By Kayla Hoang, Staff Writer
We all have a general knowledge of the yearly tradition: we give our gratitude before a table heaping with turkey, stuffing and a wide variety of other foods. Americans know the story: Thanksgiving is a holiday to commemorate the peaceful union between Native Americans and the pilgrims when they first settled on the land.
The reality of what happened, however, is a bit harsher than what your teachers may have taught you as schoolchildren. We grew up with the story that the English pilgrims settled in Plymouth and met the Indians, and they all came together for the first Thanksgiving, each side providing food for the other and they sat down in tables and conversed in happy-go-lucky harmony, right? Not really. Let’s delve into the quick (but accurate) history lesson on the full story of Thanksgiving.
It’s true that the English pilgrims journeyed over on the Mayflower in 1620 to the region they later named Plymouth. There, they found the land’s occupants, the Wampanoag Indians (yes, they have a name) and on the occasion of a good harvest the following year, the pilgrims and the Wampanoag got together for a three-day feast.
The relationship between the pilgrims and the Wampanoag was far from relaxed, however. The tension and hostility between the two groups led to raids, attacks and a long and violent war that didn’t quite end so happily.
The feast marked a contract with Massasoit, the leader of the tribe, and the pilgrims and the Wampanoag became a powerful ally with them for trade and alliances with other tribes for land.
The contract worked for a little while- before the settlers started abusing their privileges and brought more Europeans to settle on the land. Thousands of new colonists poured into the area, some started taking over more Wampanoag land and asserting their control over the Indians.
As more Europeans were brought in, so were their diseases, and a majority of the Native Americans died from unknown viruses carried in by the settlers.
At this point, Massasoit was no longer chief, and the spot was taken over by his son Metacomet, or “King Philip” to the English. The relationship already hung by a thread, and the tension between the Wampanoag and the pilgrims grew more and more pent-up until the breaking point- some members of the tribe were executed for the murder of one of the Englishmen, John Sassamon.
The Wampanoag snuck over to English settlements and started on raiding the camps in retaliation, which escalated to fighting between the two sides. Soon after, the English declared war, which went about as well as you’d expect.
King Philip’s War lasted about a year, but it had devastating effects. While some colonists moved away, others were kidnapped for ransom. Indians were attacked, and their tribe’s winter supply quickly ran dry. Both sides made their own alliances, resulting in about 2500 colonists dead, and twice as many casualties for the Native Americans.
Metacomet attempted to look for more allies, and when he failed he returned back on his way home- only to be killed in a final battle. He was then beheaded, dismembered, and his head was placed on a spike to represent the colonial victory for 25 years after the war.
Of course, this wasn’t the only Native American/European war over who-gets-what-land, there were plenty more with worse histories. And plot twist? The feast between the Wampanoag and colonists wasn’t even that significant until 200 years later, during the civil war. In fact, they didn’t even call it “Thanksgiving” yet.
In the 19th century, author Sarah Josepha Hale petitioned for Thanksgiving to be an official US holiday through letters written to presidents, politicians and numerous published articles. When it came time to the civil war, Abraham Lincoln needed an method to thank the troops after a series of victories, so he declared Thanksgiving as a national holiday in 1863. A few generations later, Franklin D. Roosevelt set the date of the holiday back a week to boost sales during the Great Depression (he eventually set it to the fourth week of November in 1942 after some intense controversy).
This is how the holiday stands today: due to a bloody conflict over land ownership, a president who wanted to promote the troops and another president who needed to promote profits.
Now, it’s great that people look at Thanksgiving as a time to be grateful for each other and what we’re given (some look at it as the day before Black Friday, but that’s another issue to worry about), and there’s nothing wrong with taking time off to celebrate a dinner with your loved ones. It’s a good message, but it’s the ignorance to the history behind it that remains a problem.
Currently, most Americans see Thanksgiving as what the media chooses to paint it as: a harmonious unity where two opposing groups got together, set aside their differences and join in feast. In truth, it’s just another excuse to avoid what really had to be taken away (and the extent of what had to be done to take it) to give us this holiday today. There’s no issue with keeping the holiday, but there’s definitely room for improvement when it comes to the history aspect of how Americans perceive it.
