Should We Celebrate Thanksgiving?
- Amy Compare
- Nov 25, 2020
- 8 min read
Despite having celebrated 25 Thanksgivings in my life, I’ve never actually looked up the story of Thanksgiving myself. I vaguely remember learning about the whitewashed version we all seem to get in elementary school about a fun feast with Pilgrims and Native Americans, but I don’t really remember learning about it in school beyond that. I have known for a while that that version is not a true retelling of what really happened, but I had never looked up the story of Thanksgiving and the context around it until now. This next section of history will be in bullet points because that is how I wrote it out, and don’t want to change it, but I learned a lot about New England in the 15/1600s.
In 1524, there was the first known contact between Native Americans in southern New England and Europeans, in Narragansett Bay near Aquidneck Island.
In 1602, Bartholomew Gosnold visited Cape Cod and was in contact with the Wampanoag tribe, and some historians argue that Gosnold prevented Spain from settling the Atlantic coast, which allowed the British to establish colonies instead.
In 1614, a Nauset tribal member named Epenow was captured by Europeans and kept in bondage for three years before he figured out to escape. In the same year, Tisquantum, also known as Squanto, and 19 other Wampanoag men were lured onto an English ship, taken captive, and sold into slavery.
In 1616, a lethal pandemic raged through may Wampanoag villages, and in three years, villages like Patuxet where the pilgrims settled (later called Plymouth), which were populous, were nearly devoid of life. While the Wampanoag population was largely decimated by disease, their rivals to the west, the Narragansett Tribe were largely untouched.
By the time the Pilgrims showed up in 1620, the Wampanoag people were in a precarious situation, shaped by volatile contact with Europeans, slavery, regional threats to their way of living, and illness.
The first Thanksgiving service known to have been held by Europeans in North American was May 27, 1578 in Newfoundland, although early services were probably held by Spaniards in the land that we now call Florida. There were also Thanksgiving services held by Jamestown colonists in 1610 and also by Berkley Hundred settlers. All of these happened before the Pilgrim’s Thanksgiving that became the common “original Thanksgiving” narrative we commonly learn about.
The narrative is that the Pilgrims left for North American in search of religious freedom, but that isn’t exactly accurate. While the congregation of Puritans within the Pilgrims did break off from the Church of England for religious reasons, they did not come to North America, but to Holland where they were free to practice their religion. After a decade of living in Holland where they struggled to find jobs and feared Dutch influence on their children, the congregants sought a charter from The London Company to start a colony in North America, although it was granted for land near the mouth of the Hudson River.
September 1620, 102 people from Plymouth, England left on a ship called the Mayflower. They were religious separatists seeking a new home to be able to actively practice their faith. The trip lasted 66 days, and they came ashore near the tip of Cape Cod, far north of their intended destination of the Hudson River. They found themselves amid indigenous people who were distrustful and wary of Europeans and entangled in the complex politics of rival tribes.
Despite all this, Ousamequin, also known as Massasoit, a leader in the Wampanoag tribe, decided to help the group of Pilgrims. At this time, the Wampanoag tribe had a government much closer to a democratic government than the Pilgrim’s government and was organized into sachemships where each sachem, or leader, would oversee a village. Sachems ruled by the will of the people and each sachemship was independent, but had relationships with the other sachemships. This was a complex decision in which Massasoit decided that the risks of helping the Pilgrims (costing warriors, risk of Europeans returning in overwhelming numbers) was outweighed by the rewards (making allies who would intimidate enemies threatening Wampanoag territory).
About half of Pilgrims died during the winter of 1620 from illness, starvation, or cold. Although the Wampanoag made their presence known during this time, they did not reach out until February when a man named Samoset, a visiting Abenaki tribal member who knew English also known as Squanto or Tisquantum, delivered the message to the Pilgrims that the Wampanoag were ready for war or peace with them, and that they needed to make their intentions clear. (Squanto himself was captured and forced to travel to Europe to be sold into slavery in Spain in 1614, ended up in London, and eventually allowed to travel as a guide to Newfoundland where he met the English explorer Thomas Dermer who brought him home in 1619).
In March, there were diplomatic meetings between the two groups to work out an alliance, and a belief by the Wampanoag that the band of Pilgrims would stay small. The Wampanoag tribe introduced the Pilgrims to native crops and introduced them to the best places to fish and hunt. They taught them different methods to better grow crops in New England. In the Summer of 1621, Massasoit signed a treaty with the Pilgrims offering them food in exchange for protection against other hostile tribes.
In November 1621, after their first successful corn harvest, Governor William Bradford organized a celebratory three-day harvest feast. Wampanoag members were not invited, but they showed up as a reminder that the Pilgrims were on their land, and that they were outnumbered.
A second Thanksgiving was held in 1623 by the Pilgrims after rains that had followed a long drought.
In a little more than 50 years, European settlers would vastly outnumber Indigenous people and start displacing them and driving them off their ancestral land.
In the 1670s, relations between Indigenous people and settlers deteriorated as King Philips War (AKA - First Indian War) ended in death, enslavement, or displacement for the majority of Indigenous folks living in southern New England. During this time, one of Massasoit’s sons, Metacomet, was killed, and his head was captured on a pike outside Plymouth Colony as a warning, and the descendants of the Massasoit, who had helped the Pilgrims, were sold into slavery in the West Indies.
