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Date Posted: 16:28:14 04/09/06 Sun
Author: Reggie
Subject: Re: THANKSGIVING: FACT OR FICTION
In reply to: Jonathan 's message, "THANKSGIVING: FACT OR FICTION" on 13:50:07 11/21/05 Mon

>THANKSGIVING: FACT OR FICTION
>by Jonathan Holmes
>
>In the minds of many Americans, when asked the
>question, “When was the United States first settled?”,
>invariably the response will be, “in 1620 when the
>Pilgrims landed.” This so called “origin myth” has
>frequently been termed “the story of the first
>Thanksgiving” in many children’s books about the
>subject.
>
>However, beginning the story of America’s settlement
>with the Pilgrims at Plymouth Colony in 1620 leaves
>out not only the Native population, but also the
>Spanish, African and French as well. As a matter of
>fact, the very first non-Indian or non-Native settlers
>in this country know called the United States, were
>African slaves left in Georgia in 1526 by Spaniards
>who abandoned a settlement attempt.
>
>According to Jeannine Cook, in Columbus and the Land
>of Ayllón: The Exploration and Settlement of the
>Southeast published in 1992, in the summer of 1526,
>approximately five hundred Spanish colonists and one
>hundred African slaves, and perhaps some free African
>colonists, under the command of Lucas Vázquez de
>Ayllón, founded a settlement in America called San
>Miguel de Gualdape.
>
>The colonists had sailed from the Caribbean island of
>Hispaniola in July 1526 aboard six ships. In August,
>they had landed at Winyah Bay on the mouth of the
>Pedee River, in what is now South Carolina, near
>present-day Georgetown. However, they failed to find
>an Indian village, which they felt from past
>experience would be necessary for food until crops
>could be planted and harvested, so they sailed further
>southward. On what would later become the Georgia
>coast, Ayllón and his colonists found a village of
>Guale Indians and chose to settle nearby.
>
>Although physical remains of their settlement have not
>been found, historians and geographers have utilized
>surviving navigation logs and other records to
>reconstruct the 1526 voyage. Based on the latest
>research, the San Miguel de Gualdape settlement
>probably was situated on the mainland of what today is
>McIntosh County in Georgia, opposite Sapelo Sound.
>Disease and disputes with the local Guale Indian
>village caused many deaths in the settlement, and
>finally in November 1526, the African slaves rebelled,
>killed some of their Spaniard masters, and escaped to
>live with the local Guale tribe. By now only 150
>Spaniards survived, so they evacuated back to Haiti.
>The former slaves elected to remain behind.
>Consequently, the first non-Native settlers in this
>country we now know as the United States, were
>Africans.
>
>In 1564, approximately 250 French Protestants or
>“Huguenots” as they were called, established a
>settlement on the St. John’s River near present-day
>Jacksonville, Florida calling it La Caroline,
>commanded by René Goulaine de Laudonniere. Then in
>August 1565, some 600 Spanish soldiers and settlers
>under Don Pedro Menéndez de Avilés came ashore at the
>site of a Timucuan Indian village, fortified the
>fledgling village and named it Saint Augustine.
>
>According to findings by Kathleen Teltsch, published
>in the New York Times in 1990 titled, Scholars and
>Descendants Uncover Hidden Legacy of Jews in
>Southwest, when the long arm of the Spanish
>Inquisition established itself in Mexico City, some
>Spanish Jews, called Sephardim in Hebrew, (the
>descendants of Jews whose ancestors lived on the
>Iberian Peninsula), fled with Don Juan de Oñate in
>1598 and established permanent settlements in what is
>today New Mexico and Colorado.
>
>In addition, beginning the origin story in 1620 at
>Plymouth, Massachusetts, omits recognition of the
>first British settlement in Jamestown, Virginia in
>1607, and also omits the Dutch, who were living in a
>settlement in what is now Albany, New York by 1614.
>
>Just before the Pilgrims landed in Massachusetts Bay,
>a process started in Southern New England which would
>lay a foundation for the Plymouth Colony which was to
>come later. By 1617, British and French fishermen had
>been fishing off the Massachusetts coast for decades.
>After filling the hulls of the ships with Cod, they
>would go ashore to gather firewood and fresh water,
>and perhaps capture a few Native Indians to sell into
>slavery in Europe. It is now considered likely that
>these fishermen transmitted some illness to the Native
>population.
