By Pamela Nagler
Published 11/21/2022 12:00 Am PST
Updated 11/22/2022 9:41 Am PST

Whereas Columbus’ so-called ‘discovery’ of America has become our nation’s creation myth, a feast between Pilgrims and Native Americans has become our nation’s covenant myth. We repeat it, reenact it, celebrate it as Thanksgiving because it tells us that there was some kind of tacit agreement between Indigenous nations and the English colonists, though this is not the truth.

The true story of Plymouth Rock, the Mayflower and the Pilgrims began a few years before they arrived in 1620. Previous to colonization, European fisherman, explorers and slave traders had already visited the continent’s east coast. The true story of the European invasion did not begin as a story of fellowship, but rather a story of captivity and plague. 

Before Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, English enslavers had kidnapped Squanto, actually named Tisquantum, a Paxtuxet Native from the region. They took him and a handful of others to England to labor and be viewed as an oddity. While in Europe, a disease killed his people - likely imported by the Europeans - possibly smallpox or a parasitic disease brought by the rats that the Europeans brought with them. When Tisquantum returned to his homeland, he returned to find that his entire population of his village were dead, and that he was the last living Paxtuxet.

Tisquantum became extremely important for the Pilgrims - along with the Wampanoag. It is unlikely that the Pilgrims could have survived without the support of him along with the support of the Wampanoag nation. Tisquantum surprised the Pilgrims with his ability to speak English, and he quickly became their ally, serving as their guide, interpreter and teacher. He taught them how to plant corn with fish for manure. He taught them the best locations to catch fish, and guided them to other sites that helped them survive. He helped them trade with other indigenous peoples.

Crossing the Atlantic Ocean had been rough for the Pilgrims. On the way, they became sick with various diseases, including scurvy. Less than half survived, and only four women. Though they landed in late fall, most did not emerge from the ship until March. Those who could, took care of the sick. 

The Pilgrims had few good reports to send back to England.
However, about a year after the Mayflower landed, in December of 1621, Pilgrim leader Edward Winslow submitted a brief report of a feast between the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag to their investors, the London Company, back in England:

“And God be praised, we had a good increase . . . Our harvest being gotten in, our Governor sent four men on fowling; that so we might, after a more special manner, rejoice together, after we had gathered the fruit of our labours. They four, in one day, killed as much fowl as, with a little help besides, served the Company almost a week. 

 At which time, amongst other recreations, we exercised our Arms; many of the Indians coming amongst us. ‘And amongst the rest, their greatest King, Massasoyt, with some ninety men; whom, for three days, we entertained and feasted. And they went out, and killed five deer: which they brought to the Plantation; and bestowed on our Governor, and upon the Captain, and others . . . These things I thought good to let you understand . . . that you might on our behalf give God thanks who hath dealt so favourably with us.” Hanc

There were clear motives behind Winslow’s description of a bountiful harvest, a successful hunt and a three-day feast with friendly Indians. It was embedded in a report to convince investors back in England that the Colony was a worthy investment in spite of the many, dismal reports of sickness, death and hardship.

However, this momentary peaceful event belies the truth. Relations between the Indigenous people of this region and the Pilgrims quickly disintegrated into fierce and extirpative warfare that set the stage for even more extirpative warfare in the future.

Shortly after this feast, the Pilgrims began constructing a palisade for self-defense against the Native Americans. By February of 1622, the colonists had constructed a stockade eight feet high and twenty-seven hundred feet long that ringed their entire settlement that they had built on top of the hill. In the next year, they expanded this fort, adding six cannons. 

That year, 1623, the Pilgrims heard rumors that their Native American neighbors planned to attack them, so they attacked first. They invited the Massachusett men to a “peaceful summit,” and proceeded to ambush, poison and murder them. The Pilgrims cut off one of the warrior’s heads, and brought it back to their fort for public display, along with a flag drenched in “Indian blood.”

In 1630, even more English colonists arrived - a whole different group of Puritans - and not long after, in 1636, war, the Pequot War, broke out between the newly-arrived and the Native Americans.

