Imagine what the first Thanksgiving must've been like for the Pilgrims who set sail on the Mayflower in September 1620. They left Plymouth, England carrying 102 passengers with them. These Pilgrims were religious separatists who had left the Church of England with the hopes with sailing to a better land where they could establish a church and worship God as they saw fit. They had disagreements with the hierarchical structure of the Church of England. There was also a motive of looking for land to develop as well for some.
After setting sail, it took 66 days and they landed near the tip of Cape Cod. The winter was very treacherous and many who sailed to the New World died on the long voyage of sickness. One month later, the Mayflower crossed Massachusetts Bay and the Pilgrims began the work of establishing a village at Plymouth, Massachusetts. The Pilgrims had met a Native American from the Abeneki tribe which greeted them in English. Several days he returned with another Native American named Squanto, a member of the Pawtuxet Tribe. Squanto taught the Pilgrims were were very malnourished on the journey to the New World how to cultivate corn, how to extract sap from maple trees, catch fish in the rivers, and how to avoid poisonous plants. He also helped the settlers forge an alliance with the Wampanoag tribe for the next 50 years. In November 1621, after the Pilgrims' first corn harvest proved successful, Governor William Bradford organized a celebratory feast and invited a group of the Native Americans' fledgling colonies allies, which included Wampanoag chief Massoit. The feast lasted 3 days. There is no record on exactly what the Pilgrims' first Thanksgiving meal was but it was believed it was prepared by some of the spices of the Native American Indians. Throughout the years there have been calls for national days of Thanksgiving during the colonial period and even during America's early years. It was Sara Hale, daughter of Nathaniel Hale, who pushed for Thanksgiving to be celebrated as a holiday. Abraham Lincoln made it official and called for the last Thursday of every November to be celebrated as Thanksgiving. In 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt changed the date of Thanksgiving to the fourth Thursday of each month as to give shoppers more time to start their Christmas shopping.
Click on the above link from History.com to read more details of the Pilgrims' first Thanksgiving.
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