Thanksgiving is the holiday when friendly Native Americans welcomed the Pilgrims into their homes and held a great feast, right? That’s the story that many have been taught since they were kids for generations, but is it the truth?
The real story of the First Thanksgiving is much more grim. Not only were the indigenous people massacred, but in a lot of retellings of the first Thanksgiving they are depicted as “mindless savages.” This image continues to add to harmful stigmas against Native Americans almost 400 years later.
Nino Reyos, a member of the Northern Ute and Laguna-Pueblo nations, shared his feelings about the controversy around Thanksgiving. “You can’t forget history, you have to learn from it and keep it alive for future generations to remember it.”
Before Europeans arrived, the Wampanoag nation had 67-69 villages spread throughout modern-day Rhode Island and Massachusetts. They had celebrations every year to celebrate the land and give thanks in the form of feasts and ceremonial games. These celebrations were called Nickommoh, and they are what traditional Thanksgiving celebrations are based on.
The Wampanoag had never been exposed to European diseases before, so their immune systems couldn’t handle the sickness brought by explorers. Whole villages were decimated by these diseases. By the time the pilgrims arrived in 1620, the Wampanoag were very low in numbers (40,000 spread throughout all their villages). They were losing a war against the Narragansett, a neighboring Native people that weren’t as affected by the plague and therefore greatly outnumbered the Wampanoag.
After the arrival of the Pilgrims, there was a brief moment of mutual interest between the Wampanoag and the Europeans. The pilgrims had no idea how to survive in this strange new land, so the Wampanoag offered help in exchange for European weapons. With the help of Tisquantum, an English-speaking Patuxet, the pilgrims were able to grow a plentiful supply of food. The Wampanoag in turn were able to defend themselves from the Narragansett.
The tentative peace between the Europeans and the Native Americans didn’t last long, however. Many massacres followed, including the destruction of the Pequot village, also known as the Pequot massacre. In 1637, the governor who called for the massacre, Massachusetts Colony Governor John Winthrop, declared a day of thanksgiving after the massacre occurred. “This incident is also often cited as the first official mention of a “thanksgiving” ceremony, and is another commonly cited origin story for the Thanksgiving we know today,” says Kristin Salasky author of, ‘The Real History Of Thanksgiving Isn’t The One You Learned In School—Here’s How To Celebrate Smarter’.
People are still being affected by the myth of the ‘First Thanksgiving’. The story created by the pilgrims sparked the formation of a multitude of stereotypes against Native Americans. Sure, some of those stereotypes are arguably positive: the environmentalist, the brave warrior, the wise elder, but they caused a lot of negative stereotypes as well. As Arlene Hirschfelder and Paulette F. Molin say in their article ‘I is for Ignoble: Stereotyping Native Americans,’ “Almost any portrait that we see of an Indian, he is represented with a tomahawk and scalping knife in hand, as if they possessed no other but a barbarous nature.” These images were found long ago, but they still appear throughout the country even now, hundreds of years after they were drawn. “We’ll always have to live with some sort of having to defend ourselves… and remind people that we’re here, a proud people,¨ Nino commented.
“I think if they had an opportunity to sit down and share stories and share food and laugh, you know, express ourselves in that manner, rather than having your own thought about ‘one culture is better than another,’ and at least have the opportunity to open our minds up to another, then we’ll really be able to see that we’re all creations. We may be different, but we all have value and happiness and love and culture, we may limit ourselves if we don’t allow ourselves to be open to others.
“November is celebrated as Native American month; well, I’ve heard some people say ‘we’re Native all year round’ so we need to celebrate our culture and our heritage every day. The idea now is not to forget the past, but yet to understand it so we can share that for future generations.” Thanksgiving might be a fun and lighthearted holiday, but it’s important to keep its history in mind while you celebrate. After all, that history is damaging to millions of people.
