What is Thanksgiving to you? Most people nowadays would agree that Thanksgiving is a celebration of all things to be thankful for like family, friends, and life. Each year on the fourth Thursday in November, we Americans gather for a day off feasting, football and family. While today’s Thanksgiving celebrations would likely be unrecognizable to attendees of the original 1621 harvest meal, it continues to be a day for Americans to come together around the table, except with some updates to the menu. As far as we know, corn was plentiful during this “First Thanksgiving”. Instead of eating it off the cob, the corn was removed from the cob and turned into cornmeal, which was boiled and pounded into a thick corn mush or porridge that was sweetened …show more content…
According to the facts from the reading, thanksgiving is a time of mourning for the Indians. They mourn because they remember the theft of the land, crops such as corn stolen, and ransacking of the graves of fellow Indians the Englishmen did. The myth that Indians and Pilgrims became great friends was also a myth I found interesting. Prior to reading this literature, I thought that the Indians taught the Pilgrims how to use dead fish as fertilizer for their crops, but this was determined not to be true. In fact, within a mere generation the balance of power shifted enormously and theft of land by the Europeans settlers had become so greedy they were forced into battle. This is when English soldiers massacred about 700 Indian men, women, and children. The food I thought to have been served during the first Thanksgiving was not true either. Written and oral evidence show what was actually consumed. The food actually consumed included; five deer, dried corn pounded and boiled to a porridge, pompion-cooked, mashed pumpkin, plums, grapes, berries and melons. However, the fruits would have been out of season as it would have been too cold. The Pilgrims and Indians did not feast on turkey, potatoes, berries, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie, and popcorn. No one really knows when the “first” Thanksgiving occurred. The literature says that people have been giving thanks for as long as people have existed. To refer
Nathaniel Philbrick opens his book by drawing a direct line from the early Pilgrim’s arrival on Plymouth rock to the building of America. He goes on to say, “Instead of the story we already know, it becomes the story we need to know.” Many of us growing up, myself included romanticize about the pilgrims in the light of the first Thanksgiving and we think about the Indians sitting down with the Pilgrims to take part of the Thanksgiving meal. Next, we believe the myth that everyone lived happily ever after.
Nathaniel Philbrick tells the story of the Pilgrims, beginning with them breaking away from the Church of England, emigrating to Holland, and eventually to America on the Mayflower. He talks about the relationship they had with the "Strangers" or nonbelievers that accompanied them on their adventure. He tells stories about disease, death, deception, and depression. I had never thought about it, but you know some of those people had to be suffering from depression. He tells of joys but mostly of hardships and as he describes some of the first meetings with the Native Americans. His description of the first Thanksgiving is not the same as the pictures I have seen all of my life.
Development: Everyone is biased to a certain degree in what they believe to have happened between the Pilgrims and the Native Americans due to a perpetuation of myths in the media and in the celebration of Thanksgiving itself. Using entries from the diaries of two of the original settlers William Bradford and Benjamin Church, Philbrick brings to life a story very different than the one grew up with. In the preface Philbrick tells us of his interest in the history of the time era and the search for answers while struggling with “conflicting preconceptions” of the period and the facts that his primary source research (the manuscripts of Bradford and Church) was revealing.
The first Thanksgiving was a celebration of coming together between Native Americans and the English settlers in the fall of 1621 in Plymouth Colony. Before this first Thanksgiving, the settlers were preparing for the harsh coming winter by gathering food and supplies. With the help of Squanto, a Wampanoag Indian who knew English, the settlers to grow corn and use fish to fertilize the soil for better harvest. Squanto helped the Colonists learn how to fish. This brought the Wampanoag Indians closer to the English settlers. They began to work together, soon the Native Americans offered to help hunt for and with the English settlers. The leader of the Wampanoag, Massasoit and 90 of his mencame for the first Thanksgiving. For three days, the English and the native men, women and children celebrated together playing games, singing songs, dancing and feasting on their harvest. Their meal consisted of corn, shellfish and other roasted meat like duck, goose and venison. This marked the historic and first Thanksgiving holiday of the history of our nation.
