The Real Story of Thanksgiving

In North America you'll notice that the leaves are changing color, pumpkin spice lattes are back, and Charlie Brown is playing on TV, which must mean it's time for Thanksgiving with family, friends, and plenty of turkey. Even if you're not American, you've probably heard of the holiday, but the image of pacifist settlers singing kumbaya alongside the natives is dead wrong. The

story

begins on a cold dock in England in August 1620, when 120 men, women and children boarded two English merchant ships in the port of Southampton bound for America. Both ships seem to be held together by saliva and prayers.

The Speedwell was so old that it had fought against the Spanish Armada in 1588, and the Mayflower was such an ungainly transport ship that it could barely sail against the wind and out of the North Atlantic in the fallen winter. It's nothing but westerly winds, it was the absolute worst ship to try to cross, but somehow the Mayflower had reached America twice before, even if it had taken twice as long as usual. Fortunately, these would-be settlers were determined to do so. They had to be religious dissident Brownists from the Anglican Church of England. You see, the Brownist beliefs were relatively simple, the first that only the word of the Holy Bible was infallible, the second that individual churches and their local communities should have more say and autonomy in both beliefs were aimed at getting rid of the corrupt power structure of old Catholicism, which did not happen when the new church began to look more Catholic the day the Brownishes bought a printing press and began handing out pamphlets to they opposed, leading to the Brownishes becoming intimately familiar with the inside the London prison system, they had such a bad reputation that Shakespeare even mentions them in one of his works The Twelfth Night, where he says that he would gladly be a Brownist than a politician, not exactly a flattering comparison, so the Pilgrims decided Risk it all as a new colony on the creaking ship of the Americas and it would all be an English colony but not subject to religious politics, so they set sail and braved the rough seas of autumn in August 1620.

They had not even made it out of port. when they discovered that the steering wheel was filling with water, so they stopped in Dartmouth for repairs. Undaunted, they propped up the leaking boards and sat back to a new life and watched with joy as the final land and Cornwall slipped away behind them only to turn around and immediately see it again. The speed well had recently been refitted with a larger mast and someone had clearly botched the job. The ship was going nowhere, so 20 people agreed to stay behind and bring more. his congregation with them the following year and 102 crammed onto the already overloaded Mayflower and finally left again on September 6th or maybe it was the 16th.

No one is

real

ly sure whether the calendars in that period are a bit shaky. Their trip was thankfully dull after recent events. But halfway across the ocean, the pilgrims' good luck again unleashed a storm and strong winds whipped through the storm. A deep crack echoed throughout the ship. A main beam had broken, so they brought out a replacement. of the hold and tried to reinforce it but the buckling was so severe that it did not stay in place, which meant it was time to turn around and return to England again. The delays had already used up all the pilgrims' money and for them that was not an option, so they decided to try something else first, they had brought a large iron screw as cargo, probably a piece from the same printing press that had expelled them from England first and used it to lift the new beam into place, somehow it stayed on long enough.

To cross the Atlantic, they made landfall on November 9 just off Cape Cod and then turned south toward the Hudson River Valley, hoping to get closer to established colonies and warm weather, but strong winter currents cut them off. Forced to return to Massachusetts, where they anchored in the Natural Harbor of Provincetown, knowing that their previous claim to this new land had been unreliable at best, the colonists agreed to draw up a new contract for their colony, calling it the Covenant. Mayflower, organized them as a civil political body created for the general good of the colony. where issues would be decided by voting, this set of rules and beliefs established by the pilgrims has since been called the world's first written constitution.

The men on the ship put their names in writing and they all signed the agreement together and within weeks they all began to die together the scurvy and disease took over the ship and when the first snows came they turned the ship into a frozen tomb. Scouting parties were sent out to find a suitable place to build and any men who could still stand were put on board with swords and armor. and matchlocks found the landscape deserted and they found themselves strangers in an unknown land full of native burials and abandoned villages, but wherever they went, eyes watched them as they went as far as they could, each day they camped on the shores and in the dark Tomorrow they covered their jackets over a barricade to try to move their boats back into the water and that was when the arrows began to rain down on them.