From this time to the present, Indigenous people have been displaced from their land and culture.
In 1789, George Washington issued the first Thanksgiving proclamation by the national government of the US in which he called upon Americans to express gratitude for the end of the war, the country’s independence, and the ratification of the US Constitution. In 1817, New York became the first of several states to officially adopt an annual Thanksgiving holiday, although they all held them on a different day, and was largely not celebrated in the South.
In 1827, magazine editor and writer Sarah Josepha Hale, who also wrote the nursery rhyme “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” launched a 36 year campaign to establish Thanksgiving as a National Holiday.
In 1863, in the height of the Civil War, President Lincoln established Thanksgiving as a national holiday as the last Thursday in November (now the 4th Thursday in Thanksgiving). The feel-good story of the Pilgrims really gathered hold around this time, as President Lincoln was looking for a way to unite the country.
The Southern Wampanoag still live in southern New England (3 tribes out of the original 69 pre-contact) and have retained their culture, despite systemic removal of their land and denial of their rights for hundreds of years. The Wampanoag and many other indigenous tribes recognized Thanksgiving day as the National Day of Mourning. It is a way to honor Native ancestors and Native struggles and not celebrate colonization by recognizing Thanksgiving as a holiday.
Should we celebrate thanksgiving?
I think first and foremost, it is important to tell all stories of Thanksgiving, and not just one that was a PR attempt to heal a country divided by war. I think it’s possible to paint a picture that shows that the pilgrims had tenacity and resilience while at the expense and harm or the Indigenous people who lived here. Much like everything in life, this story and the people involved are messy and complex and cannot be fit into neat boxes of good and bad. I’m not trying to cancel the Pilgrims or Thanksgiving, but recognize that we traditionally tell only an incomplete story and that our history is a lot more complicated than we want to believe.
Another added element that I have been thinking about is how the first thanksgiving feast itself was a celebration of a successful harvest. The Wampanoag were teaching the Pilgrims how to be in relation with the land in this new place, which helped them survive and successfully expand their colony. Since then, Indigenous folks have been driven off their land, had their traditional food systems disrupted, and descendants of settlers also for the most part have had this relation to land and connection to where their food comes from destroyed. Even if this were not a story about the destruction of a culture and people, it would also be about the destruction of a way of living in relation with land that merited a celebration of harvest. I think it’s not a coincidence that we, as a country, celebrate a holiday without really knowing the story behind it, and also have a general lack of knowledge around the lack of food sovereignty in the country. Being able to grow your own food in community to harvest is a way towards decolonization of the holiday and everyday life.
I’ve always liked Thanksgiving for being able to bring family together in a more formal way. In my family, it never felt like more than a special meal. I never felt like it was a way to memorialize the Pilgrims or even a way to formally express gratitude for each other - it was just a way for family to be together. In my anti-racist group last week, we discussed if Thanksgiving is something we should even celebrate, as many Indigeous groups recognize it as a day of mourning for their ancestors and culture and how by not even acknowledging any historical context to the holiday, we still uphold ideas of white supremacy). I know that my perspectives will change as I continue to grow and learn more, but I think it is possible to celebrate a Thanksgiving of gratitude while also recognizing and sharing the deeper history of the country and the people who were impacted. I know some people may say that we cannot celebrate Thanksgiving and stand in solidarity with Indigenous folks who are mourning, but celebration in itself often feels like a form of resistance, and I think it’s important, albeit with a shift in mindset that will not happen overnight. At the same time, it is important to realize that what happened in the past, what was happening during the time of the first Thanksgiving and before, was setting the stage for tragedy that is still being felt by nearly all (if not all) Indigenous folks today. While the actual first Thanksgiving may not have been harmful to anyone, the greater context of what was happening at the time was harmful to Indigeous people, and those effects still carry on today (from lack of food sovereignty to lack of ancestral land access to voter suppression).
I know that this Thanksgiving feels very different to me, and not just because of COVID and not spending it with friends/family. It feels different because I know now that it’s not a celebration for everyone, and that there are more perspectives and stories to the day than I knew before. This Thanksgiving, I am reflecting more critically on the history behind the day and my part in upholding colonial systems. I know the actions I do will not create a national wave, but hopefully they can impact some people in my spheres and networks. To be quite honest, I’m not sure what I am going to do yet tomorrow, but I am going to spend it parts of it outside on land that I have adopted as my temporary home, watch (probably the recording) of the National Day of Mourning, listen to the All My Relations podcast Thanksgiving episode (below) and call home to celebrate virtually with my family.
Alternative/Extra things you can do on Thanksgiving to decolonize and recognize Indigenous perspectives:
Share this history with the people you celebrate Thanksgiving with
Watch a livestream (or afterwards, a recording) of National Day of Mourning Protests/Ceremony put on by United American Indians of New England (UAINE): http://www.uaine.org/
Donate to UAINE here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/uaine-20202021-fundraiser
Learn about who’s land/ancestral land you are living on: https://native-land.ca/
Listen to this podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/thankstaking-or-thanksgiving/id1454424563?i=1000499682949
Resources:
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