The First Thanksgiving
To borrow a page from Louis Sachar- “There is no Miss Zarves. There is no nineteenth story. Sorry.”
There is no “First Thanksgiving.” Thanksgivings and harvest festivals have been celebrated by people all around the world for thousands of years. The three-day feast that took place in Patuxet/Plymouth in the fall of 1621 was a harvest festival that Edward Winslow wrote about in his journal. The event was not widely known about until more than 200 years later, when his journal was rediscovered. Since then, this harvest festival has been reshaped into a national origin story that is a central part of America’s elementary history curriculum. Our class today focused on the American origin myth of the first Thanksgiving, and worked to separate fact from fiction.
“Most texts and supplementary materials portray Native Americans at the gathering as supporting players. They are depicted as nameless, faceless, generic “Indians” who merely shared a meal with the intrepid Pilgrims. The real story is much deeper, richer, and more nuanced. The Indians in attendance, the Wampanoag, played a lead role in this historic encounter, and they had been essential to the survival of the colonists during the newcomers’ first year. ”
Jennie Augusta Brownscombe, The First Thanksgiving at Plymouth, 1914
Jean Leon Gerome Ferris, The First Thanksgiving, 1621, 1912-1915
We spent some time in class analyzing these paintings- there are many historical inaccuracies, and also the composition of the pictures (who is front and center, who is seated, how many people from the Wampanoag and Pilgrim communities are represented) is highly problematic. I’ll list some of the specific issues in the bullet points below, but first, check out this graphic, which shows how many of the Mayflower Passengers made it through the winter to attend the “first Thanksgiving”.
Of the 102 Mayflower passengers, only 50 were still alive a year later, most having died over the winter after having to live on the very cold ship. There were 18 adult women who made the voyage, and by Thanksgiving, only four of them were still alive. I don’t know about you, but that is really not in keeping with my mental image of “the first Thanksgiving.” I pictured lots of women preparing the feast, and, like these paintings show, mostly white people and some Wampanoag people eating together. But that’s not even close to accurate. In reality, we know that there were 90 Wampanoag men at the feast. They joined the 50 Pilgrims, almost half of whom were children, so really there were three times as many Wampanoag adults as Pilgrim adults.
Let’s talk about some other Thanksgiving myths, some of which are visible in the paintings above.
The Wampanoag people who attended the feast are often depicted (in classrooms and in the paintings above) in the traditional clothing of the Plains Indians. They absolutely did not where big feathered headdresses, and their presence in these paintings is as historically inaccurate as painting Japanese people at the table. They’re from an entirely different place, with a different culture and language.
The Pilgrim clothing we usually see is wrong too. They wore colorful clothing with no buckles on their shoes. You can read more about their real clothing here.
Pilgrims did not live in log cabins.
The Wampanoag would not have been sitting on the ground, as shown in these and many other paintings. This is a choice the artists made to put the focus on the white people. It makes the Wampanoag seem subservient, less important, and less worthy.
Like I said above, there were 90 Wampanoag men and 50 total Pilgrims (including 4 women and 20ish children), so it is a myth that the first Thanksgiving was dominated by the Pilgrim and not the Wampanoag.
Possibly the most common misconception is that the Pilgrims extended an invitation to the Wampanoag for helping them reap the harvest. We have no historical evidence of this.
The Wampanoag provided the bulk of the food! They showed up and saw there wouldn’t be enough food for everyone, so they went hunting and brought back five deer. The Pilgrims were only able to grow the produce that was likely part of the feast with help from the Wampanoag, who taught them about corn and how to cook it, and other indigenous foods that the Pilgrims had never seen or cooked with before (like pumpkins).
The fowl served at the First Thanksgiving could have been turkeys, ducks, geese, and swan. Early Plymouth writings also mention eating eagle and crane at other times.
From Michael Dorris’ Why I’m Not Thankful for Thanksgiving, “A year ago my older son brought home a program printed by his school; on the second page was an illustration of the “First Thanksgiving,” with a caption which read in part: “They served pumpkins and turkeys and corn and squash. The Indians had never seen such a feast!” On the contrary! The Pilgrims had literally never seen “such a feast,” since all foods mentioned are exclusively indigenous to the Americas and had been provided, or so legend has it, by the local tribe.”
“The celebration in 1621 did not mark a friendly turning point and did not become an annual event. Relations between the Wampanoag and the settlers deteriorated, leading to the Pequot War. In 1637, in retaliation for the murder of a man the settlers believed the Wampanoag killed, they burned a nearby village, killing as many as 500 men, women, and children. Following the massacre, William Bradford, the Governor of Plymouth, wrote that for “the next 100 years, every Thanksgiving Day ordained by a Governor was in honor of the bloody victory, thanking God that the battle had been won.” - Grace Donnelly, for Fortune.
