Keep in mind that the first Pilgrims aboard the “Mayflower” departed Plymouth, England on September 16, 1620. They sailed south-westwardly across the North Atlantic Ocean for 58 days. They dropped anchor just off the seashore of Cape Cod at what is known today as Provincetown, Massachusetts on November 11, 1620.
The autumnal celebration in late 1621 jointly celebrated with the Pilgrims and the Native Americans in the vicinity of Plymouth Rock located on Cape Cod in what is now the state of Massachusetts has become known as “The First Thanksgiving.” The event, however, was in fact neither the first occurrence of our modern American holiday, nor was it even a “Thanksgiving” in the eyes of the Pilgrims who celebrated it. The Pilgrims, because of their English culture and custom, did recognize a traditional English harvest celebration which is exactly what this first ceremony happened to be to which the Pilgrims invited Massasoit, the most important Indian Chief among the entire Wamapanoag nation. It was only in the nineteenth century that this event became identified with the American Thanksgiving holiday celebrated in November of each year.
The first Thanksgiving as the Pilgrims would have called it did not occur until 1623, in response to the good news of the arrival of additional colonists and supplies of sustenance from England. That event most probably occurred in July and consisted of a full day of prayer and worship and probably very little revelry.
The event now commemorated in the United States at the end of November each year is more properly termed a “harvest festival.” The original festival was probably held in early October 1621 and was celebrated by the 53 surviving Pilgrims, along with Massasoit and 90 of his Indian men. There exists three contemporary accounts of the event that still survive: “Of Plymouth Plantation” by William Bradford; “Mourt’s Relation” probably written by Edward Winslow; and “New England’s Memorial” penned by Plymouth Colony Secretary–and Bradford’s nephew–Captain Nathaniel Morton. The celebration lasted three days and featured a feast that included numerous types of waterfowl, wild turkeys, and fish procured by the colonists, and five deer brought by the Native Americans.
The association of the Pilgrims with the Thanksgiving holiday has a most complicated history. The holiday itself evolved out of a routine Puritan religious observation, irregularly declared and celebrated in response to God’s favorable Providence, into a single, annual, quasi-secular New England autumnal celebration.
After the departure of Massasoit and his men, Squanto (Indian friend of the pilgrims) remained in Plymouth to teach the Pilgrims how to survive in New England, for example using dead fish to fertilize the soil. For the first few years of colonial life, the fur trade (buying furs from Native Americans and selling them to Europeans) was the dominant source of income beyond subsistence farming. Shortly after the springtime departure of the “Mayflower” which was returning to England, Governor Carver suddenly died. William Bradford was elected to replace him and went on to lead the colony through much of its formative years.
As promised by Massasoit, numerous Native Americans arrived at Plymouth throughout the middle of 1621 with pledges of peace. On July 2, a party of Pilgrims, led by Edward Winslow (who later became the chief diplomat of the colony), set out to continue negotiations with the Chief. The delegation also included Squanto, who acted as a translator. After traveling for several days, they arrived at Massasoit’s capital, the village of Sowams near Narragansett Bay. After meals and an exchange of gifts, Massasoit agreed to an exclusive trading pact with the English (and thus the French, who were also frequent traders in the area, were no longer welcome). Squanto remained behind and traveled the area to establish trading relations with several tribes in the area.
In late July, a boy by the name of John Billington became lost for some time in the woods around the colony. It was reported that he was found by the Nauset, the same group of Native Americans on Cape Cod from whom the Pilgrims had stolen corn seed the prior year during their first explorations. The English organized a party to find and return John Billington back to Plymouth Colony. The Pilgrims agreed to reimburse the Nauset for the stolen goods in return for the Billington boy. This negotiation did much to secure further peace with the Native Americans in the surrounding area.
During their dealings with the Nausets over the release of John Billington, the Pilgrims learned of troubles that Massasoit was experiencing. Massasoit, Squanto, and several other Wampanoags had been captured by Corbitant, Chief of the Narragansett tribe. A party of ten men, under the leadership of Myles Standish, set out to find and execute Corbitant. While hunting for Corbitant, they learned that Squanto had escaped and Massasoit was back in power. Several Native Americans had been injured by Standish and his men and were offered medical attention in Plymouth. Though they had failed to capture Corbitant, the show of force by Standish had garnered respect for the Pilgrims, and as a result nine of the most powerful chiefs in the area, including Massasoit and Corbitant, signed a treaty in September 1621 that pledged their loyalty to the English King James.
In May, 1622, a vessel named the “Sparrow”arrived at Plymouth carrying seven men from the Merchant Adventurers whose purpose was to seek out a site for a new settlement in the area. Two more ships followed shortly thereafter carrying sixty settlers, all men. They spent July and August in Plymouth before moving north to settle in modern Weymouth, Massachusetts at a settlement they named Wessagussett. Though short-live, the settlement of Wessagussett provided the spark for an event that would dramatically change the political landscape between the local Native American tribes and the English settlers. Responding to reports of a military threat to Wessagussett, Myles Standish organized a militia to defend Wessagussett. However, he found that there had been no attack. He therefore decided on making a pre-emptive strike. In an event called “Standish’s Raid” by historian Nathaniel Philbrick, he lured two prominent Massachusetts military leaders into a house at Wessagussett under the pretense of sharing a meal and making negotiations. Standish and his men then stabbed and killed the two unsuspecting Native Americans. The local sachem (chief), named Obtakiet, was pursued by Standish and his men but escaped with three English prisoners from Wessagussett, whom they executed. Within a very short time, Wessagussett was disbanded, and the survivors were integrated into the town of Plymouth.
