History of Thanks giving | Tradition and meaning in 2020
History of Thanks giving In the United States , Thanksgiving is a time to be together with the family, enjoy parades, sample lots of delicious food, and often travel.
American students are often taught that the tradition dates back to the Pilgrims, English religious dissenters who helped establish the Plymouth Colony in what is now Massachusetts in the year 1620.History of Thanks giving
What the story says
As the story goes, friendly Native Americans came out to teach settlers how to survive in the New World. Then they all came together to celebrate with a party in 1621. Attendees included at least 90 men from the Wampanoag tribe and the roughly 50 surviving Mayflower passengers. The party lasted three days and featured a menu that included deer, birds and corn, according to Smithsonian Magazine.
Actually, the Thanksgiving holidays predate Plymouth . Severallocalities are even known to have competed to claim the first Thanksgiving for themselves.
The modern definition of Thanksgiving revolves around eating turkey, but in centuries past it was more of an occasion for religious activity . History of Thanks giving The legendary festivals of 1621 in Plymouth endure in popular memory, but the Pilgrims themselves would probably have considered their 1623 day of prayer to be the first true
Others point to 1637 as the true origin of Thanksgiving , due to the fact that the governor of the Massachusetts colony , John Winthrop, declared a Thanksgiving day to celebrate the colonial soldiers who had just murdered 700 men, women and Pequot children in what is now Mystic, Connecticut.
Either way, the popular narrative of the initial harvest festival that endures is thanks to Abraham Lincoln .
The new way of celebrating these dates has also erased from the collective memory what happened between the Wampanoag and the English a generation later.
Massosoit, the overlord of the Wampanoag , turned out to be a crucial ally for the English settlers in the years after the establishment of Plymouth. He sealed an exclusive trade pact with the newcomers and allied with them against the French and other local tribes such as the Narragansetts. However, the alliance became strained over time.
What many forget about Thanksgiving
The Plymouth authorities began to exercise control over “most aspects of Wampanoag life” as the settlers consumed more and more land. The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History estimated that disease had already reduced New England’s indigenous population by 90% between 1616 and 1619, as the natives continued to die from what the settlers called ” Indian fever .”
By the time Massasoit’s son, Metacomet,
known to the English as “King Philip,” inherited the leadership, relations unraveled . The “King Philip” War began when several of his men were executed for the murder of the Punkapoag interpreter and Christian convert John Sassamon.
He was repulsed and attacked by the Mohawks.
History of Thanks giving The war was just one of a series of brutal, vaguely remembered confrontations between Native Americans and settlers that occurred in New England, New York, and Virginia.
The Thanksgiving modern can be a celebration of people coming together, but that’s not the whole picture when it comes to the history of that day.
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