers had the help of other tribes who weren't especially fond of their neighbors and didn't mind seeing them dead.

Every person on this continent is the descendant of an immigrant. Human life did not originate here. And the process of immigration was sometimes brutal and desperate and unspeakably cruel. There is not an inch of ground on this earth without blood on it, or one unstained hand.

[Clara T]

15. It's not really about "noble savages'

as I read it , it is more about coming to terms in a remotely honest fashion with our nations historical lies. You cannot stop living the lie until you stop telling the lie. Even though Thanksgiving today is just a dippy consumer display of gluttony it is important to dispel and I would contend dissolve the entirety of the Holiday as it does continue to tell and reinforce the lie as folks "celebrate" this manufactured holiday.


Of Note:
It was regarded as evidence of bravery for a man to go into "battle" carrying no weapon that would do any harm at a distance-not even bows and arrows. The bravest act in war in some Indian cultures was to touch their adversary and escape before he could do physical harm.


The targeting of non-combatants like women, children, and the elderly was never contemplated. Indians expressed shock and repugnance when the Europeans told, and then showed, them that they considered women and children fair game in their style of warfare.
A major Indian "war" might end with less than a dozen casualties on both sides. Often, when the arrows had been expended the "war" would be halted. The European practice of wiping out whole nations in bloody massacres was incomprehensible to the Indian.


According to one scholar, "The most notable feature of Indian warfare was its relative innocuity." European observers of Indian wars often expressed surprise at how little harm they actually inflicted. "Their wars are far less bloody and devouring than the cruel wars of Europe," commented settler Roger Williams in 1643. Even Puritan warmonger and professional soldier Capt. John Mason scoffed at Indian warfare: " feeble manner...did
hardly deserve the name of fighting." Fellow warmonger John Underhill spoke of the Narragansetts, after having spent a day "burning and spoiling" their country: "no Indians would come near us, but run from us, as the deer from the dogs." He concluded that the Indians might fight seven years and not kill seven men. Their fighting style, he wrote, "is more for pastime, than to conquer and subdue enemies."


All this describes a people for whom war is a deeply regrettable last resort. An agrarian people, the American Indians had devised a civilization that provided dozens of options all designed to avoid conflict--the very opposite of Europeans, for whom all-out war, a ferocious bloodlust, and systematic genocide are their apparent life force. Thomas Jefferson--who himself advocated the physical extermination of the American Indian--said of Europe, "They are nations of eternal war. All their energies are
expended in the destruction of labor, property and lives of their people."

http://victoria.indymedia.org/news/2003/11/18449.php

[Name removed]

11. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[not systems]

12. Right whatever...

I'm outraged by the outrage.

[whoretaculture]

14. Right

I have no tolerance for the intolerant.

[not systems]

19. Forfend...

"I can't believe that on this holiest of holidays
at this great and holy venue that someone would
besmirch the reputation of the fore fathers who
righteously disposed the natives without even the
slightest violence or blood lust."

[ismnotwasm]

13. I haven't heard that story either

Although there are plenty of other stories of how we treated the first people that are just as vile
Off topic: One interesting thing I did learn in an American ethics class I took once. There is a general impression that the Indians the settlers first met were primative, and clothed in the typical sterotypical version of Indian wear--you know loin cloths, feathers. From what I understand, no only is that bullshit, but they also had extensive orchards and cultivated lands.
So revisionist history lives on, and the stories we got in grade school were a dim echo of any truth.

[mzmolly]

17. I doubt the accuracy of this story. I know that the settlers going

back to Columbus were cruel to the native people, but this seems a bit much?

[H2O Man]

23. It is accurate.

The part about the massacre, and the colonial governor declaring it a day of celebration. It is in no way connected with Washington, Lincoln, or the US holiday.

[mzmolly]

26. That's what I thought.

I felt there were elements of truth, but I doubted portions - especially those you mention.

I've read about 5 different versions of this story so far today. ;)

Thanks :hi:

[not systems]

27. Doesn't the US holiday celebrate the pilgrims?

They are the very people who committed this massacre.

It seems like a stretch to say that the holiday has
nothing to do with the very people it uses as it's symbol.

[TallahasseeGrannie]

30. Thanksgiving is a harvest festival

that happened to be celebrated by some not-so-nice folks.

Find me somebody with really clean hands and I'll celebrate their holidays.

Humans are a violent species. All of us. I don't know of any exceptions. Even here on DU the word hate and kill and used in rants all the time. It's not a huge leap from words to the real thing.

If we have to atone for all our ancestor's wrongdoings we might has well just jump off a cliff now and get it over with.

Pass the turkey. Oh, wait...what about the turkey holocaust? I am not worthy! Where's the nearest cliff?

[not systems]

31. Celebrating it and knowing the truth of its orgins...

are two different things.