In 1970, the city of Plymouth planned a 350 year anniversary ceremony of the first Thanksgiving. They thought it would be a nice idea to have a Wampanoag person give a speech at the event, so they invited a Wampanoag man named Frank James to give a speech. But first, they wanted to read it to make sure it was acceptable to them. They didn’t like what they read, and would not permit James to give his speech. Here’s a condensed excerpt of his speech, but you can read the full thing here.
“Today is a time of celebrating for you … but it is not a time of celebrating for me. It is with heavy heart that I look back upon what happened to my People … The Pilgrims had hardly explored the shores of Cape Cod four days before they had robbed the graves of my ancestors, and stolen their corn, wheat, and beans … Massasoit, the great leader of the Wampanoag, knew these facts; yet he and his People welcomed and befriended the settlers … little knowing that … before 50 years were to pass, the Wampanoags … and other Indians living near the settlers would be killed by their guns or dead from diseases that we caught from them … Although our way of life is almost gone and our language is almost extinct, we the Wampanoags still walk the lands of Massachusetts … What has happened cannot be changed, but today we work toward a better America, a more Indian America where people and nature once again are important.”
In response to the censorship of James’ speech, Native activists and non-Native allies organized a counter-parade that year, and have continued the tradition every year since, calling it “the National Day of Mourning.”
The last line of James’ speech, imploring us to become “a better America, a more Indian America where people and nature once again are important,” offers us a path forward in how to learn from the real story of the harvest festival of 1621. We can be more like the Wampanoag people. When people wash up on our shores in search of a better life, we can welcome them. Help them with generosity and compassion, share our food and resources. We can treat people and nature with respect and reverence. We can look to Indigenous leaders for guidance in being good stewards of this land. We can show gratitude to the Indigenous people who cultivated the foods that make up our Thanksgiving feast and now make up 70% of the world’s diet.
Thanksgiving Day Suggestions
If you are planning a traditional Thanksgiving dinner with your family, here are some ideas to help bring the Wampanoag, Indigenous people, and anti-racism and environmentalism into your celebration.
If you have been meeting with us for the last few weeks, and you’ve worked on making paper/LEGO versions of the Mayflower or The White Lion ships, and you’ve worked to fill them with facts about the real history of the 1621 harvest, pull them out and share those facts and stories with people around your thanksgiving table. Talk about some of the myths you helped bust in class.
Print out the PDF coloring sheet of an excerpt of Frank James’ speech (see image below). Kids can color it and send it in the mail to friends and family or can read it aloud to family members around the table.
From article no. 1 listed below, “Take a moment of silence and remembrance for ancestors and the people whose land you are occupying before your meal. If you’re into setting intentions and ceremony, make one out of candle-lighting with anti-racist intentions and gratitude to Native Peoples at its core.
“We are all thankful to our Mother, the Earth, for she gives us all that we need for life.” — Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address
“We are taught that when we gather herbs or food, we should only acquire what is needed from the plant. To do otherwise would be wasteful. . . . Our greed would jeopardize the future of the plants because some plants must remain to flower and go to seed. We would also compromise our own future because we may eliminate what we need for our ceremonies, as well as food for the following year.” —Lawrence Shorty (Navajo), 1999
“With one mind, we turn to honor and thank all the Food Plants we harvest from the garden. Since the beginning of time, the grains, vegetables, beans, and berries have helped the people survive. Many other living things draw strength from them, too. We gather all the Plant Foods together as one and send them a greeting of thanks.”
—Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address
Try not to buy anything on Black Friday. Instead, opt outside and help clean up nature.
Honor the Indigenous communities of Arizona and elsewhere who helped Biden win the 2020 election. Check out this map of the counties that went blue compared to the locations of Native American reservations. Help continue to push for Indigenous rights and sovereignty by working to elect Democrats in the Georgia senate elections. See last week’s blog post for ways that you and your kids can help.
Additional Resources
This article from 2016 has a fantastic list of ways to Make Your Thanksgiving about Social and Environmental Justice.
Decolonizing Thanksgiving: A Toolkit for Combatting Racism in Schools (but helpful resources for homeschoolers too).
Teaching Thanksgiving in a Socially Responsible Way, from Teaching Tolerance.
NMAI American Indian Perspectives on Thanksgiving. This 10 page PDF resource is so good.
If you, like me, love reading about food and food history, check out this article from a Thanksgiving food historian. She even includes a very goofy recipe for a traditional seventeenth century pumpkin side dish that you could make with your kids.
More good food history. Where I learned that Pilgrims ate swans, cranes, and eagles.
Thanksgiving lesson plan based on the An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the US for Young People.
Speaking of AIPHOTUS, one of the authors, Debbie Reese, keeps a great blog about American Indians in Children’s Literature. Check out her post about Thanksgiving, and follow her on social media to keep up to date.
Download the PDF here. Art by Helen Allen.
