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Deconstructing the Myths of "The First Thanksgiving"

Deconstructing the Myths of "The First Thanksgiving"



We offer these myths and facts to assist students, parents and teachers in thinking critically about this holiday, and deconstructing what we have been taught about the history of this continent and the world. (Note: We have based our "fact" sections in large part on the research, both published and unpublished, that Abenaki scholar Margaret M. Bruchac developed in collaboration with the Wampanoag Indian Program at Plymouth Plantation. We thank Marge for her generosity. We thank Doris Seale and Lakota Harden for their support.)

Myth #1: "The First Thanksgiving" occurred in 1621.

Fact: No one knows when the "first" thanksgiving occurred. People have been giving thanks for as long as people have existed. Indigenous nations all over the world have celebrations of the harvest that come from very old traditions; for Native peoples, thanksgiving comes not once a year, but every day, for all the gifts of life. To refer to the harvest feast of 1621 as "The First Thanksgiving" disappears Indian peoples in the eyes of non-Native children.


Fact: The Plymouth settlers did not refer to themselves as "Pilgrims." Pilgrims are people who travel for religious reasons, such as Muslims who make a pilgrimage to Mecca. Most of those who arrived here from England were religious dissidents who had broken away from the Church of England. They called themselves "Saints"; others called them "Separatists." Some of the settlers were "Puritans," dissidents but not separatists who wanted to "purify" the Church. It wasn't until around the time of the American Revolution that the name "Pilgrims" came to be associated with the Plymouth settlers, and the "Pilgrims" became the symbol of American morality and Christian faith, fortitude, and family.


Fact: The colonists were not just innocent refugees from religious persecution. By 1620, hundreds of Native people had already been to England and back, most as captives; so the Plymouth colonists knew full well that the land they were settling on was inhabited. Nevertheless, their belief system taught them that any land that was "unimproved" was "wild" and theirs for the taking; that the people who lived there were roving heathens with no right to the land. Both the Separatists and Puritans were rigid fundamentalists who came here fully intending to take the land away from its Native inhabitants and establish a new nation, their "Holy Kingdom." The Plymouth colonists were never concerned with "freedom of religion" for anyone but themselves.

Myth #4: When the "Pilgrims" landed, they first stepped foot on Plymouth Rock.

Fact: When the colonists landed, they sought out a sandy inlet in which to beach the little shallop that carried them from the Mayflower to the mainland. This shallop would have been smashed to smithereens had they docked at a rock, especially a Rock. Although the Plymouth settlers built their homes just up the hill from the Rock, William Bradford in Mourt's Relation: A Journal of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, does not even mention the Rock; writing only that they "unshipped our shallop and drew her on land." (3) The actual "rock" is a slab of Dedham granodiorite placed there by a receding glacier some 20,000 years ago. It was first referred to in a town surveying record in 1715, almost 100 years after the landing. Since then, the Rock has been moved, cracked in two, pasted together, carved up, chipped apart by tourists, cracked again, and now rests as a memorial to something that never happened. (4)

It's quite possible that the myth about the "Pilgrims landing on a "Rock" originated as a reference to the New Testament of the Christian bible, in which Jesus says to Peter, "And I say also unto thee, Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church and the Gates of Hell shall not prevail against it." (Matthew 16:18) The appeal to these scriptures gives credence to the sanctity of colonization and the divine destiny of the dominant culture. Although the colonists were not dominant then, they behaved as though they were.

Myth #5: The Pilgrims found corn.

Fact: Just a few days after landing, a party of about 16 settlers led by Captain Myles Standish followed a Nauset trail and came upon an iron kettle and a cache of Indian corn buried in the sand. They made off with the corn and returned a few days later with reinforcements. This larger group "found" a larger store of corn, about ten bushels, and took it. They also "found" several graves, and, according to Mourt's Relation, "brought sundry of the prettiest things away" from a child's grave and then covered up the corpse. They also "found" two Indian dwellings and "some of the best things we took away with us." (5) There is no record that restitution was ever made for the stolen corn, and the Wampanoag did not soon forget the colonists' ransacking of Indian graves, including that of Massasoit's mother. (6)

Myth #6: Samoset appeared out of nowhere, and along with Squanto became friends with the Pilgrims. Squanto helped the Pilgrims survive and joined them at "The First Thanksgiving."








Fact: Both written and oral evidence show that what was actually consumed at the harvest festival in 1621 included venison (since Massasoit and his people brought five deer), wild fowl, and quite possibly nasaump-dried corn pounded and boiled into a thick porridge, and pompion-cooked, mashed pumpkin. Among the other food that would have been available, fresh fruits such as plums, grapes, berries and melons would have been out of season. It would have been too cold to dig for clams or fish for eels or small fish. There were no boats to fish for lobsters in rough water that was about 60 fathoms deep. There was not enough of the barley crop to make a batch of beer, nor was there a wheat crop. Potatoes and sweet potatoes didn't get from the south up to New England until the 18th century, nor did sweet corn. Cranberries would have been too tart to eat without sugar to sweeten them, and that's probably why they wouldn't have had pumpkin pie, either. Since the corn of the time could not be successfully popped, there was no popcorn. (12)

Myth #10: The Pilgrims and Indians became great friends.


Myth #11: Thanksgiving is a happy time.


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