The First Thanksgiving and the Infamous 1637 Thanksgiving

The Mayflower, with it's group of 102 Puritans arrived at Cape Cod in September 1620.  The ship had planned on arriving in Virginia, a far more temperate climate.  In October, the ship sailed across Massachusetts Bay to what is now known as Plymouth Rock.  Throughout that brutal first winter, most of the colonists remained on board the Mayflower, where they suffered from exposure, scurvy, and outbreaks of various contagious diseases.  Only half of the Mayflower's original passengers and crew lived to see their first New England spring. In March 1621, the surviving settlers moved ashore, where they received an astonishing visit from an Abenaki native, who greeted them in English. Several days later, the Abenaki returned with a member of the Pawtuxet tribe, Squanto.  Squanto had been kidnapped years before by an English sea captain, and had been sold as a slave.  He learned English and Spanish, before he escaped to London, where he signed on as an interpreter for an exploratory expedition, so he could return to his homeland.  English and Dutch traders had already been in contact with local tribes up and down the New England coast - and they spread contagious diseases which the Native Americans had no immunity against.  The Puritans found an abandoned village near Plymouth Rock, and named it Plymouth - never realizing that the local Wampanoag tribe had named it Pawtuxet - before the majority of the native villagers succumbed to smallpox.
  Squanto, previously a slave of the English and Spanish, taught the group of English refugees, weakened by malnutrition and illness, how to cultivate maize (corn), how to extract the sap from maple trees, how to catch fish in the local rivers, and which plants were poisonous and needed avoidance.  He also helped the settlers forge an alliance with the local tribe, the Wampanoag.  That alliance would endure for more than 50 years, and, tragically, remains one of the sole examples of harmony between the native tribes and the European colonists.
   In November 1621, after the Pilgrims' first corn harvest proved successful, Governor William Bradford organized a celebratory feast and invited a group of the new colony's allies, including the Wampanoag chief Massasoit.  This feast, which lasted for three days, was what is now called the "first Thanksgiving."  It was a combined celebration of the Fall Harvest and a giving of thanks to God for the groups survival for the first year in their colony of Plymouth.  While no record exists of the historic feast's exact menu, the Pilgrim chronicler Edward Winslow (my many, many-times Great Uncle) wrote in his journal that Governor Bradford sent four men on a fowling mission to prepare for the event, and that the Wampanoags arrived with a gift of five freshly killed deer.  It is also suggested by historians that the menu included ducks, swans, geese, seals, and lobster. Many of the dishes were likely prepared using traditional Native American spices and cooking methods.  The Pilgrims did not have ovens at that time, and it is assumed that sugar was not to be had, so pies, cakes, confections and desserts were probably not consumed.
  The Pilgrims at Plymouth had their second Thanksgiving celebration in 1623 to mark the end of a long drought.  The drought had threatened that fall's harvest, and it prompted Governor Bradford to call for a religious fast. Days of fasting and thanksgiving on an annual or occasional basis became common practice in other New England settlements as well.
   ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Let's skip ahead eleven years to 1634...  There are quite a few new European colonies in the area around Plymouth.  The native Narragansetts and Mohicans are allies of the English at Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth and Saybrook.  The towns of Wethersford, Springfield, Hartford and Winfield are established between 1633 and 1636.  The Pequot tribe is being squashed on all sides, and wants to expand into Wampanoag, Mohican, Narragansett and Algonquin territories.  The native tribes are contesting the control of fur trading with the Europeans.  The Mohicans  traded with the English, the Pequot tribe with the Dutch.
   There were a series of murders and retaliations between the Pequots and both the Dutch and English.  Then the Narragansett joined in, and killed an English trader doing business with the Pequots.  The Narragansett, however, convinced the English that the Pequots were responsible for the death of the trader named John Oldham.  War broke out between the Pequots and the European settlers.  Governor William Bradford, who organized the first two Thanksgivings at Plymouth, was still the leader of the Plymouth colony.
  William Newell, a Penobscot tribal member and former chair of the anthropology department of the University of Connecticut, claims that the first Thanksgiving took place in 1637, and that it was not "a festive gathering of Indians and Pilgrims, but rather a celebration of the massacre of 700 Pequot men, women, and children." In 1637, the Pequot tribe of Connecticut gathered for the annual Green Corn Dance ceremony near (what is today) Mystic.  Mercenaries of the English and Dutch attacked and surrounded the fortified village; everything was burned to the ground, and anyone attempting to escape was killed. The Governor declared a public day of Thanksgiving.
   Governor William Bradford, in his famous History of the Plymouth Plantation, celebrated the Pequot massacre: "Those that escaped the fire were slain with the sword; some hewed to pieces, other run through with their rapiers, so as they were quickly dispatched and very few escaped. It was conceived they thus destroyed about 400 at this time.  It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fire, and the streams of blood quenching the same, and horrible was the stink and scent thereof, but the victory seemed a sweet sacrifice, and they gave the prayers thereof to God, who had wrought so wonderfully for them, thus to enclose their enemies in their hands, and give them so speedy a victory over so proud and insulting an enemy."
   The remaining Pequots were rounded up and sold into slavery in the Caribbean.  It became illegal to say the word "Pequot" in New England.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
So, why do Americans celebrate Thanksgiving?  Please give some thought to both sides of the history.  After all, several of my ancestors came to what is now the United States as refugees, and they took the land and ways of life of the native peoples.
   Personally, I just thank the powers that be for family, friends, enough to eat, a roof over my head,and my two loving felines.