>
>The Plague which started escalating in the
>Southeastern coast of New England in 1617 made the
>“Black Plague” of 1348-1350, which killed an estimated
>30% of the population of Europe, pale by comparison.
>Some Historians theorize the New England Plague was
>Bubonic, others suggest it was Viral Hepatitis or
>Influenza. In any event, within three years the New
>England Plague had wiped out close to 96% of the
>Native population of coastal New England. Native
>tribal societies were devastated. During the next
>fifteen years additional epidemics, most of which we
>now know to have been Smallpox, struck Native Indian
>populations repeatedly. John Winthrop, Governor of the
>Massachusetts Bay Colony at Plymouth beginning in
>1629, called the Plague, “miraculous.”
>
>According to R. C. Winthrop in Life and Letters of
>John Winthrop, 2 volumes, 1864–67, Gov. John Winthrop
>wrote a close friend in England in 1634 saying,
>
>“But for the natives in these parts, God hath so
>pursued them, as for 300 miles space the greatest part
>of them are swept away by the Smallpox which still
>continues among them. So as God hath thereby cleared
>our title to this place, those who remain in these
>parts, being in all not 50, have put themselves under
>our protection...”
>
>The result of the Plague of 1617, which is said to
>have reduced the coastal Native tribes from 30,000 to
>approximately 300, helped to prompt the myth of the
>legendary “warm reception” the Pilgrims enjoyed in
>1620 from the Wampanoag Federation of tribes. In
>actuality, Massasoit (b. 1580, d. 1661) of the
>Pokanoket tribe, and leader or Grand Sachem of the
>Wampanoag Federation, was eager to ally with the
>Pilgrims that arrived in 1620 because the plague had
>so weakened his villages, that he feared the stronger
>Narragansett Federation of tribes in Rhode Island and
>the Tarratine Federation of tribes in Maine that would
>likely take advantage of the situation. Especially
>since war had broken out between the Tarratines and
>the Penobscots in 1615. When Nanapashamet, the Grand
>Sachem of the eleven villages of the Massachusett
>Federation of tribes offered help to the Penobscots,
>the Tarratines of Maine hunted him down and killed him
>in 1619.
>
>The Massachusett Federation of tribes, around what is
>now Boston Harbor, had been powerful enough to drive
>off Samuel de Champlain and his men when they tried to
>settle in Massachusetts in 1606, and in 1607 the
>Abenaki tribes successfully expelled the first
>Plymouth Company settlement from the coast of Maine.
>However, by the time the Native populations of
>Southeastern New England had replenished themselves to
>some degree, after so many being killed by Plagues in
>1617, it was too late to expel the European intruders.
>
>Bear in mind that the Separatist Puritans on the
>Mayflower, later known as Pilgrims, numbered only 35
>out of the 102 settlers on board. The other 67 persons
>on board were ordinary folk seeking their fortunes in
>the new Colony at Jamestown, Virginia. Why the
>Mayflower never arrived in Virginia, but ended up in
>Massachusetts Bay, is still up to debate. The “origin
>myth” states that the Mayflower was blown off course.
>However, a great majority of Historians now believe
>that the Dutch bribed the Mayflower’s captain and part
>owner, Christopher Jones, to sail north so the
>Pilgrims would not settle near their settlement of New
>Amsterdam, now known as New York City.
>
>It is further believed that Massachusetts Bay was then
>chosen as a good site because of the known absence of
>Native Indians, as a result of the Plague three years
>earlier, in addition to the good fishing known to be
>off Cape Cod. In fact, John Smith had studied the
>Massachusetts Bay area previously in 1614 and he
>published the result of his explorations on his land
>and coastal survey in a guidebook called A Description
>of New England printed in London in 1616. The
>guidebook included a map drawn by Smith himself, of
>the land he named New England. A guidebook one of the
>35 Pilgrims carried with them on the Mayflower. (note:
>A rare copy of this book was recently purchased at
>Sotheby’s Auction in New York in 1999 for $211,500.)
>
>Despite having ended up many miles from other European
>settlements, the Pilgrims hardly “started from scratch
>in a wilderness” as the “origin myth” would have us
>believe. Throughout Southern New England, Native
>Indian tribes had repeatedly burned the underbrush,
>creating a park-like environment. After first landing
>at the tip of Cape Cod in what is now Provincetown,
>Massachusetts, the Pilgrims assembled a boat for
>exploring and began looking around for a site for
>their new home. They chose Plymouth perhaps because of
>it’s beautifully cleared fields, recently planted with
>corn, it’s sheltered harbor, and a brook of fresh
>water nearby. It was a great site for a town, because
>before the Plague of 1617, this had been Squanto’s
>village of the Patuxet tribe.
