As reliably as summer turns to autumn, when leaves start to fall Americans start to think about a meal with turkey at the center. Though Virginians among others have argued for earlier feasts as the first real Thanksgiving, the small settlement of Plymouth, Massachusetts, has an enduring claim to this essentially American holiday. This fall marks the th anniversary of the December arrival of the Mayflower , the ship that carried English settlers into the lands of the Wampanoag and their neighbors.
The English were far from the first Europeans to be seen in those regions; explorers, fishermen and traders had been passing through for a hundred years before, some of them kidnapping Native men. In , an English ship captain took two dozen men from the area near the future Plymouth to sell as enslaved labor in Spain. One of them was the interpreter the Plilgrims would know as Tisquantum, or Squanto. The Pilgrims also were not all that religiously tolerant, though compared to later New England settlers they seemed so.
Some of these myths were sown in their earliest writings as they reacted to, and then shaped, how their settlement was perceived. The Pilgrims were embedded in a larger world, primarily a Native world, but also a world connected to European trade and ideas. If Americans see these early settlers as part of something larger, they can better understand the truth behind Thanksgiving, not to mention the origins of the United States itself.
Pestana, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, spoke with Smithsonian about her book and what she learned in her research. An intimate look inside Plymouth Plantation that goes beyond familiar founding myths to portray real life in the settlementβthe hard work, small joys, and deep connections to others beyond the shores of Cape Cod Bay. By the early fall of , the settlers been there for almost a full year. They had harvested some crops, probably in September, not November, and decided to stop their labors and have a little celebration.
If it was intended to be threatening, or throw down some kind of gauntlet, that might be the reason why 90 Native American warriors showed up. Whether that's a tense moment or not, those Native men brought with them venison, deer that they've hunted. Then, [the two groups] ate together, so it did end up being a harvest celebration with Native peoples present and contributing some of the food. Not turkey, as I'm always telling my students, but in fact, they're eating this deer meat, basically, and probably the corns, beans, and squash the settlers had managed to plant and harvest with some guidance.
