Thanks Giving
Thanksgiving typifies much of what I have found. We were taught that the pilgrims invited the Indians to a feast to give thanks for the help they had received from the Algonkian Indians that year. The pilgrims, in fact, had observed thanksgiving feasts in November as religious obligations in England for many years before coming to the New World. The Algonkian Indians had celebrated six thanksgivings a year. When they sat down with the Pilgrims it was really the Indians fifth of the year. Only Massasoit (chief of the Wamponoags- which is part of the Algonkians) and his immediate family along with Squanto and Samoset were invited. However, the feast was really more about the Pilgrims obtaining an agreement with Massasoit to use the land that once was the Patuxet to build Plymouth. After three days of feasting an agreement was reached.16 years later near present day Groton, Connecticut, over 700 men, women and children of the Pequot Tribe had gathered for their annual Green Corn Festival which is our Thanksgiving celebration. In the predawn hours the sleeping Indians were surrounded by English and Dutch mercenaries who ordered them to come outside. Those who came out were shot or clubbed to death while the terrified women and children who huddled inside the longhouse were burned alive. The next day the governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony declared "A Day Of Thanksgiving" because 700 unarmed men, women, and children had been murdered.
The killings became more and more frenzied, with days of thanksgiving feasts being held after each successful massacre. George Washington finally suggested that only one day of Thanksgiving per year be set aside instead of celebrating each and every massacre. During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln decreed Thanksgiving Day to be a legal national holiday -- on the same day he ordered troops to march against the starving Sioux in Minnesota.
As most will agree, the thanksgiving story we heard while growing up was not the same story stated above.
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