>
>The new Plymouth colonists did not encounter a
>wilderness. In fact, in Three Visitors To Early
>Plymouth: Letters about the Pilgrim Settlement in New
>England During its First Seven Years by John Pory,
>Emmanuel Altham, and Isaack deRasieres, edited by
>Sydney V. James, Plymouth colonist Emmanuel Altham
>noted in a letter in 1622 that,
>
>“In this bay wherein we live, in former time, hath
>lived about two thousand Indians.”
>
>In addition, the colonists received help and support
>from sources not fully known by the majority of
>Americans today. In his sailor’s journal, written by a
>colonist on his second full day in Plymouth,
>Massachusetts, and published in the work done in 1901
>by Azel Ames titled, The Mayflower and Her Log, July
>15, 1620-May 6, 1621, Edward Winslow writes of he and
>a companion, saying,
>
>“...we marched to the place where we had the corn
>formerly, which place we called Cornhill, and digged
>and found the rest, of which we were very glad. We
>also digged in a place a little further off, and found
>a bottle of oil. We went to another place which we had
>seen before, and digged, and found more corn, viz. Two
>or three baskets full of Indian wheat, and a bag of
>beans, with a good many of fair wheat ears. Whilst
>some of us were digging up this, some others found
>another heap of corn, which they digged up also, so as
>we had in all about ten bushels, which will serve us
>sufficiently for seed”.... “The next morning we
>followed certain beaten paths and tracks of the
>Indians into the woods, supposing they would have led
>us into some town, or houses”.... “When we had marched
>five or six miles into the woods and could find no
>signs of any people, we returned again another way,
>and as we came into the plain ground we found a place
>like a grave, but it was much bigger and longer than
>any we had yet seen. It was also covered with boards,
>so as we mused what it should be, and resolved to dig
>it up, where we found, first a mat, and under that a
>fair bow”..... “Also between the mats we found bowls,
>trays, dishes, and such like trinkets. At length we
>came to a fair new mat, and under that two bundles,
>the one bigger, the other less. We opened the greater
>and found in it a great quantity of fine and perfect
>red powder, and in it the bones and skull of a
>man”.... “We brought sundry of the prettiest things
>away with us, and covered the corpse up again. After
>this, we digged in sundry like places, but found no
>more corn, nor any thing else but graves.”
>
>In Karen Ordahl Kupperman’s book, Settling with the
>Indians: The Meeting of English and Indian Cultures in
>America, 1580-1640, published in London by J. M. Dent
>in 1980, she states that the Pilgrims continued to rob
>graves for years. However, more help came to the
>Pilgrims from an even more unlikely source named
>Squanto, also known as Tisquantum.
>
>In the “origin myth,” Squanto was a solitary member of
>the Pautuxet tribe, part of the Wampanoag Federation
>of tribes, who had supposedly learned English from
>fisherman, and as a “God sent savior”, taught the
>Pilgrims how to hunt and fish in the new wilderness,
>which helped them survive their first winter in New
>England.
>
>According to Sir Ferdinando Gorges, a leader of the
>Plymouth Company in England, around 1605 a British
>Captain stole Squanto from Massachusetts when he was
>still a boy, along with four members of the Penobscot
>tribe, and took them to England. There Squanto spent
>nine years, three of them in the employ of Sir
>Ferdinando Gorges. After which, in 1614, he arranged
>for Squanto to be returned to Massachusetts.
>
>Later in 1614, after skirmishing against and then
>making peace with the Patuxets, John Smith returned to
>England, leaving a second ship to fish for cod under
>the command of one Thomas Hunt. Luring Squanto and
>about twenty other Wampanoags on board, Hunt kidnapped
>them and then seized about seven others on Cape Cod
>before sailing for Málaga, Spain. There Hunt began
>selling his captives as slaves until some priests
>intervened and redeemed the rest, including Squanto,
>in hopes of converting them to Christianity. Squanto's
>movements are unclear for the next three years until
>1617, by which time he had somehow managed to get to
>London. Living in the home of John Slany, the
>treasurer of the Newfoundland Company, Squanto became
>immersed in the English language and culture, and he
>began to see in the colonial ambitions of Slany and
>his associates the means by which he could return
>home.
