Welcome to
the first week of the Thanksgiving Nine, Q’s Blog’s attempt to liven up the
Thanksgiving Season! This week will
focus on the origins and creation of Thanksgiving as a national holiday…starting
today with the story of the very first Thanksgiving…sorta.
The story of
the first Thanksgiving is one we’re told about in a fairy tale way from very
very young. The Pilgrims came over on
the Mayflower, and settled at Plymouth Rock.
They came with very little in terms of supplies, and were not ready for
the harsh winter. The noble local
Indians helped them out by giving them maize (corn), beans, and squash, taught
them how to hunt, and they had a nice feast together!
Of course,
that’s not exactly how it happened. Let’s
take a look back at the real story of the First Thanksgiving!
First off,
the Thanksgiving that provides the basis for our current holiday was not even
the first Thanksgiving style feast to happen in the Americas! The first Thanksgiving on Anglo-American soil
was held by Martin Frobisher, who held the feast at Frobisher Bay (humble guy,
eh?) upon returning from an unsuccessful search for the fabled Northwest
Passage. So, the first Thanksgiving over
here actually happened in Canada! This
particular Thanksgiving serves as the basis for the Canadian Thanksgiving
holiday, which happens in October. The
first documented thanksgiving feasts in the United States area were actually
conducted by Spaniards in the 16th century. Thanksgiving services became very common
throughout the Commonwealth of Virginia as early as 1607, and the settlement of
Jamestown (the first permanent settlement over here) held a thanksgiving in
1610. So, yeah, Thanksgiving
celebrations were around long before the Pilgrims made their way to Plymouth
Rock.
But, as the
story goes, the modern Thanksgiving holiday traces its origins to a 1621
celebration at the Plymouth Plantation, where the settlers there held a harvest
feast after a successful growing season.
This was continued in later years, and became the basis for Thanksgiving.
The first
thanksgiving, really, wasn’t a Thanksgiving at all, but a traditional harvest
feast. However, the story about the
helpful Native Americans does appear to be somewhat accurate. Squanto, a Patuxet Native American who
resided with the Wampanoag tribe, taught the Pilgrims how to catch eel and grow
corn. He also served as an interpreter
for them, having learned English while enslaved in Europe and during travels in
England. Additionally the Wampanoag
leader Massasoit had donated food stores to the fledgling colony during the
first winter when supplies brought from England were insufficient.
The first
Thanksgiving feast lasted three days, providing enough food for 53 Pilgrims and
90 Native Americans. The feast consisted
of fish (cod, eels, and bass) and shellfish (clams, lobster, and mussels), wild
fowl (ducks, geese, swans, and turkey), venison, berries and fruit, vegetables
(peas, pumpkin, beetroot and possibly, wild or cultivated onion), harvest
grains (barley and wheat), and the Three Sisters: beans, dried Indian maize or
corn, and squash.
As I said,
though, this was a harvest festival, held almost a full year after they had
landed in Plymouth. The Pilgrims held
another Thanksgiving celebration in 1623, after a switch from communal farming
to privatized farming, a fast, and a refreshing 14-day rain resulted in a
larger harvest. This thanksgiving is
suspected to have been made on Wednesday, July 30, 1623, a day prior to the
arrival of a supply ship with more colonists, but prior to the fall harvest. This 1623 thanksgiving was significant because
the order to recognize the event was from civil authority, (Governor Bradford)
and not from the church, making it likely the first civil recognition of Thanksgiving
in New England.
Irregular
thanksgivings continued after favorable events and days of fasting after
unfavorable ones. In the Plymouth tradition, a thanksgiving day was primarily a
church observance, rather than a feast day. But thanksgiving days did have a
civil observance linked to the religious one, as in 1623. Gradually, an annual
Thanksgiving after the harvest developed in the mid-17th century. This did not
occur on any set day or necessarily on the same day in different colonies in
America.
Of course,
these stories have been romanticized over the years. The first feast between the Pilgrims and the
Native Americans has turned into a glorious event, depicted as the noble Indians
(surprisingly dressed as Plains Indians, despite being on the coast) shared a
table with the Pilgrims, dressed in black outfits with white trim and those
funny hats. Actually, this romanticized
view of the first thanksgiving was aided by this painting by Jean Leon Gerome
Ferris…
Its funny
because, I mean, we were all part of those school plays, right? Some people dressed as Indians, feathers in
hair, others dressed as Pilgrims, the black suits and hats…AND THAT’S ENTIRELY
INACCURATE! Also, Thanksgiving was more
of a sporadic event than it’s portrayed as.
They happened when there was something to be thankful for…a successful
voyage, the end of a drought, or a grand military victory! The idea behind Thanksgiving is solid…a day
to give thanks for the things in our lives…its just, the specific events this
day was supposed to be based on might not have actually happened as advertised.
So, while
the Pilgrims and Indians did appear to share a feast, it was more of a harvest
feast. The Native Americans did help out
the Pilgrims in teaching them to fish the local waters and giving them the
crops of the land…most notably corn (delicious, delicious corn). This feast, also, was not the first of its
kind to take place in the Americas, with the first of its kind coming in Canada
a good 50 years prior, and earlier feasts in the future United States happening
in Virginia a good decade in advance of the Plymouth feast. However, all good legends have a nice, neat
story involved. Thus, the story of a
grand first Thanksgiving came together!
Come back
Wednesday for the story of how Thanksgiving became a National American
Holiday! (Spoiler: I’m heavily involved…tangentially).
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