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The Origin of Thanksgiving

© Amirah Libra Adaoha

I decided to post this article, because these past two months since the September 11th attacks, has seen a surge in neo-patriotism in the United States. There has been a lot of debate over why this has happened without too many solid answers.

Many people, people of color and African Americans in particular, seem to be afflicted with selected memory syndrome. All is not well in the United States and we must begin to deal with issues on our own soil before we try to confront problems in other countries.

All people of color must realize that they have common vested interests in American society and when they band together, form groups and coalitions, they will be able to affect enormous change.

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In mid-winter 1620 the English ship Mayflower landed on the North American coast (at Plymouth Rock) delivering 102 Puritan exiles. The original Native people ("Indians") of this stretch of shoreline had already been killed off in great numbers. In 1614 a British expedition had landed there. When they left they took 24 Indians as slaves and left smallpox, syphilis and gonorrhea behind. That plague swept the so called "tribes of New England", destroyed and some villages totally. The Puritans landed and built their colony called "the Plymouth Plantation" near the desired ruins of the Indian village of Pawtuxet. They ate from abandoned cornfields grown wild. Historical accounts tell us that only one Pawtuxet named Squanto had survived. He had spent the last years as a slave to the English and Spanish in Europe. The Pilgrim crop failed miserably, but the agricultural expertise of Squanto produced 20 acres of corn, without which the Pilgrims would have surely perished.

Squanto spoke the colonists' language and taught them how to plant corn and how to catch fish. Squanto also helped the colonists negotiate a peace treaty with the nearby Wampanoag tribe, led by the chief Massasoit. These were very lucky breaks for the colonists. Thanks to the good will of the Wampanoag, the Puritans not only survived their first year but had an alliance with the Wampanoags that would give them almost two decades of peace.

In celebration of their good fortune, the colony's governor, William Bradford, declared a three-day feast after the first harvest of 1621. It later became known as "Thanksgiving", but the Pilgrims never called it that. The "Indians" who attended were not even invited. The pilgrims only invited Chief Massasoit and it was Massasoit who then invited ninety or more of his "Indian" brothers and sisters to the affair to the chagrin of the indignant Europeans. No turkey, cranberry sauce

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