Thanksgiving, which happens annually on the fourth Thursday of November, is an American National Holiday centred around gratitude for the harvest and other blessings of the year. Its history seems to show a peaceful coalition between the Indigenous people of modern-day Massachusetts and the Pilgrims – white settlers who arrived in the 1600s – however research has shown the truth to be much darker. I have found conflicting information online and so will aim to present as balanced a narrative as I can, whilst also assessing the transparency of the celebration through the lens of the marginalised Native Americans.
The status quo, taught to American schoolchildren today is rather… positive, presenting a very glossed version of events occurring just before a war that wiped out many Indigenous populations. The tale begins with one hundred Christian Pilgrims, who left England on the Mayflower in search of a better life in 1620. After a gruelling journey, they arrived in Cape Cod; unprepared for the cold winter, half died of disease and starvation, with the survivors settling into a village they named Plymouth, neighbouring the prospering Wampanoag people. They, and more specifically Tisquantum (Squanto) saw the settlers’ struggles, extended a helping hand, showed them how to cultivate crops and, come Autumn, were cordially invited to a feast marking the settlers’ first successful harvest, forming a fellowship that lasted for years.
Unfortunately, this is not the narrative held by descendants of the Indigenous people in Plymouth, or, in fact, across the country. Their story included the extended version of Squanto’s fate – that he and twenty-three other able Native men were lured on Captain Thomas Hunt’s ship with the promises of trade, before being sold into slavery in Spain. It took them many years to get back to their homeland which, at that point, was unrecognisable after an outbreak of disease that lasted for three years after the first visit by the white settlers that wiped out almost 90% of the Native population in the region (according to a study published in Quaternary Science Reviews), aptly termed “The Great Dying”. The story of the actual Thanksgiving Feast varies between sources, with some asserting that the Wampanoags were directly invited by the settlers, and some saying they weren’t and came only because they heard gunshots fired by the rather merry gentlemen.
However, this apparent peace between the newcomers and the Wampanoags (who, for reference, have been living in harmony with their land for approximately 10,000 years prior) became strained after the Pilgrims started expanding into the shared land. The tension came to a head after the death of Ousamequin (the Wampanoag confederacy’s sachem or leader) in 1662, and the subsequent takeover by his heir, Metacom, known as King Philip to the English, who felt that the original alliance formed by his father was no longer being honoured. The colonists demanded the Native Americans hand over their weapons if any peace agreement was to be reached, as well as hang three tribe members who were involved in the murder of a Christian Native for acting as an informer in 1675.
King Philip’s war began, lasting fourteen months and resulting in the deaths of thousands, until the final defeat of the Narrangansett tribe in 1676, and the fleeing of King Philip after his wife and children’s executions. In August, he himself was killed by a Native American at the service of the English at Mount Hope, Rhode Island, who then displayed his head on a stake in Plymouth. This marked the end of Indigenous rule of the land.
And so began the marginalisation of Native people in America that is still acutely felt by descendants to this day. Many hold a National Day of Mourning for the lives lost and ruined in this war on Thanksgiving Thursday in Plymouth, as well as an Unthanksgiving Day in San Francisco, commemorating a nineteen-month long occupation protest on Alcatraz Island by Native Americans in 1969.
I hope this shows how history can often be adapted by the dominant culture, i.e., by the winners. This is why we must question it and look past frequent “whitewashing” to explore other sides of the story, other perspectives, and other cultures, in order to present events accurately, respectfully and responsibly.