The article about states that a friendly Thanksgiving did
take place also Pequots themselves were celebrating the
"annual Green Corn Festival" so I would like to say---

"Have a good Green Corn Festival..." but since this history
is not well know "Have a good Thanksgiving has to do."

[H2O Man]

34. Thanksgiving

or harvest festivals were common among all agricultural people above the equator for centuries. To use the "thanksgiving vs green corn" as evidence of anything will only result in recognizing that the Indians in the northeast did not speak English. There is no difference in the sense of the meaning of the festival.

Certainly it is important to recognize that in the history of contacxt between the European cultures and the Native Americans, there was an extreme amount of violence. And it was largely one-sided. And there were ugly examples of the Europeans celebrating their slaughter of Indian people. And the people of the United States have far too often created myths that are mistaken for historic truths.

We can wring our hands and feel awful, or we can also recognize that a heck of a lot of good can be drawn from the early colonial and even Revolutionary War eras. (Each is worthy of consideration as distinct: it is as much an error to consider the massacre in question as having a direct relationship on Washington, as it is to say that the Civil War and Vietnam were one the same.) Native society was not of value in some detached sense. We can't go back. But we can infuse the values of Native philosophy into today's experience. And we can pressure our government to honor the treaties with Native Americans.

[not systems]

37. Sounds about right...

It seems that at least 80% of the original article
can be backed up by other sources.

Even if the 20% is unsubstantiated it is a far cry from
the popular myth of thanksgiving as taught in schools.

I don't see any reason to give Washington the benefit
of the doubt but barring more evidence I can't be sure
what he was really celebrating it is so wrapped up in
calls to honor god's gifts to the nation.

Maybe that isn't code for "thanks god for helping us
kill off the savages." -- maybe it is.

[not systems]

20. Pequot War reference

http://www.usahistory.com/wars/pequot.htm

1637

The first of the many wars between whites and Indians was fought in 1637 betweenthe Pequots and New England settlers. The Pequots were a warlike tribe centered along the Thames River in southeastern Connecticut. By 1630, under their chief, Sassacus, they had pushed west to the Connecticut R. There they had numerous quarrels with colonists, culminating in the murder by the Pequots of a trader, John Oldham, on July 20, 1636. On Aug. 24 Gov. John Endicott of Massachusetts Bay Colony organized a military force to punish the Indians, and on May 26, 1637, the first battle of the Pequot War took place when the New Englanders, under John Mason and John Underhill, attacked the Pequot stronghold near present-day New Haven, Conn. The Indian forts were burned and about 500 men, women, and children were killed. The survivors fled in sall groups. One group, led by Sassacus, was caught near presentday Fairfield, Conn., on July 28, and nearly all were killed or captured. The captives were made slaves by the colonists or were sold in the West Indies. Sassacus and the few who escaped with him were put to death by Mohawk Indians. The few remaining Pequots were scattered among other southern New England tribes.

Carruth, Gorton. "The Encyclopedia of American Facts and Dates". 10th Ed. New York: Harper Collins Publishers. ©1997.

[not systems]

21. "Happily a better Christian spirit now prevails"

http://www.colonialwarsct.org/1637.htm

© 2000 The Society of Colonial Wars in the State of Connecticut

1637 - THE PEQUOT WAR

...

"The effect of the Pequot War was profound. Overnight the balance of power had shifted from the populous but unorganized natives to the English colonies. Henceforth there was no combination of Indian tribes that could seriously threaten the English. The destruction of the Pequots cleared away the only major obstacle to Puritan expansion. And the thoroughness of that destruction made a deep impression on the other tribes."

...

In the bright moonlight the little army crept stealthily up the wooded slope, and were on the point of rushing to the attack when the barking of a dog aroused a sentinel and he gave the alarm to the sound sleepers within. Before they were fairly awake, Mason and Underhill burst in the sallyports. The terrified Pequods rushed out of the wigwams, but were driven back by swords and musket-balls, when the tinder-like coverings of the huts were set on fire. Within an hour about seven hundred men, women and children perished in the flames, and by the weapons of the English. The strong, the beautiful, and the innocent were doomed to a common fate with the blood-thirsty and cruel. The door of mercy was shut. Not a dusky human being among the Pequods was allowed to live. When all was over, the pious Captain Mason, who had narrowly escaped death by the arrow of a young warrior, exultingly exclaimed God is over us He laughs his enemies to scorn, making them as a fiery oven. Thus does the Lord judge among the heathen, filling the place with dead bodies. And the equally if not more pious Dr. Mather afterward wrote: "It was supposed that no less than 500 or 600 Pequod souls were brought down to hell that day." Happily a better Christian spirit now prevails.

...

[H2O Man]

22. While that was indeed

the first one noted for celebration by a government official, the business about George Washington is way off the time line.