Word quickly spread among the Native American tribes of Standish’s attack; many Native Americans abandoned their villages and fled the area.
As noted by Philbrick: “Standish’s raid had irreparably damaged the human ecology of the region…It was sometime before a new equilibrium came to the region.” Edward Winslow, in his 1624 memoirs “Good News From New England,” reports that “they forsook their houses, running to and fro like men distracted, living in swamps and other desert places, and so brought manifold diseases amongst themselves, whereof very many are dead.” Lacking the trade in fur provided by the local tribes, the Pilgrims lost their main source of income for paying off their debts to the Merchant Adventurers. Rather than strengthening their position, “Standish’s Raid” had disastrous consequences for the colony, as attested William Bradford, who in a letter to the Merchant Adventurers noted “[W]e had much damaged our trade, for there where we had [the] most skins the Indians are run away from their habitations…” The only positive effect of “Standish’s Raid” seemed to be the increased power of the Massasoit-led Wampanoag, the Pilgrims‘ closest ally in the region.
The First Thanksgiving Proclamation of June 20, 1676:
On June 20,1676, the governing council of Charleston, Massachusetts, held a meeting to determine how best to express thanks for the good fortune that had seen their community securely established. By unanimous vote they instructed Edward Rawson, the clerk, to proclaim June 29 as a day of thanksgiving, our first. That proclamation is reproduced below in the same language and spelling as the original:
“The Holy God having by a long and Continual Series of his Afflictive dispensations in and by the present Warr with the Heathen Natives of this land, written and brought to pass bitter things against his own Covenant people in this wilderness, yet so that we evidently discern that in the midst of his judgements he hath remembered mercy, having remembered his Footstool in the day of his sore displeasure against us for our sins, with many singular Intimations of his Fatherly Compassion, and regard; reserving many of our Towns from Desolation Threatened, and attempted by the Enemy, and giving us especially of late with many of our Confederates many signal Advantages against them, without such Disadvantage to ourselves as formerly we have been sensible of, if it be the Lord’s mercy that we are not consumed, It certainly bespeaks our positive
Thankfulness, when our Enemies are in any measure disappointed or destroyed; and fearing the Lord should take notice under so many Intimations of his returning mercy, we should be found an Insensible people, as not standing before Him with Thanksgiving, as well as lading him with our Complaints in the time of pressing Afflictions:
The Council has thought meet to appoint and set apart the 29th day of this instant June, as a day of Solemn Thanksgiving and praise to God for such his Goodness and Favour, many Particulars of which mercy might be Instanced, but we doubt not those who are sensible of God’s Afflictions, have been as diligent to espy him returning to us; and that the Lord may behold us as a People offering Praise and thereby glorifying Him; the Council doth commend it to the Respective Ministers, Elder and people of the Jurisdiction; solemnly and seriously to keep the same Beseeching that being perswaded by the mercies of God we may all, even this whole people offer up our bodies and soulds as a living and acceptable Service unto God by Jesus christ.”
And so was proclaimed for the very first full-authority time, that a local “Thanksgiving Day” was publicly announced in Charlestown,
Massachusetts.
The first National “Thanksgiving Day” was declared in 1777 by the Continental Congress, and others were declared from time to time until 1815. The holiday then reverted to being a regional observance until 1863,
when two national days of Thanksgiving were declared , one celebrating the victory at Gettysburg on August 6, 1863 and the other the first of our last-Thursday-in-November annual Thanksgivings. Although the Pilgrims’ 1621 harvest celebration had been identified as the first American Thanksgiving as early as 1841 by Alexander Young, the common Thanksgiving symbolic associations in the 19th century centered on Turkeys, Yankee dinners and an annual family reunion, not Pilgrims. Mention of the Pilgrims brought to mind the initial Landings or the names Myles, Priscilla, and John,… not Thanksgiving.
Moreover, whenever a Pilgrim, or more accurately, a generic 17th century puritan image appeared in popular art in connection with Thanksgiving during the nineteenth century, it was not the now familiar scene of English and Indians sitting down to a peaceful and pastoral outdoor feast. The real New England Thanksgiving, as is shown in the 1777 proclamation, bore less of a resemblance to our modern holiday than the feasting and games of the Pilgrim harvest celebration. The fact that the 1621 event had not been a real Thanksgiving in the Pilgrim’s own eyes was irrelevant. The Pilgrim harvest celebration quickly became the mythic “First Thanksgiving” and has remained the primary historical representation of the holiday ever since. The earlier Pilgrim holiday, Forefather’s Day (December 21, the anniversary of the Landing on Plymouth Rock), which had been celebrated since 1769 faded in importance as the Pilgrims increasingly became the patron saints of the American Thanksgiving.
Now You Know More Of What Really Happened………….