What Indian Tribe Taught the Pilgrims to Cultivate Land and Invited to Thanksgiving Meal

Michelle Tirado
Special to Indian Country Today

As well often the story of the 1621 Thanksgiving is told from the Pilgrims' point of view, and when the Wampanoag, who partook in this feast too, are included, it is usually in a brief or distorted fashion. In search of the Native American perspective, we looked to Plymouth, where the official get-go Thanksgiving took place and where today the Wampanoag side of the story can be plant.

Plimoth Plantation is one of Plymouth's elevation attractions and probably the identify to go for the offset Thanksgiving story. Information technology is a living museum, with its replica 17th century Wampanoag Homesite, a representation of the homesite used past Hobbamock, who served as emissary betwixt the Wampanoag and Pilgrims, and staffed by 23 Native Americans, more often than not Wampanoag; 17th century English Village; and the Mayflower Two, a replica of the send that brought the Pilgrims to Plymouth.

(Related: 400 years subsequently, 'we did not vanish')

According to a Plimoth Plantation timeline, the Mayflower arrived at Plymouth Harbor on Dec 16, 1620. The Pilgrims settled in an area that was once Patuxet, a Wampanoag village abandoned four years prior after a mortiferous outbreak of a plague, brought by European traders who showtime appeared in the area in 1616. The museum'southward literature tells that before 1616, the Wampanoag numbered 50,000 to 100,000, occupying 69 villages scattered throughout southeastern Massachusetts and eastern Rhode Island. The plague, all the same, killed thousands, upwardly to two-thirds, of them. Many besides had been captured and sold as slaves.

And yet, when the Wampanoag watched the Mayflower's passengers come ashore at Patuxet, they did not run across them equally a threat. "The Wampanoag had seen many ships earlier," explained Tim Turner, Cherokee, manager of Plimoth Plantation's Wampanoag Homesite and co-owner of Native Plymouth Tours. "They had seen traders and fishermen, but they had non seen women and children earlier. In the Wampanoag ways, they never would have brought their women and children into damage. So, they saw them as a peaceful people for that reason."

(WATCH: A Wampanoag retelling of Thanksgiving)

But they did not greet them correct away either. The English language, in fact, did not run across the Wampanoag that starting time winter at all, according to Turner. "They saw shadows," he said. Samoset, a Monhegan from Maine, came to the village on March sixteen, 1621. The side by side day, he returned with Tisquantum (Squanto), a Wampanoag who befriended and helped the English that spring, showing them how to plant corn, fish and assemble berries and basics. That March, the Pilgrims entered into a treaty of mutual protection with Ousamequin (Massasoit), the Pokanoket Wampanoag leader.

Turner said what most people practise not know about the showtime Thanksgiving is that the Wampanoag and Pilgrims did non sit downwards for a large turkey dinner and it was not an event that the Wampanoag knew most or were invited to in advance. In September/October 1621, the Pilgrims had just harvested their first crops, and they had a good yield. They "sent four men on fowling," which comes from the one paragraph account by Pilgrim Edward Winslow, i of simply two historical sources of this famous harvest feast. Winslow also stated, "we exercised our arms." "Most historians believe what happened was Massasoit got word that there was a tremendous amount of gun fire coming from the Pilgrim village," Turner said. "And then he thought they were beingness attacked and he was going to bear help."

Related:
— A Canadian looks at American Thanksgiving
— Thanksgiving offers a style forrard

When the Wampanoag showed up, they were invited to join the Pilgrims in their feast, only there was not plenty nutrient to feed the chief and his 90 warriors. "He (Massasoit) sends his men out, and they bring back five deer, which they present to the chief of the English language town [William Bradford]. So, in that location is this whole ceremonial gift-giving, as well. When y'all give it as a gift, it is more merely food," said Kathleen Wall, a Colonial Foodways Culinarian at Plimoth Plantation.

The harvest feast lasted for iii days. What did they eat? Venison, of course, and Wall said, "Non merely a lovely roasted articulation of venison, but all the parts of the deer were on the tabular array in who knows how many sorts of ways." Was there turkey? "Fowl" is mentioned in Winslow'due south business relationship, which puts turkey on Wall'due south list of possibilities. She too said there probably would accept been a variety of seafood and water fowl along with maize bread, pumpkin and other squashes. "It was nix at all like a modernistic Thanksgiving," she said.

While today Thanksgiving is one of our nation's favorite holidays, it has a far different significant for many Wampanoag, who at present number between 4,000 and 5,000. Turner said, "For the most part, Thanksgiving itself is a day of mourning for Native people, non just Wampanoag people."

Related:
— What Actually Happened at the Get-go Thanksgiving? The Wampanoag Side of the Tale
— 6 Thanksgiving Myths and the Wampanoag Side of the Story
— Do American Indians Celebrate Thanksgiving?
— A true Native American Thanksgiving

At noon on every Thanksgiving Day, hundreds of Native people from around the land assemble at Cole'due south Colina, which overlooks Plymouth Stone, for the National Day of Mourning. It is an annual tradition started in 1970, when Wampanoag Wamsutta (Frank) James was invited past the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to give a spoken language at an event celebrating the 350th anniversary of the Pilgrims' arrival and then disinvited after the event organizers discovered his speech was one of outrage over the "atrocities" and "cleaved promises" his people endured.

On the Wampanoag welcoming and having friendly relations with the Pilgrims, James wrote in his undelivered speech: "This activeness past Massasoit was perhaps our biggest fault. We, the Wampanoag, welcomed yous, the white man, with open up artillery, little knowing that it was the beginning of the cease."

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Source: https://indiancountrytoday.com/archive/the-wampanoag-side-of-the-first-thanksgiving-story

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