Plymouth Colony Governor William Bradford wrote about a major battle within  this war, the Mystic Massacre, in which few indigenous people escaped. Some 400 -700 Native Americans were  either roasted in a fire that the Pilgrims set, or they were hacked by swords:

“Those that scraped [escaped] the fire were slaine with the sword; some hewed to peeces, others rune throw [run through] with their rapiers, so as they were quickly dispatchte, and very few escapted. It was conceived they thus destroyed about 400 at this time. 

It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fyer, and the streams of blood quenching the same, and horrible was the stincke and sente there of, but the victory seemed a sweete sacrifice, and they gave the prayers thereof to God, who had wrought so wonderfully for them, thus to inclose their enemise in their hands, and give them so speedy a victory over so proud and insulting an enimie.” 114, Stannard

In spite of the sheer numbers of murdered Natives, the rivers of blood and the stench, Mayor Governor Bradford considered it a “sweet sacrifice.”

After this, the Massachusetts Bay Colony Governor John Winthrop reported: “There was a day of Thanksgiving kept in all the churches for the victory obtained against the Pequot, and other mercies.” 123, Winthrop

In England, thanksgivings were somber days of prayer, fasting and private reflection - in New England, the Puritans often called thanksgivings to commemorate massacres and the mass murder of Indigenous people.

To the South, the Dutch learned from the Puritans about both massacre and taking body parts as trophies, and in 1643, the Dutch Governor Willem Kieft of the village of Manhattan, New York, ordered the massacre of the Wappinger People, a previously friendly tribe. The Dutch killed 80. Afterwards, they kicked around their severed heads like soccer balls on the village streets. One Native was castrated, skinned, and then forced to eat his own flesh, while the Dutch watched and laughed. 

In 1675, the Puritans launched another war - King Philip's War. The Pequot War had been more of a local action, but King Philip’s War involved the entire region and various Indigenous nations. It  is still considered the bloodiest war per capita in US history. It was never certain that the Puritans would win, but on June 20, 1676 the Puritans governing council held a meeting to determine a way to “express thanks for the victories in War with the Heathen Natives.” They proclaimed June 29 a "day of public thanksgiving,” saying, "there now scarce remains a name or family of them [the Indians] but are either slain, captivated or fled.”

Later, in 1704, Massachusetts Bay Colony Governor Thomas Dudley declared a “General Thanksgiving for God’s infinite goodness to extend his favors . . . In defeating and disappointing . . . the expeditions of the Enemy Indians against us. And the good Success given us against them, by delivering so many of them into our hands.” Overdine

Some eighty years later, in the late 1780s, when things looked bleak for the rebel forces who fought against the English, General George Washington sent out a plea to all that “supported the cause of Freedom” for a day of prayer and thanksgiving to rally everyone’s spirits. The Revolutionary War was also a war against Native Americans and thanksgivings came fast and furious after the Europeans and the English colonists waged war against them. Massacres were coming around with such frequency that, as President, Washington consolidated them into a single day, and in 1789, he proclaimed November 26th to be observed annually as a Day of Thanksgiving. 

Not all the states observed it, and neither did the Presidents who succeeded him, but to offset the bleak days of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln revived the tradition. Struggling to unite his divided country, Lincoln declared a national day of Thanksgiving. This time, the other Presidents followed.

Some 40 years after President Lincoln’s Proclamation to celebrate Thanksgiving, US satirist, Mark Twain commented in his article, The Dervish and the Offensive Stranger, how odd it was to designate a day to celebrate the Native American genocide:

“Thanksgiving Day became a habit, for the reason that . . . the exterminating had ceased to become mutual, and was all on the white man’s side, hence it was proper to thank the Lord for it, and to extend the usual annual compliments.”

LINKS

Hanc, John. The Plymouth Hero You Should Really Be Thankful for This Thanksgiving: Without Edward Winslow, we probably wouldn’t even be celebrating the holiday. Smithsonian Magazine November 21, 2016.

Stannard, David E. American Holocaust: The Conquest of the New World. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.

Winthrop, John. The Journal of John Winthrop, 1630-1649. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996.