Unlike Plymouth, the colonists in Jamestown did not have good relationships with the Native Americans. This caused them to kill each other, thinning the colonists’ numbers even more. The colonists did not realize that their movements into the New World angered the 15,000 Powhatan Native Americans already living there. Document D by Ivor Noel Hume, The Virginia Adventure, Alfred A. Knopf, 1994 shows how a trading incident went haywire. In 1609, “Francis West and thirty-six men sailed up the Chesapeake Bay to try to trade for corn with the Patawomeck Indians…” This event proved to be futile, since the Indians did not want to trade and the “success” involved killing the Native Americans. Their horrible relationship with the Native Americans was shown again in Document E by J. Frederick Fausz, in the book “An Abundance of Bloodshed on Both Sides: England’s First Indian War, 1609-1614,” The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, January 1990. On may 26, 2 colonists are the first to die ever in the colony by an “Indian attack on Fort James.” The next event written down explains how at least 3 more colonists fall to the Native American ambushes. In addition, in December, the Pamunkey Native Americans kill 2 more colonists. The last two events stated show that of the 100 men at Nansemond, the Native Americans kill half of them, leaving the men at Nansemond with only 50 left. In addition, the last
This is a disgrace! To all the turkey’s at Thanksgiving! forty-five million turkey’s are cooked a year. Not only are those awful humans eating us, now they are entrapping us in disgusting cages and making us eat only corn and soybeans. That’s not even the worst part, they put something in our food called vitamins and minerals. I heard yesterday from keith, my turkey friend, that they talk about how they feed turkeys healthy things so that the people who buy the turkeys won’t get sick or something like that. They also say we taste different at different ages.
Thanksgiving Compare and Contrast Food, Family, and Fun!! Thanksgiving is a national holiday in the United States, always celebrated on a Thursday in November. There are many different ways people celebrate Thanksgiving. You give thanks and celebrate what you are most thankful for. Thanksgiving is a national holiday that has many different traditions, activities, and foods in different families.
[2] If one were to ask the man on the street to recite the story of the Pilgrims, it would go something like this: These religious people wanted to worship as they pleased, so they left England and came to America; the voyage was hard and many of them died, but with the help of Squanto they were able to raise crops the next Spring and Summer. They had a bountiful harvest, and in the Fall they invited the Indians to join them in a thanksgiving feast where they served roasted wild turkey. Their strong religious faith and trust in God's providence were the main reasons they prospered in the New World. Quite likely these two facts would not be mentioned: the Pilgrims were a separate group from the Puritans, and the Plymouth Colony failed to obtain a charter and ultimately became a part of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1692. Also absent from the recital would be the fact that Plymouth, the poor but proud capital of the Pilgrim Colony, sank to the status of a not-very-important county seat, its interests shrinking to a radius of a few miles and the scale of its affairs lessening accordingly (Willison 408).
Textbooks in today’s schools still tell the same story that has been handed down from generation to generation. Every year children dress up and put on plays about the famous story of the first Thanksgiving. No one knows the truth though or at least people pretend to not know the embarrassing truth of our “founding fathers.” Textbooks today give the candy coated version of good saintly Englishmen come to a better world and find good neighbors willing to help in their time of need.
The Pilgrims worked hard to establish a new home in Plymouth. Local Indian tribes became loyal to the Pilgrims. One Indian in particular, Squanto, who knew Engl...
Many school children celebrate a cliché Thanksgiving tradition in class where they play Indians and Pilgrims, and some children engage in the play of Cowboys vs. Indians. It is known that some died when colonization occurred, that some fought the United States government, and that they can be boiled down to just another school mascot. This is what many people understand of the original inhabitants of America. Historical knowledge of these people has been shallow and stereotyped. The past 150 years has given birth to a literate people now able to record their past, present, and future. Native American literature, as it evolves, defines the Native American culture and its status in the world, as an evolving people, more so than any historical account can.
The first Thanksgiving was a very memorable time in U.S. history. The real meaning of Thanksgiving is to spend time with your family and be thankful for what you have been blessed with.
When the great holiday of Thanksgiving comes to mind, most people think of becoming total gluttons and gorging themselves with a seemingly unending amount of food. Others might think of the time spent with family and friends. The whole basis of the holiday is family togetherness, fellowship, and thankfulness for blessings received during the previous year.
November; the time when Thanksgiving rolls around and schools begin to display decorations of leaves, cornucopias, turkeys, pilgrims, and Indians. To elementary aged children this time means little to nothing except a week of no school, plenty of food, and loads of time with family. America has begun to train children from elementary school age to only associate Native Americans with Thanksgiving and pilgrims. America breeds children from day one to view Native Americans as a Thanksgiving tale or a page in a textbook but never takes the time to teach them about the day to day struggles that Native Americans still suffer from.
A big part of Thanksgiving is a Thanksgiving feast. The feast usually consists of potatoes, corn, sweet potatoes, peas, gravy, stuffing, salads, buns and lots of other great food. The main part of the feast is usually the turkey. Other families might have ham, roast beef, duck or chicken. The dessert that is most likely to follow the feast is pumpkin pie. Other people may choose different desserts and food depending on their customs and beliefs for which they choose to give thanks. Let’s not forget the biggest and most important reason for this holiday – giving THANKS! People usually give thanks for everything they have. Their jobs, health, families or just being alive are just a few of the things that people give thanks for.