The First Thanksgiving

There have been some disputes by many historians concerning whether or not the Thanksgiving feast at Plymouth actually constituted the first Thanksgiving in the United States.  Historians have recorded other ceremonies of thanks among Europeans settlers in North America that predate the Pilgrims' celebration.  In 1565, for example, the Spanish explorer Pedro Menendez de Avile invited members of the local Timucua tribe to a dinner in St. Augustine, Florida, after holding a mass to thank God for his crew's safe arrival.  On December 4, 1619, when 38 British settlers reached a site known as Berkeley Hundred on the banks of Virginia's James River, they all read a proclamation designating the date as "a day of Thanksgiving to Almighty God."

On this Thanksgiving Day many Americans will be traveling to nice, warm homes of their friends and loves ones to participate in a very nice Thanksgiving feast.  The menu will consist of turkey, dressing, ham, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, corn, green beans, dinner rolls, and pumpkin pie, to name a few items.  People will feast until they are stuffed.  Then once they finish their traditional Thanksgiving meal, some will sit back and watch NFL Football on television, which has become a Thanksgiving tradition for decades.   There will also be Thanksgiving Day parades that will take place today such as the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade which began in 1924.  Thanksgiving Day has become a day of feasting.  The tragic part is we forget to thank God for his bountiful blessings on this earth.  We've forgotten what Thanksgiving is all about.  We're a very spoiled people in this generation.  Our early forefathers didn't enjoy the nice warm homes and the conveniences of life we enjoy today.

Today we'll be focus on the feast the Pilgrims had with the Native Americans in what is traditionally  considered the first Thanksgiving meal in the New World.  The menu for their first Thanksgiving meal probably didn't include turkey.  However, they were thankful and they gave thanks to God for protecting them from a brutal winter.  The Pilgrims that sailed to the New World didn't come to an America that possessed the conveniences of life like we enjoy today. They didn't sail to an America which possessed nice homes, vehicles, an abundance of food, material wealth, electronic gadgets, etc.  America was a wilderness land in 1620 when they arrived on the Mayflower Compact.  America was an undeveloped land.  They had to labor for everything they had.  We can learn a lesson from this time in history.  Let's take a stroll down memory lane to learn about this famous Thanksgiving meal.

According to History.com, which is the source where the information is coming from, a small ship called the Mayflower in September 1620 left Plymouth, England and set sail for the New World.  The Mayflower carried 102 passengers--an assortment of religious separatists seeking a new home where they could freely practice their faith and other individuals who were lured by the promise of prosperity and land ownership in the New World.  After a treacherous crossing that lasted 66 days, they dropped anchor near the tip of Cape Cod, far north of their intended destination at the mouth of the Hudson River.  One month later, the Mayflower crossed Massachusetts Bay, where the Pilgrims, began the work of establishing a village at Plymouth.

Throughout the first brutal winter, the colonists remained on board the ship, where they suffered from scurvy and outbreaks of contagious disease.  Only half the Mayflower's original passengers and crew lived to see their first New England Spring.  This goes to show the price the Pilgrims were willing to pay for the taste of freedom.  Freedom was precious to them and they were willing to sacrifice for it.  Today's generation of Americans treat freedom as cheap goods willing to sell it for a false sense of security.  In March 1621, the remaining settlers moved ashore, where they received an astonishing visit from an Abenaki Indian who greeted them in English.  Several days later, he returned with another Native American, Squanto, a member of the Pawtuxet tribe who had been kidnapped by an English sea captain and sold into slavery before escaping to London and returning to his homeland on an exploratory expedition.  According to History.com Squanto taught the Pilgrims, weakened by malnutrition and illness, how to cultivate corn, extract sap from maple trees, catch fish in the rivers and avoid poisonous plants.  He also helped the settlers forge an alliance with the Wampanoag, a local tribe, which would endure for more than 50 years and tragically remains one of the sole examples of harmony between European colonists and Native Americans.

In November 1621, after the Pilgrims' first corn harvest proved successful, Governor William Bradford organized a celebratory feast and invited a group of the fledgling colony's Native American allies, including the Wampanoag chief Massasoit.  This is classified as the "first Thanksgiving".  The festival lasted for three days.  While no record exists of the historic banquet's precise menu, the Pilgrim chronicler Edward Winslow wrote in his journal that Governor Bradford sent four men on a "fowling" mission in preparation for the event, and that the Wampanoag guests arrived bearing five deer.  Historians have suggested that many of the dishes were likely prepared using traditional Native American spices and cooking methods.  Because the Pilgrims had no oven and the Mayflower's sugar supply had dwindled by the fall of 1621, the meal didn't feature pies, cakes, or other desserts, which have become a tradition in contemporary Thanksgiving celebrations in America.