The Reality of Jamestown vs. the Illusion of Plymouth

The story of Thanksgiving in America is for all intensive purposes a lie. It began as a way to justify what was done to the Native Americans culture. It is crucial for people to know the truth about this piece of history so that some justice is brought to all of those who lost their lives simply because they were not English or Frenchmen. This essay will explain the truth about the Native Americans and how they interacted with the pilgrims and will include the details of Jamestown which was actually a place of settlement before Plymouth. The sources used in the creation of this essay were Top Ten Myths About Thanksgiving posted on the History News Network website, Deconstructing the Myths of the First Thanksgiving posted on the Oyate website, Lectures given in class by Daniel Viles, Google Images, The Earth Shall Weep written by James Wilson, and Merriam Websters Online Dictionary.

Every year Thanksgiving is celebrated as an American holiday. In schools children are taught of the pilgrims and the Indians and of the feast that they shared together including turkey and various other traditional foods. Pictures are passed out to the children, in which the pilgrim men and women are completely covered and dressed in all black. They had arrived on their gigantic boat, the Mayflower. The Mayflower landed on Plymouth rock. These pilgrims wear big buckles and tall hats. The Indians are nearly naked and wear tall hats with feathers stuck into the backs of them and have paint smeared on their faces. These two groups clash and combine together for this one feast. This is the perfect image of Thanksgiving. It is 100% historically accurate, is it not?

Actually, this image that has been so vividly painted for us for hundreds of years, is not even close to correct. The pilgrims were not the first English settlers. They did not solely wear all black or have large obscene buckles. In fact, the Mayflower didn't even land on Plymouth rock! That was a myth that was added on to the story as an extra detail by a 95 year old man named Thomas Faunce. The legend rests entirely within his testimony which he did not even begin to tell until almost a century after the Mayflower had landed. The Mayflower actually landed in Province-town The first Thanksgiving may not have even taken place in Plymouth at all! According to the Berkley Plantation in Virginia, the first Thanksgiving in America was held there. Every year they celebrate this event and try to reenact it as precisely as possible. There legend tells them that 38 English settlers were brought to the plantation in 1619 by means of their ship the Margret.

So how is it that this story came to be so jumbled? Is any of the story accurate and why do we so willingly accept the inaccurate pieces? James Wilson answers all of these questions in his book The Earth Shall Weep. There had actually been English settlers and traders in the area for two years before the Mayflower even landed. During that time the mortality rates for the Native Americans increased drastically. There were two main sites that Englishmen and women settled on. These are known as Jamestown and Plymouth. Jamestown is often overlooked historically today as school children are taught about only Plymouth and the good natured pilgrims. The pilgrims were of a small Protestant sect. under John Calvin. They had fled England to gain independence and the right to practice under their own religion. This is what is often told as the main story today. What is commonly overlooked is the near complete extinction of another race that this move caused.

"Many Native American communities lost 75 per cent or more of their members within just a few weeks, the kind of losses predicted for a nuclear holocaust, and certainly greater than those suffered at Hiroshima." Diseases had been brought over to the Native Americans by the tradesmen and settlers. It entirely annihilated their population. It was a blow that they would never be able to recover from. Even World War One only killed two percent of the British population in four years. Death on this large of a scale would be enough to permanently scar if not destroy any culture. Eventually the Native Americans began to deal with starvation and famine as well. Due to all of the disease the crops were not able to be planted and harvested as had previously been the way. There were very few farm hands that were still willing and able to help.

The Pilgrims new that the land that they were about to settle on was not uninhabited. By 1920 hundreds of tradesmen and English/Frenchmen of different sorts had been to the land. None of the people that had gone out in search of the land were ignorant to the fact that Native Americans were already present in the territory and had a claim on it. The culture that the Englishmen had come from had taught them that land that had not been "tamed" and was not under constant improvement and was wild. So this meant that it was theirs for the taking. In other words, they did not recognize Native Americans as farmers nor did they respect their culture and way of life. Though they did not believe that the land was properly taken they did try to live off of the supplies that seemed to appear from the culture that did not farm. The Englishmen demanded that the Native Americans give them their surpluses of corn so that they could survive. All the while still denying that the culture had any real value whatsoever.

