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Indigenous Thanksgiving: The Real Story

Indigenous Thanksgiving: The Real Story

Indigenous

Thanksgiving is a time of celebration for Americans to come together and be thankful for everything they have. This holiday is steeped in traditions, history, and food.

The Last Day of Solitude 

The real thanksgiving was vastly different and turned out to be not so thankful. The Indigenous Tribes that helped feed the “Pilgrims” went into hiding, or faced genocide. According to Time Magazine, when the pilgrims landed at Patuxet, currently Plymouth Massachusetts. The location was under the control of the Wampanoag tribe and several other tribes in that location.

Samuel de Champlain’s 1605 map of Plymouth Harbor showing the Wampanoag village of Patuxet, with some modern place names added for reference. The star marks the approximate location of the Plymouth Colony.

This set in motion events that would shape the Indigenous peoples’ hardships and ultimately their fate.

The Real Pilgrims

Throughout the last 400 years of history, pilgrims have been portrayed as the victims, and as these great explorers that helped found a “New World.”

The real pilgrims had escaped England due to their religious extremism and views that even the Catholic Church and the Church of England condemned. They had escaped prosecution by loading up on the Mayflower at night under the disguise of a merchant’s vessel and headed out to sea. The original charter was drawn up while at sea.

The people who made up the pilgrims were of the religious sect Presbyterian. This sect of religion was separated from the main body of England and both the King of England and Scottland, who had set laws and statutes that the pilgrims felt were not in line with their beliefs.

Many of the pilgrims also were indebted to England through tax evasion and land dealings. They wanted their own land location for their religious beliefs which included polygamy and other forms of marriage that the church did not agree with.

The Pilgrims set sail with 120 people on board the ship around November 3, 1620, and landed at Patuxet around December 18. It is estimated that roughly 102 of the 120 onboard had Scurvy and smallpox. When the pilgrims landed, they had been at sea for over 30 days in cramped quarters on a ship designed to hold only a couple dozen sailors. The food supplies and diseases that spread through the ship led to the pilgrim’s health declining rapidly.

Wikipedia: Model of a typical merchantman of the period, showing the cramped conditions that had to be endured.

The First Meal

Through the remainder of 1620-1621, the pilgrims found themselves in desperate need of food and supplies. Within the first year of settling into Plymouth, they had established relations with the Wampanoag Tribal Federation. The tribes helped train the pilgrims in farming and helped with constructing their settlement. According to written sources on the story.

It is debated on the exact level of the tribe’s help, but there are sources that show that the tribes made contact with the pilgrims. The first thanksgiving is heavily contested as well since there are only two accounts of the events.

There is also fallacies with the fact that the pilgrims were the “First Settlers,” according to the book by David J. Silverman, This Land Is Their Land: The Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving and an interview conducted by Smithsonian Magazine in 2019.

“One is that history doesn’t begin for Native people until Europeans arrive. People had been in the Americas for least 12,000 years and according to some Native traditions, since the beginning of time. And having history start with the English is a way of dismissing all that. The second is that the arrival of the Mayflower is some kind of first-contact episode. It’s not. Wampanoags had a century of contact with Europeans–it was bloody, and it involved slave raiding by Europeans. At least two and maybe more Wampanoags, when the Pilgrims arrived, spoke English, had already been to Europe and back and knew the very organizers of the Pilgrims’ venture.”

There are also fallacies in how the thanksgiving story plays out. Pilgrims’ lives revolved around their religious practices including justifying their voyages as a “biblical and Godly venture.”

This also included attempting to convert the tribes over to Christiandom and forcing many of the tribes there into slavery and execution. It included diseases introduced that had killed most of the tribes in that location. The overall effect of the pilgrims and their previous counterpart’s contact shows that by the time November 1621 had happened, the European settlers were well in control of everything there.

Capitalizing on Thanksgiving While Deconstructing Native Americans

Currently, there are 1500 laws in place that govern Native Americans and their reservations. The Wampanoag Tribal Federation lost all but a small amount of land during the 400 years of European colonization. The way that Thanksgiving has been manufactured is to capitalize on the way the story of the pilgrims played out without recognizing the hundreds of thousands of Indigenous People that have been killed, murdered, enslaved, and sold for that piece of pumpkin pie and turkey.

This also includes the horrible portrayal of indigenous peoples as “savage and uncultured.” This is done through costumes that show them wearing basic leather items and primitive weapons. This is also done by showing them needing Europeans help and how indigenous people would attack or kill settlers.

The tribes according to artifacts and material culture wore wools, linens, decorated blankets, and were well-educated in both their tribal culture and European cultures. They also had a federation of governing bodies that predated the establishment of the Europeans by hundreds of years.

Currently, the Wampanoag Tribal Federation is fighting for its tribal and land recognition. In an article by the Boston Globe, the tribe has been in a legal battle to ensure that their tribal federation is protected and guaranteed.

Slice of Pie

Thanksgiving should be a time for reflection of what we are happy to have. Currently, Indigenous Tribes face higher unemployment rates, human trafficking, slavery, murder, and many other obstacles that give them crumbles of the overall pie that is the American Dream.

The Wampanoag Tribal Federation has been devastated by these laws and the 400 years of ongoing legal legislation. They have faced losing their federal status to having their small 300-plus acre reservation taken from them. The indigenous people who helped the pilgrims now need more help than ever to ensure they have equal rights.

This Thanksgiving, instead of sticking with the traditions, look at donating to the local tribal councils and volunteering to help your local tribes.

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