Thanksgiving Lessons

[deutsey]

Every year around this time when I was a kid, I remember learning in school about the origin of this month’s big holiday.

As we made pilgrim hats and Indian headbands out of construction paper, the teacher told us the familiar story of how the Plymouth colonists and Wampanoag Indians celebrated the first Thanksgiving together in 1621. It’s a nice story about the Indians teaching the pilgrims how to plant their first crops in the New World and the pilgrims inviting the Indians over for a feast to thank them and God for the harvest.

However, as with many of our national myths, the story we were taught in school is greatly embellished. In fact, beyond two brief accounts written by pilgrims Edward Winslow and William Bradford we know very little about what happened during this event. There was a harvest feast in Plymouth and Indians were there, but a lot of the rest is open to interpretation.

http://www.pilgrimhall.org/1stthnks.htm

For example, Tobias Vanderhoop, a descendent of the Wampanoag tribe, says his ancestors were not invited guests at all. They had shown up at the settlement to investigate concerns that the pilgrims had become “a little rowdy during their harvest celebration, firing off their muskets,” Vanderhoop says.

http://www.voanews.com/english/archive/2006-11/2006-11-22-voa27.cfm?CFID=320334045&CFTOKEN=55016283&jsessionid=8830d48de76ecebeb1e44b36783d487a765c

Nonetheless, the pilgrims apparently welcomed the 90 Wampanoag to stay for a three-day feast and the Indians went out and killed five deer to contribute to the festivities, according to Winslow’s account. This impromptu gathering was far from the first Thanksgiving in North America, however.

SNIP

The Smithsonian article goes on to give a good summary of how Thanksgiving went from a regional New England celebration to become in 1941 the official American holiday we now celebrate. That history is interesting, but I was particularly intrigued by the article’s passing mention of Thanksgiving customs like the Green Corn Dance that indigenous people in North America practiced long before European settlers arrived.

MORE at http://midshorelife.com/content/thanksgiving-lesson-gratitude-and-hospitality

[niyad]

1. thanks

[onager]

2. Settlers got food and knowledge, Indians got Jesus and syphillis.

n/t

[DeSwiss]

3. The stories told in schools....

...and which have been written-up as "facts" in American high school history books, are best propaganda, and in truth mostly outright lies.

Excerpts from the book: "Lies My Teacher Told Me" http://www.amazon.com/Lies-My-Teacher-Told-Everything/dp/0684818868">by James W. Loewen

Chapter Three - "The Truth About The First Thanksgiving"

Page 74 -- Considering that virtually none of the standard fare surrounding Thanksgiving contains an ounce of authenticity, historical accuracy, or cross-cultural perception, why is it so apparently ingrained? Is it necessary to the America psyche to perpetually exploit and debase its victims in order to justify its history? -- Michael Dorris

Page 75 -- The Europeans were able to conquer America not because of their military genius, or their religious motivation, or their ambition, or their greed. They conquered it by unpremeditated biological warfare. -- Howard Simpson

Page 77 -- Starting the story of America's settlement with the Pilgrims leaves out not only the Indians, but the Spanish. The very first non-native settlers in "the country we now know as the United States" were African slaves left in South Carolina in 1526 by Spaniards who abandoned a settlement attempt. In 1565 the Spanish massacred the French Protestants who had settled briefly in St. Augustine, Florida, and established their own fort there. Some later Spanish settlers were our first pilgrims, seeking regions new to them to secure religious liberty: these were Spanish Jews, who settled in New Mexico in the late 1500's.

Few Americans knew that one-third of the United States, from San Francisco to Arkansas to Natchez to Florida, has been Spanish longer than it has been "American," and that Hispanic Americans lived here before the first ancestors of the Daughters of the American Revolution ever left England. Moreover, Spanish culture left an indelible mark on the American West. The Spanish introduced horses, cattle, sheep, pigs and the basic elements of cowboy culture, including its vocabulary: mustang, bronco, rodeo, lariat and so on. Horses that escaped from the Spanish and propagated triggered the rapid flowering of a new culture among the Plains Indians. "How refreshing is would be," wrote James Axtell, "to find a textbook that began on the West Coast before treating the traditional eastern colonies."

- As for "knowing very little about what happened during this event." I suppose that all depends upon whom one asks.....

[RebelOne]

5. I read that book. Everyone should.

[deutsey]

4. Yeah, I'm acutely aware of "the rest of the story" (as tragic as it is)

However, my focus here was just on the common trait of thankfulness and how it was so engrained in both white and Native American cultures, and how it was an integral part of their daily lives.

Modern consumer consciousness, removed as it is, for the most part, from direct experience of and dependence on the natural world, seems numb to that basic sense of deep gratitude.