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9 Lies You Were Told About the First Thanksgiving
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Over a hundred years into Europeans’ exploring, trading, and slave-taking in mainland North America, one particular English dude jotted down a few notes about a harvest party in his town:

Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a special manner rejoice together, after we had gathered the fruits of our labors; they four in one day killed as much fowl, as with a little help beside, served the Company almost a week, at which time amongst other Recreations, we exercised our Arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and amongst the rest their greatest king Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five Deer, which they brought to the Plantation and bestowed on our Governor, and upon the Captain and others. And although it be not always so plentiful, as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want, that we often wish you partakers of our plenty.

Edward Winslow, December, 1621

Some 400 years later, a whole mythology has developed around this event, laden with themes of friendship and togetherness and toughness in the face of adversity. Too bad almost everything we tell ourselves about this holiday is made up. Let’s dig in and explores the truth behind the lies.

Myth: Thanksgiving was when Europeans and Native Americans first met

Myth: Thanksgiving was when Europeans and Native Americans first met
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The child-friendly versions of the Thanksgiving story often make it sound like Plymouth was where Europeans and Native Americans first met. But that’s not even close to the truth. Remember, Tisquantum (“Squanto”) already knew English—that’s because he had been kidnapped and enslaved, and escaped, at least once (some historians say maybe even twice). He had crossed the Atlantic multiple times by the time the Pilgrims had done it once.

As a historian of indigenous slavery points out here on Reddit, not only had Europeans made settlements in many parts of mainland North America long before the Pilgrims did, but often the explorers who thought they were the first arrivals found that Native Americans were already familiar with, and wary of, European traders and slavers. Verrazzano met indigenous people who knew that Europeans liked to trade for furs; Ponce de Leon met indigenous people who already spoke a few words of Spanish. And those expeditions were a good hundred years or so before the 1621 feast with the Pilgrims.

One thing that made Massasoit, the sachem of the Wampanoag, cautiously optimistic about allying with the Pilgrims: they arrived as families, with women and children, suggesting that they were more interested in peace than the all-male contingents of fishers and traders they had met before.

Myth: The Wampanoag selflessly took pity on the poor, starving Pilgrims

Myth: The Wampanoag selflessly took pity on the poor, starving Pilgrims
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The idea you might get from retellings like the Peanuts Thanksgiving special is that the Pilgrims were lonely, starving, and stupid, unsure of how to actually survive in what they saw as the wilderness. Meanwhile the Wampanoag decided to help them as an act of generosity.

In truth, the politics on both sides were complicated, and the two groups saw advantages in making a strategic alliance. The Wampanoag had local enemies, and apparently saw the English as a potential ally against them. The Pilgrims liked the idea of protection, and they needed trade partners to be able to send back goods like fish and furs to the investors who had financed the whole Mayflower venture in the first place, and so was born a treaty between the two groups.

By the way, the Pilgrims weren’t entirely without food at first; they famously pissed off another local tribe by stealing their corn.

Myth: After the first Thanksgiving, Europeans and Native Americans lived in peace and harmony

Myth: After the first Thanksgiving, Europeans and Native Americans lived in peace and harmony
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At the end of the kid-friendly Thanksgiving legend, everyone lives happily ever after. Oh, and then the Indians disappeared somehow.

Neither part of that ending is true. The Wampanoag are still around, and are still fighting for their history and land to be recognized. The United American Indians of New England recognizes a National Day of Mourning on the fourth Thursday in November every year.

The Pilgrims, and their fellow English colonists from other areas of what is now Massachusetts, felt justified in taking over the new-to-them lands for themselves. (God said so, and all that.) A series of skirmishes over the years culminated in a deliberate attempt to eliminate the local native population, including the events now known as the Pequot War of 1637 and King Phillip’s War in 1675—the latter being the “bloodiest war per capita” on U.S. soil.

The “King Phillip” of the latter is the son (birth name Metacomet) of the sachem who made the initial peace treaty with the Pilgrims. As the History Channel describes it, the war ended when:

The English-Indian soldier John Alderman shot and killed King Philip on August 20, 1676, at Mount Hope. King Philip was hung, beheaded, drawn and quartered. His head was placed on a spike and displayed at Plymouth colony for two decades.

Myth: The Pilgrims were fleeing England for religious freedom

Myth: The Pilgrims were fleeing England for religious freedom
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This one is sort of true, but with a lot of caveats. For one thing, they weren’t leaving England at all—they had done that already. They were now leaving Holland.

