The REAL History of Thanksgiving

By all means, as I have posted before at this time of year, let us be thankful for family and friendship, and for sharing of resources and goodwill towards strangers.

But let's divorce ourselves from the distorted stories taught in American schools as if they resembled true history.

Let us read and know that the Puritan pilgrims at Plymouth gave thanks for a plague of smallpox that virtually wiped out the Patuxet whose villages earlier English slave hunters had already raided. The famous Squanto was one of those Patuxet enslaved by the British and taken to England only to return later to help the pilgrims negotiate a treaty with the Wampanoag.

The Wampanpoag, as was custom, provided game and some vegetables as a goodwill gesture in finalizing the treaty. A generation later, the whites launched King Phillip's War, resulting in mass extermination of many eastern native peoples.

Let us learn and acknowledge that the first officially proclaimed day of thanksgiving was not in Plymouth but in 1637 in Massachusetts Bay Colony was in celebration of the massacre of 700 Pequot men, women and children. Thereafter, thanks giving days were held by the English after every bout of massacre perpetrated along the Atlantic indigenous territories.

Let us realize that George Washington suggested having just one day of thanksgiving to celebrate all the killings since they were becoming too numerous.

And let us pause in shocking recognition that on the same day that Abraham Lincoln declared the November date as the official Union date for Thanksgiving Day, he also ordered troops to march against the starving Sioux in Minnesota.

So by all means, enjoy the feast and family day, but realize that for many of us who identify with our Native roots that this is more a time of mourning than celebration.

For further real history see Thankful for Genocide: the Real Story of Thanksgiving.