It is told in the Americans traditional version of the Thanksgiving story that the Pilgrims provided the food for their "Indian friends". This is not so. It was actually the Native Americans of the Wampanoag tribe that supplied the food for the event. They brought five deer with them and allowed the Englishmen to join them in the feast. Part of the myth that is currently believed today is that at the feast there was turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, pie, and pop-corn. This is also not so. In truth they only had deer, possibly some wild fowl (most likely not turkey), mashed pumpkin, and possibly "nasaump" (dried corn pounded and boiled into a thick porridge). Potatoes did not end up in New England until the 18th century during trade and cranberries were to bitter for the people to eat and they had no sugars at the time to sweeten them with.

Though Thanksgiving is a joyful holiday time to get together for many American families it is simply nothing more than a time of mourning for others. It is a time that represents roughly 500 years of betrayal, much death, and famine. In truth Thanksgiving is really nothing to celebrate. It should be a time of mourning for all of the lives that were lost and a beautiful culture and its traditions. The depictions that still circle today do not do this culture any justice whatsoever with the exception of a few intelligent people such as James Wilson. Many people merely do not care enough to search to find the truth that resides behind the many lies. In a school in Seattle it has actually been banned that Thanksgiving should be celebrated. The local board of education declared that it was "insensitive" to their Native American population. The teachers have been required to teach the true story of Thanksgiving. Many people view it as robbing our culture of tradition but perhaps it is merely righting a wrong that has long be ensued on a culture that is nearly lost.

Pilgrims and Puritans are all too often mixed up in modern society. Neither of the two groups were alike other than that they both fled from England. Though they both left, only one of the two groups actually gave up on England entirely and that was the pilgrims. All along the Puritans held out hope that one day England would change and come to its senses. The Puritans did not even land in Plymouth until nearly a decade after the pilgrims. Some pilgrims came for religious reasons and others because they had heard tales of riches to be made and found but all of the Puritans came simply for religious freedom. The puritans viewed the pilgrims as a people whose actions were driven by a misguided hope for perfection rather than by a real view of the world.

The Pilgrims that came over on the Mayflower believed that their God had created and cleared this land for them. They refused to acknowledge that the Native Americans had any part of it or that they had any rights to the land. In fact some of the pilgrims even tried to convert the Native tribes over to their religion and many did follow. The Native Americans resolve towards the beliefs began to falter as they saw all of the people that they loved begin to slowly die off around them. They began to believe that perhaps they had done something to offend their gods and so perhaps it might be best to take on the religion of these strange Englishmen. Obviously whatever the Englishmen were doing had to be working for them because they just kept coming in by the boat load so perhaps there was more to their religion and belief system after all.

Often the people of Jamestown are left out of the traditional story's and the pilgrims are made out to be something that they are not. Pilgrims did not dress in all black with funny belt buckles and they did not come to the new land simply for religious purposes. Native Americans were not simply half naked people that spoke with trees. Both were very distinct cultures and one nearly drove the other into extinction. Perhaps the pilgrims and tradesmen did not intend to bring the diseases over to the Native tribes but regardless, they did. Then the people of Jamestown and the people of Plymouth all took of the Native Americans corn unfairly claiming that they had "found" it and they dug up Indian graves and stole from them. They terrorized a culture that was different from theirs and because it did not operate identically to their own they decided that it was not worthy of "their" ground. It was a truly awful time period. Yet though this was a time period of nothing more than death and lack of justice it is celebrated yearly in America and the children are brought up believing lies about the entire ordeal. In truth, it was horribly tragic and all America should acknowledge the truth of the matter. It is easy to see why people would want to believe that the forefathers of the country were simply acting upon their faithfulness to their high moral standards and that their cooperation with the Indians brought the nation to what it is today, but this is simply untrue. It is beyond time to recognize the matter for what it truly was. Any culture that bases its traditions around lies and prides itself on the make believes, is no culture at all.