The holiday we celebrate As Thanksgiving is a harvest feast. All over the world, throughout history, people have celebrated the end of the hard work of harvest by feasting on the fruits of their labor. Our tradition is to commemorate the Pilgrims’ Thanksgiving feast at Plymouth Plantation in 1621, but before that, Spanish settlers had celebrated a Thanksgiving in1565, in what is now Saint Augustine, Florida. For thousands of years earlier, the people who were here before either group of settlers arrived had been holding similar feasts to celebrate the harvest.

Widely dispersed over the great landmass of the Americas, native Americans numbered approximately 75 million people by the time Columbus came, perhaps 25 million in North America. Responding to the different environments of soil and climate, they developed hundreds of different tribal cultures, perhaps 2,000 different languages. They perfected the art of agriculture and figured out how to grow maize (corn), which cannot grow by itself and must be planted, cultivated, fertilized, harvested, husked and shelled. They ingeniously developed a variety of other vegetables and fruits, as well as peanuts, chocolate and rubber. On their own, the Indians were engaged in the great agricultural revolution that other peoples in Asia, Europe, Africa were going through about the same time. (Zinn, Howard, A People’s History of the United States)

A harvest Feast that survives today is the Green Corn ceremony, or Busk. Oklahoma’s Muskogee, or Creek, were agriculturalists from their earliest days. After coming to Indian Territory they grew small grains and large crops of corn in the rich lands bordering the Canadian and Arkansas rivers and their tributaries. Their success with these crops brought prosperity. The Green Corn dance was celebrated at the end of summer as their thanksgiving celebration. It was a time for renewing life. Men repaired the communal buildings. Women extinguished their Hearth fires, cleansed their houses and broke their cooking pots. After a ceremonial Green Corn dance, home fires were rekindled with coals from the ceremonial fire, and village women pre- pared a sumptuous feast of celebration and thanksgiving.

One thing the Pilgrims had to celebrate was the generosity of the Wampanoag, the Indians that helped them survive that first year. The Pilgrims had come to the new land ill equipped to provide for their needs. The tools and skills that were useful in the Old World didn’t always work in the new land. Tisquantum, or Squanto, was a captive of the Wampanoag who went to live with the Pilgrims and taught them how to grow corn. He could speak English because he had been kidnapped earlier by British sailors and taken to live in Britain for seVeral years. After he made his way back to America, he was captured by the Wampanoag. He is known for teaching the Pilgrims to fertilize their corn with fish, but some historians believe that was a method he had actually learned in Britain. It was not a common practice among the New England tribes.

The Wampanoag had more productive farm fields and ate more calories per capita than the typical person in Europe at the time. They had religious beliefs that called for charity to the helpless and hospitality to anyone who came to them with empty hands. They were also hoping to form an alliance with the Pilgrims to help them fight the Iroquois. The foods eaten at the Pilgrim’s feast included maize (corn) and a few other crops they had planted along with deer meat and game birds. Many of our traditional foods were not included.

Those attending the Pilgrims’ Thanksgiving feast didn’t sit at a table. They stood, squatted, or sat on the ground as they clustered around outdoor fires. The deer and game birds turned on wooden spits, and pottages, or stews, made of varieties of meats and vegetables, were simmered in pots.