Grabbing muskets, they fired blindly into the forest. Their leader appeared from behind a tree and shot three arrows directly at the pilgrims. The man gave a triumphant shout and then disappeared back into the forest. The pilgrims searched the area but found no bodies, only 18 brass-tipped arrows made of deer horn and eagle claws. When they went to retrieve their jackets, they found them riddled with arrow holes. guessing that up to 30 or 40 men were waiting for them in the forest. The pilgrims left before they could return. The next day they found the construction site they were looking for, suitable for winter construction, already out of wood and with high hills for defensive positions, but it was not there.

Patuxet, also littered with corpses, had been a village of the Wampanoag people until it was devastated by an outbreak of Indian fever three years earlier. The epidemic was so severe that the colonists found unburied skeletons still inside their homes, but with more colonists dying from By the time the Pilgrims were in no condition to be fussy, they moved the mayflower to join them and began building the The first common house to be completed became a hospital for the sick and the 19 families each built their own city, huddled together for defense and by In February, the settlement was complete, but without food or adequate shelter they continued to die one by one and When the snows melted only 47 of the original 102 Pilgrims were still alive and half of the Mayflower's crew had died, as well as those who survived.

The survivors now faced danger from summer raiding parties, so they decided to fortify the village bringing cannons from the ship to point towards the unknown wilds, finally free of the bitter cold, they planted corn taken from the abandoned graves and warehouses of the old Wampanoag village and With that first thaw came their first contact with the locals. A tall, dark-skinned man boldly walked out of the forest and walked directly towards the center of his city. The pilgrims stopped him pointing guns, then he opened his mouth and greeted them in English. welcoming them to the new land and then quickly ordered a beer to drink, it was a samaset of the eastern Abenaki who had spent years exchanging stories and supplies with the English fishermen who passed through the area and while exchanging stories about their acquired taste for the English. delights, he warned that not all tribes would be as friendly as his, but they could glean little else from him as his English was broken at best.

The following week, samaset returned with a new man, tisquantum, known today as squanto, who spoke fluent English. He was the last survivor of the Patuxent tribe, the same land now inhabited by pilgrims who had been captured by slavers as children and had lived in Spain and England before escaping back home only to discover that their own people had been wiped out by the disease he had infected. taken captive a useful tool to deal with the continuing English invasion Squanto announced the arrival of 60 armed warriors and their leader the Wampanoag The Pilgrims grabbed their muskets and ran to the walls and expected the worst, but neither side wanted to make the first move. step with After some back and forth of the squanto, their Assassiwet chief agreed to sit down with the governor of the pilgrims and after a good amount of liquor to relax both parties, they got down to the business of peace and saw that the Wampanoag They were besieged on all sides by the enemy. tribes with abundant land but no power to stop them, while others saw the English settlers as a threat, Masaswit saw an opportunity, the pilgrims agreed to help the chief against his enemies using their muskets and cannons in exchange for mutual protection and something much needed .

Squanto's farming advice specifically on how to plant native foods that the Pilgrims had never encountered before and thus began an unlikely friendship where Squanto passed on his knowledge of the land under his tutelage, the Pilgrims learned to plant corn, beans and squash in a way that They made sure everyone would prosper when they weren't planting, they sent diplomatic parties to every tribe within a 50-mile radius to make mutual peace, and they took the time to bash the heads of anyone who threatened their native allies by the time fall came. . and with the harvest ready to be gathered, they found themselves looking rather optimistically at the new year, especially in comparison to the last.

It was in this spirit that the men were sent into the forest to hunt some game birds, probably turkeys and waterfowl, for a feast. To thank the lord for his generosity and good luck, Mesasoit joined them with 90 of his people and brought five deer for the occasion, plus some eels, some fish, crabs and one or two lobsters and, of course, his freshly harvested corn. and pumpkin and you got the first

thanksgiving

dinner it was a celebration that lasted three days a harvest festival with sports games and friends like so many others around the world

thanksgiving

grateful that there will be enough food to eat and one more year he survived.

I'm sure the new land wasn't perfect, it wasn't harmony between man and beast or a permanent peace between settlers and natives, but for a while the people put aside their differences and were thankful for an opportunity. in life and many other harvest festivals appear around. the world today for exactly the same thing and that is the

story

of the first thanksgiving