The people we now know as Pilgrims—that wasn’t an official name at the time—were looking for a place where they could practice the version of Christianity they thought was best, not where everybody could practice whatever religion they liked. And they were also motivated by money, leading to the Mayflower expedition as a venture backed by investors. As historian John Turner summarized on Reddit:

The Pilgrims more or less had enjoyed “Christian liberty” in the Dutch Republic, but they considered it fragile and they felt that their poverty in Leiden was a disincentive for others in England to join their church / movement. So the idea was that they would more fully prosper in northern Virginia / New England, and that greater prosperity would bring about a greater willingness on the part of Englishmen and women to leave behind the Church of England and join true churches.

Myth: The term “thanksgiving” refers to celebrating the murder of Native Americans

Myth: The term “thanksgiving” refers to celebrating the murder of Native Americans
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The people at Plymouth did murder a lot of Native Americans, as we mentioned, but that came later than the party we memorialize as the first Thanksgiving. One of the more famous massacres occurred in 1637, when a group of English Puritans killed hundreds of people in a Pequot village, causing many of them to be burned alive, in what is now Connecticut. The governor of Massachusetts wrote in his journal that there was “a day of thanksgiving kept in all the churches” afterward.

So did they kill a lot of indigenous people and use the word “thanksgiving” to refer to how they felt about that? Yes. But was that the Thanksgiving? No. Snopes points out that days of thanksgiving were commonly observed for all kinds of occurrences that the Puritans felt were good for them, including political victories and the safe arrival of ships. Days of thanksgiving were marked by prayer and perhaps fasting, not by feasting.

By the time Thanksgiving was adopted as a national holiday in 1863, variations of a fall harvest holiday (on different dates, and with different traditional dishes, depending on your location) were being celebrated in various parts of the country. They weren’t specifically commemorating the Pequot massacre, and arguably weren’t commemorating any specific 1600's-era historical event at all.

The hats are all wrong

The hats are all wrong
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Let’s take a little break from genocide to talk about fashion. If you’ve ever made buckled “pilgrim hats” or extravagantly feathered headdresses from construction paper for a Thanksgiving class party, your teacher got it all wrong.

English and Dutch men of the Pilgrims’ time did sometimes wear a tall hat called a capotain. This is more or less the hat you’re thinking of—but it did not have a characteristic buckle. We don’t know exactly where the buckle image came from, but it was not part of the fashion in the 1600's.

And if you’re imagining the Wampanoag wearing long feathered headdresses, those are also completely out of place. Eagle feathered war bonnets were a Great Plains thing, with each feather being earned individually; they weren’t just a fashionable hat, and they weren’t worn in the area we now call New England.

Myth: Turkey has always been the traditional Thanksgiving food

Myth: Turkey has always been the traditional Thanksgiving food
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Turkey may have been on the menu at the 1621 feast; all we know for sure is that there were “fowl” being served alongside venison. But the fowls could also have been ducks, geese, pigeons, or other miscellaneous birds.

Pumpkins and cranberries may have been available, but sugar wasn’t a common enough ingredient to make pumpkin pies and cranberry sauce as we know them today. Meanwhile, there were probably eels, fish, and other seafood.

Sarah Josepha Hale, who advocated in the 1800's for New England-style Thanksgiving celebrations to be made nationwide, wrote that a traditional Thanksgiving meal might include turkey and pumpkin pie—but also goose, duck, beef, pork, mutton, chicken pot pie, and pickles.

Myth: Thanksgiving has been celebrated every year since 1621

Myth: Thanksgiving has been celebrated every year since 1621
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The harvest feast of 1621 was a one-off celebration, and it was not specifically called “thanksgiving.” Snopes reports that the Pilgrims never had another celebration quite like it, due to poor harvests and an influx of new members that would have made a village-wide feast impractical.

George Washington proclaimed a day of “public thanksgiving and prayer” in 1789, but it was not specifically a day for feasting. We’ve already mentioned how New Englanders would declare days of prayer for thanksgiving from time to time; it took centuries for this idea to blend with the idea of a fall harvest festival and to be codified as an annual holiday.

Myth: Plymouth Rock is historically important

Myth: Plymouth Rock is historically important
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The Pilgrims “landed on Plymouth rock,” many sources tell us. (I am thinking primarily of the historical documentary song Anything Goes.) But that story seems to have been made up a century later, by an old man who pointed it out to onlookers and swore that his father told him that was the rock the Pilgrims landed on. (The Pilgrims didn’t even land at Plymouth at first.) After the rock became famous, it was chipped at for souvenirs, broken in half by accident, and moved multiple times. The date “1620” was carved into it sometime around 1880. It’s just a rock.