>
>Squanto's plans moved closer to realization when, on
>an expedition to Newfoundland, he became reacquainted
>with Thomas Dermer, an officer under John Smith in
>1614. Like Smith, Dermer had left Patuxet before the
>fateful kidnapping. Dermer took Squanto back to his
>former employer, Sir Ferdinando Gorges, then the most
>determined colonizer of New England. Although he had
>already failed in several attempts to use kidnapped
>Indians to advance his endeavors, Gorges was persuaded
>by Squanto's evident knowledge of the region, his
>apparent standing among his people, and his professed
>loyalty. So with Thomas Dermer at the helm, Squanto
>finally sailed for Massachusetts in the spring of
>1619.
>
>Now Squanto set foot again in Massachusetts and walked
>to his home village of Patuxet, only to make the
>horrifying discovery that he was the sole member of
>his village left alive. All others having perished in
>the Plague epidemic two years earlier.
>
>By the winter of 1620, struggling to survive, half the
>unprepared Plymouth colonists succumbed to starvation
>and disease during the harsh winter. Finally in March
>of 1621, members of the Pokanoket and Nemasket tribe
>convinced Samoset, a visiting Abenaki with ties to
>English traders, to sound out the beleaguered
>colonists. Finding them receptive, Samoset returned a
>few days later with Squanto, whose knowledge of the
>English and their language exceeded his own.
>
>As translator, ambassador and technical advisor,
>Squanto was essential to the survival of the Plymouth
>Colony in it’s first two years. In the book edited by
>Samuel Morrison in 1981 titled Of Plymouth Plantation:
>1620-1647 the first Governor of Plymouth Colony,
>William Bradford called Squanto,
>
>“...a special instrument sent of God for our good
>beyond expectation. He directed us how to set our
>corn, where to take fish, and to procure other
>commodities, and was also our pilot to bring us to
>unknown places for our profit.”
>
>Their “profit” was the primary reason most Mayflower
>colonists made the trip. Contrary to the myth,
>religious freedom was only a secondary motive. Squanto
>was not the only advisor for the Pilgrims either. As
>critical as he was to Plymouth's fortunes, Squanto's
>usefulness was limited because he had no power base
>among the remaining Wampanoags or other local natives.
>In the summer of 1621 the colony invited a second
>Indian, a Pokanoket named Hobbamock, to live among
>them, and he stayed for several years serving as a
>guide and ambassador. In fact, Hobbamock helped the
>Plymouth colonists to set up fur trading posts at the
>mouth of the Penobscot and Kennebec rivers in Maine,
>along the Aptucxet River in Massachusetts, and along
>the Windsor River in Connecticut.
>
>All this brings us to Thanksgiving. The Pilgrims did
>not introduce the Fall Harvest Thanksgiving Ceremony.
>
>Northeastern tribes had observed autumnal harvest
>celebrations for centuries. However, in the Fall of
>1621, the Governor of the Plymouth Colony, William
>Bradford, decided to have a harvest thanksgiving
>celebration of his own and invited Massasoit, the
>Grand Sachem of the Wampanoag Federation to come as a
>guest. Massasoit arrived on the appointed day with
>ninety warriors, and gifts of more food, including
>apple cider, deer, lobster, clams, oysters, smoked
>eel, corn, squash, wild rice, smoked cod fish, and
>popped corn with maple syrup. The Wampanoags remained
>at Plymouth for three days and the celebration
>continued for several more days after they left.
>
>When the next great wave of Puritans settled in the
>Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630, there was such a
>shortage of food, that the new Governor, John
>Winthrop, sent one of the ships back to England to
>purchase as much food as possible. When it returned in
>February 1631, Governor Winthrop ordered a day of
>Thanksgiving to be celebrated by all the settlements
>in the colony. The first such celebration to be held
>in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in ten years since
>1621.
>
>Other than in Plymouth, Massachusetts, where they were
>held as a local custom every year from 1631 on,
>thanksgiving celebrations were held sporadically in
>the European colonies in America during the 1600s and
>1700s. During the American Revolution, the Continental
>Congress recommended that each of the colonies observe
>a day of thanksgiving every year, and when George
>Washington later became President, he proclaimed
>November 26th to be a National Day of Thanksgiving.
>However, the custom fell into disuse in a short time,
>and the States that did observe an annual thanksgiving
>day celebration, did so on a day that best suited
>them, although they all observed it in the Month of
>November.
