Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that we might after a more special manner rejoice together, after we had gathered the fruits of our labors. They four in one day killed as much fowl as, with a little help beside, served the Company almost a week. At which time, amongst other recreations, we exercised our arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and among the rest their greatest king Massasoit, with some 90 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. And although it be not always so plentiful as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want that we often wish you partakers of our plenty.” – Edward Winslow, 1621
A couple of Fridays ago, my wife and I tuned in to a lunchtime webinar offered by GBH, the Boston PBS affiliate, as part of their occasional Ask The Expert series. The topic was Thanksgiving, specifically, “The Real Thanksgiving Story” – promising a “unique opportunity to separate fact from fiction with our experts, and gain a deeper understanding of the real Thanksgiving story.”
We had thoroughly enjoyed their Thanksgiving offerings in recent years, which focused on Thanksgiving dinner with Julia Child, featuring her nephew, author Alex Prudhomme, and her longtime friend and collaborator, the highly entertaining and informative Jacques Pépin.
But we were open to something new this year, a more historical perspective on the first Thanksgiving “as shared by Brad Musquantamôsq Lopes (Aquinnah Wampanoag), Director of Wampanoag and Indigenous Interpretation and Training at Plimoth Patuxet Museums and Tom Begley, Deputy Director of Collections, Research, & Public Engagement at Plimoth Patuxet Museums.”
Growing up in Boston, I am no stranger to Plymouth and the story of the first Thanksgiving. In elementary school, the BIG field trip (i.e., where we ventured outside of Boston) was the day we travelled 40 miles south to Plymouth, MA. First stop was the harbor to see the replica of the Mayflower, peer down at Plymouth Rock, and then troupe up the hill to the statue of Massasoit (or Ousamequin), the leader of the Wampanoags. Then it was back on the bus for the short ride over to Plimouth Plantation – a recreation of the original settlement by the Pilgrims in 1620 – now known as the Plimoth Pautuxet Museums.
Although it consistently ranks high (or is it low) on lists of the most overrated tourist attractions in the US, that field trip was the first of many visits to Plymouth Rock over the years. In the same way that residents of Rochester, NY have to take visitors to Niagara Falls and those living near San Antonio visit the Alamo, we faithfully escorted friends and family to Plymouth on the doorstep of Cape Cod.
When a honeymoon visit by my wife’s cousin from Italy and his bride coincided with the abrupt end to my position with the Portland Maine Public Schools, I became the official tour guide/chauffeur for the week, cramming 7 people into our small car for the drive to Plymouth. The highlight of that trip, my normally reticent father-in-law, particularly grumpy over his daughter being married to an out-of-work psychometrician, openly flirting with the goodwife reenactor churning butter outside one of the houses at the Plantation.
A visit to Plymouth with a friend from graduate school on a 100º summer day (no air conditioning in our Sentra) included a stop for refreshingly cold cranberry juice cocktail samples at Cranberry World – picture a very poor man’s version of the World of Coca-Cola in Atlanta.
If the visitor was a Kennedy-phile, we drove the extra 40 miles or so to Hyannisport. Just because.
Bottom line, I entered that GBH webinar pretty familiar with the popular telling of the story of the First Thanksgiving and was ready to have my myths busted while nibbling on my peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
At the end of the hour, however, I left with all my “myths” about that first Thanksgiving intact and the feeling that I had missed out on an entertaining hour with Jacques Pépin. Fortunately, GBH is addressing the latter next week with a special event featuring Pépin discussing his new book.
But what about those myths?
Making Myths of Reality
The first “myth” that the experts attempted to take down was that we know what actually happened at that first Thanksgiving. They repeated several times that the only written account of the gathering is the single paragraph written by Edward Winslow presented at the beginning of this post.
I’ll concede that Winslow doesn’t use the term “thanksgiving” and doesn’t address some key points such as the presence and participation of women and children (historians agree that they were almost certainly active participants) and doesn’t specifically mention turkey, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie. However, watching a flock of wild turkeys make their way across my yard on any given day, I’m pretty confident that turkeys were part of the “fowling” that Winslow describes. And based on my uncle introducing me to hunting and “mushrooming” in the woods around Plymouth as a young boy, I can paint a picture of what else might have been included on their table to flesh out Winslow’s description.
My main takeaway, however, was that as far as paragraphs go, Winslow’s is a pretty damn fine one. I’ve conducted high-stakes standard settings with achievement level descriptions that contain much less detail. And the details that Winslow provides pretty much coincide with popular versions of the first Thanksgiving.
Another “myth” addressed was the loose connection between the current holiday and that specific gathering in 1621. A relatively minor point and one that is fairly well known (see Sarah Josepha Hale, Abraham Lincoln, and FDR).
They also addressed the “myth” that the gathering in Plymouth was the “first” thanksgiving, pointing out that people of both cultures had been giving thanks to God, gods, nature, each other, etc. for centuries. True enough, but I’m not aware of anyone who interprets the “first” in the “first Thanksgiving” that way.
A central “myth” that they wanted to bust, however, was that the popular retelling of the first Thanksgiving downplays the role of the Wampanoags by making Thanksgiving a Pilgrims story. And I’m sorry, but I just don’t get that.
I cannot speak to the story told between 1863 and 1963, but by the time I entered kindergarten in the fall of 1964, the “Indians” were at least equal partners, if not the heroes, in the Thanksgiving story we were taught. The Pilgrims would not have survived that first year without them.
As I mentioned, we climbed the hill to the statue of Ousamequin.
Even in elementary school we knew about Squanto (Tisquantum) speaking English and teaching the Pilgrims about corn. By middle school and high school, we had learned more of the backstory of why he could speak English.
As we got older, the friendship, alliance or marriage of convenience between the [Pilgrims→European settlers→colonists] and the [Indians→Native Americans→
Indigenous people→Wampanoags] remained the core, the heart and soul, of the story of the first Thanksgiving.
What then were the facts we were supposed to separate from fiction and the deeper understanding of the real Thanksgiving story that we were meant to acquire?
It became very clear from the outset of the discussion that the myth to be busted was not the true story of the first Thanksgiving.
Rather, it was the “myth” that the gathering in the fall of 1621 reflected a lasting bond between the two groups, ignoring the events would soon follow and continue to unfold throughout the history of the United States.
But is that “happily ever after BFF” interpretation really a myth that still exists and needs to be busted.
I was still in elementary school when Indigenous people and others first gathered on that hill above Plymouth Rock on Thanksgiving Day in 1970 to commemorate a National Day of Mourning. For more than a half century, that story continues to be told and told by an increasingly diverse and representative group of storytellers. We cannot hide from our history, and we need to continue to find ways to best tell a complete story.
However, we also cannot simply create new myths to replace the old ones.
The event that Winslow describes is a true story of thanksgiving that did occur. We cannot create a fiction to separate ourselves from that fact.
And we don’t have to.
If the case being made was that the historical significance of that gathering in the fall of 1621 has been overblown and the event itself mythologized to support of particular narrative, I would have to entertain that argument.
If asked, I would perhaps engage in a debate about whether the current Thanksgiving holiday should be disassociated from the Pilgrims in the same way that the holiday celebrated on the second Monday in October is no longer linked to Christopher Columbus in many states and cities.
We Need the First Thanksgiving – Right This Very Minute
On the other hand, given the current political environment in the United States and the events unfolding elsewhere around the world, perhaps it is not such a bad idea to recall and celebrate that in 1621 two cultures were able to find some common ground, help each other survive, and come together to give thanks – even if only for one brief shining moment.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Image by Robin Booker from Pixabay
Embrace the Absurd 