The Thanksgiving Truth

By: Andrea Arias-Zarate

When someone hears “Thanksgiving,” they may visualize a big feast with family and friends, consisting of sweet and savory foods such as turkey, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie. Maybe you can hear “Touchdown” coming from the living room nearby. People go around the table to say what they’re thankful for, expressing their gratitude. It’s a holiday that simply means to “give thanks.”

Yet, how did we come up with this Thanksgiving tradition?

The Native Americans welcomed European voyagers who boarded the Mayflower to their land, helping them settle. After support from Squanto, an interpreter from the Patuxet tribe, and other Native Americans, the Pilgrims were able to survive their first year in the colony and efficiently grow crops.

The following year, there was a massive feast between the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag tribe, where they gathered to celebrate the harvest for three days in November of 1621. The Native Americans and Pilgrims gathered as friendly and peaceful allies… but they weren’t!

Thanksgiving was celebrated after a murder fest.

To start, the Pilgrims believed that the Pequots were to blame for killing one of their men, which then resulted in the deaths of 700 of the tribe in July 1636. This was a bloody and horrifying event, as villages, even children, were burned by Pilgrims. They shot the Indians, also, after they ordered the Pequot to come forth. Whoever escaped were later found and killed.

As an outcome of the war, those who survived the attacks were put into slavery. The day after their victory in September 1638, the Governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony declared a Thanksgiving Day. For over 100 years, every Thanksgiving held by a Governor was to honor their victory as they thanked God that they won.

History isn’t always complete. Since most of history was passed down orally, not many of us know what exactly happened centuries ago. We don’t accurately know how the first Thanksgiving feast went down.

For starters, there isn’t any evidence of the classic turkey being served, but rather deer or geese. There was no pumpkin pie to be found, or football to be watched since there weren’t ovens nor televisions during this time, as of course, technology wasn’t yet discovered.

There is little documentation to prove if the Native Americans were even invited to the dinner in the first place. There’s the possibility that they came across the feast unexpectedly, as there was speculation that the Wampanoag crashed the feast after they heard gunfire and checked up on the situation. To add on, the tribes weren’t necessarily gathering to celebrate and come together but were instead merely gathering as allies who protected each other from tribes. They were seen as co-workers, who didn’t necessarily need to get along.

Pilgrims weren’t exactly respectful of the natives. A year before the feast, when they first arrived, the Pilgrims lacked food since as they came during the harsh winter when food was scarce. Therefore, they stole corn from the natives, robbing from their graves, where the Pilgrims dug, took out the corpse, found items, and would place the body back in.

When Native Americans were asked what they thought of the holiday, most responded negatively, as they centralize the facts of the killings and genocide that took place during the period. One of the respondents called Christopher Columbus the first American terrorist.

“It always was weird to me to have that day off in celebration of somebody, like, we don’t have a day for Hitler, but it’s the same thing.”

The holiday wasn’t made official until 1863 by President Abraham Lincoln, which was mainly to heal the wounds of the Civil War.

We came up with the tradition of Thanksgiving from the feast that was celebrated in 1621 between the Wampanoag and the Pilgrims, marking the first significant feast in America. Starting in 1863, people honored this event by also having a friendly gathering with family and friends, which was their version of allies. Yet, we ignore the true meaning behind it.

The whole idea of Thanksgiving is to “give thanks,” as it’s literally in the name. However, considering the harshness the Native Americans received from the Puritans and Pilgrims, from grave-robbing to mass killings of their people, did they really “give thanks?”