>
>During the Civil War in 1863, when President Lincoln
>felt that the Union needed all the patriotism that
>such as observance might muster, he proclaimed
>Thanksgiving a National Holiday to be observed on the
>last Thursday in November. However, the Pilgrims and
>Plymouth Colony were not included in the celebrations
>at that time. It would not be until the 1890s that the
>Pilgrims were included in the celebration traditions.
>In fact, Americans did not even use the term Pilgrim
>until the 1870s.
>
>Lastly, it is interesting to note that some historians
>believe that Thanksgiving became such an important
>holiday in the New England States because the Pilgrims
>and the Puritans wanted a festival to replace the
>Christmas Holiday that they had refused to recognize
>or observe, and which was banned outright in the
>1640s. Although this may have been the case in the
>early years, both holidays became important to all New
>Englanders after Christmas became a legal holiday in
>the United States in 1856.
>
>References:
>
>* Addison, Albert Christopher. 1911. The Romantic
>Story of the Mayflower Pilgrims. L. C. Page & Company:
>Boston, MA.
>* Ames, MD, Azel. 1901. The Mayflower and Her Log:
>July 15, 1620 - May 6, 1621. Houghton, Mifflin &
>Company: Boston, MA.
>* Anderson, Virginia Dejohn. 1993. Migrants and
>Motives: Religion and the Settlement of New England,
>1630-1640 in Katz, ed. Colonial America. McGraw-Hill,
>Inc.: New York, NY.
>* Bercovitch, Sacvan. 1986. A Library of American
>Puritan Writings. Volume 9 - The Seventeenth Century.
>Ams Press, Inc.: New York, NY.
>* Bradford, William. Samuel Eliot Morrison, ed. 1981.
>Of Plymouth Plantation 1620-1647. McGraw-Hill: New
>York, NY.
>* Cook, Jeannine. ed. 1992. Columbus and the Land of
>Ayllón: The Exploration and Settlement of the
>Southeast. University of Georgia Press, Darien, GA.
>* Davis, William T. 1883. Ancient Landmarks of
>Plymouth. A. Williams and Company: Boston, MA.
>* Deetz, James. 1996. In Small Things Forgotten: An
>Archaeology of Early American Life. Anchor Books
>Doubleday: New York, NY.
>* Garvan, Anthony N. B. 1951. Architecture and Town
>Planning in Colonial Connecticut. Yale University
>Press: New Haven, CT.
>* Greene, Jack P. 1988. Pursuits of Happiness: The
>Social Development of Early Modern British Colonies
>and the Formation of American Culture. The University
>of North Carolina Press: Chapel Hill, NC.
>* Heath, Dwight B. 1963. Mourt's Relation: A Journal
>of the Pilgrims at Plymouth. Corinth Books: New York,
>NY.
>* Hume, Ivor N. 1969. Historical Archaeology. Alfred
>A. Knopf: New York, NY.
>* Kupperman, Karen Ordahl. 1980. Settling with the
>Indians: The Meeting of English and Indian Cultures in
>America, 1580-1640, J. M. Dent: London. (reprinted
>2000 as Indians and English: Facing Off in Early
>America. Cornell University Press)
>* Perkins, Frank H. 1947. Handbook of Old Burial Hill
>Plymouth Massachussetts. Rogers Print, Inc.: Plymouth,
>MA.
>* Pory, John, Emmanuel Altham, Isaack deRasieres,
>edited by Sydney V. James. 1963 (Reprint 1997). Three
>Visitors To Early Plymouth: Letters about the Pilgrim
>Settlement in New England During its First Seven
>Years. Applewood Books, Plymouth, MA.
>* Simmons, R. C. 1976. The American Colonies: From
>Settlement to Independence. W. W. Norton & Company:
>New York, NY.
>* Smith, John. 1971. Advertisements for the Planters
>of New England. Theatrum Orbis Terrarum Ltd.:
>Amsterdam.
>* Young, Alexander. 1841. Chronicles of the Pilgrim
>Fathers of the Colony of Plymouth: from 1602 to 1625.
>C. C. Little and J. Brown: Boston, MA.
>* Teltsch, Kathleen. 1990. Scholars and Descendants
>Uncover Hidden Legacy of Jews in Southwest in New York
>Times (Sunday, 11 Nov 1990, p. 30), New York, NY.
>* Winthrop, Robert Charles. ed. 1864-1867 (Reprint
>1971). Life and Letters of John Winthrop. Vols. 1-2,
>Boston, MA.

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