[not systems]

28. Why? There was a war going on in 1789...

so how is George Washington celebrating success in the war
"way off the time line"?

Seems that George was an Indian fighting type of guy.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Indian_War

The Northwest Indian War (1785–1795), often known as Little Turtle's War in older reference works, was a war fought between the United States and a large confederation of Native Americans ("Indians") for control of the Old Northwest, which ended with a decisive U.S. victory at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794. As a result of the war, territory including much of present-day Ohio was ceded to the United States in the Treaty of Greenville in 1795.

...


http://college.hmco.com/history/readerscomp/naind/html/na_020100_littleturtle.htm

...

After the Treaty of Paris in 1783, American officials dictated four treaties to the tribes of the Old Northwest, each based on the premise that Indian tribes had surrendered their rights to the land with the defeat of the British. Native American resistance to these pretensions quickly escalated into border warfare as Kentucky filled with settlers who led attacks deep into Indian country in the late 1780s. Little Turtle was responsible for the security of Kekionga, which had attracted several villages of Delaware and Shawnee Indians.

Although American officials wanted to avoid war with the Ohio tribes (mainly because of the expense involved), President Washington approved an attack on Kekionga in 1790. Little Turtle led the villagers away previous to an attack by General Josiah Harmar on October 20 that destroyed all of the villages. Little Turtle then led an ambush of Harmar's forces, killing 183 Americans. The following year, General Arthur St. Clair led another American army to Kekionga. Little Turtle led the forces of the Miami Confederacy, as the allied tribes were then called, in a devastating defeat of nearly the entire American army. Some 630 officers and men, as well as many civilian camp followers, were killed in the worst defeat of an American army ever by Indian defenders.

...

[H2O Man]

32. Because there is

no evidence of any connection -- none -- between what happened 150 years earlier and in Washington's time, in regard to Thanksgiving.

[not systems]

33. Except that they were killing indians...

in Washington's day and 150 years earlier.

That is a connection if celebrating victories over
the indians was a tradition in New England.

[H2O Man]

35. That is rather

tortured logic.

[not systems]

24. beheading and impailing reference

http://www.answers.com/topic/king-philip-s-war?method=5&linktext=King%20Philip's%20War


King Philip's War, 1675–76, the most devastating war between the colonists and the Native Americans in New England. The war is named for King Philip, the son of Massasoit and chief of the Wampanoag. His Wampanoag name was Metacom, Metacomet, or Pometacom. Upon the death (1662) of his brother, Alexander (Wamsutta), whom the Native Americans suspected the English of murdering, Philip became sachem and maintained peace with the colonists for a number of years. Hostility eventually developed over the steady succession of land sales forced on the Native Americans by their growing dependence on English goods. Suspicious of Philip, the English colonists in 1671 questioned and fined him and demanded that the Wampanoag surrender their arms, which they did. In 1675 a Christian Native American who had been acting as an informer to the English was murdered, probably at Philip's instigation. Three Wampanoags were tried for the murder and executed. Incensed by this act, the Native Americans in June, 1675, made a sudden raid on the border settlement of Swansea. Other raids followed; towns were burned and many whites—men, women, and children—were slain. Unable to draw the Native Americans into a major battle, the colonists resorted to similar methods of warfare in retaliation and antagonized other tribes. The Wampanoag were joined by the Nipmuck and by the Narragansett (after the latter were attacked by the colonists), and soon all the New England colonies were involved in the war. Philip's cause began to decline after he made a long journey west in an unsuccessful attempt to secure aid from the Mohawk. In 1676 the Narragansett were completely defeated and their chief, Canonchet, was killed in April of that year; the Wampanoag and Nipmuck were gradually subdued. Philip's wife and son were captured, and he was killed (Aug., 1676) by a Native American in the service of Capt. Benjamin Church after his hiding place at Mt. Hope (Bristol, R.I.) was betrayed. His body was drawn and quartered and his head exposed on a pole in Plymouth. The war, which was extremely costly to the colonists in people and money, resulted in the virtual extermination of tribal Native American life in S New England and the disappearance of the fur trade. The New England Confederation then had the way completely clear for white settlement.

Bibliography

See G. M. Bodge, Soldiers in King Philip's War (1891, 3d ed. 1906, repr. 1967); G. W. Ellis and J. E. Morris, King Philip's War (1906); J. T. Adams, The Founding of New England (1921, repr. 1963); D. E. Leach, Flintlock and Tomahawk (1958, repr. 1966); R. Bourne, The Red King's Rebellion (1990); J. Lepore, The Name of War (1998).

[Hyernel]

25. Religion of peace my a....oh nevermind!

Genocide, torture and suffering. I guess that's the old fashioned conservatism that BushCo is ushering back.

:cry: