By KATE BRETAS December 16, 2021
I have always thought of Thanksgiving as a happy holiday to get together with family and eat good food, but this year I didn’t want to enjoy Thanksgiving without acknowledging its true history. Since elementary school we have been taught about a “friendly” thanksgiving feast between Native Americans and colonists, but there is another side to that story, filled with violence and suffering - especially on the part of Native American communities. Since Native American communities are still marginalized in this country today, it’s time to show the other side of that story. Here are five lies you have probably heard about Thanksgiving:
1: Thanksgiving was not an official holiday for hundreds of years
In the 1600s, Thanksgiving happened regularly - it was just a word people used to refer to having a celebration that good things had happened. Therefore, you could have several Thanksgivings in a year, or none at all. One early thanksgiving, sanctioned by the governor of Massachusetts, celebrated the massacre of over 500 Pequots by the pilgrims and their allies, the Mohegans, in 1637. Thanksgiving as a national holiday was introduced by President Lincoln in the 1860s.
2: The pilgrims and Indigenous people were great friends
The pilgrims were Puritans who travelled to the New World with the intention of establishing a theocracy, or, as they might have put it, ‘purifying’ the land. Puritanism encouraged them to believe that the Indigenous people were not favored by god and poor stewards of the land, therefore making the pilgrims’ main goal to drive the native people from their land and claim ownership of it.
3: Thanksgiving has always involved feasting
Because the pilgrims were Puritans, they wouldn’t have celebrated by feasting. Instead, early versions of what we now call Thanksgiving likely involved fasting and prayer. On the other hand, harvest festivals were common and, if the harvest was good, there would be several each fall.
4: The pilgrims invited the Wampanoags to an early Thanksgiving celebration
There is no real evidence that suggests that the pilgrims invited any Indigenous people, much less the Wampanoags in particular, to celebrate with them in 1621. The Wampanoag leader and possibly other members of the tribe were indeed in attendance, but that is likely explained by the fact that the Wampanoags had a settlement nearby and were on a diplomatic mission to see if a political alliance was possible.
5: Squanto’s oversimplified role
Squanto is usually said to be an Indigenous person who acted as translator and diplomat when the pilgrims arrived and showed them how to plant corn and fish. What’s often overlooked is how he, a member of the Patuxet tribe, was previously captured by the English and sold into slavery in Spain. He cleverly claimed he knew how to find treasure back in the New World and thus found his way home - only to discover his tribe dead due to smallpox. He struck an uneasy alliance with the pilgrims in an attempt to unify surviving Native people in 1621, two years after he found himself back in New England.