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It's the time of year when friends and family gather, feast, and give thanks to the Almighty for their fortunes ( because after all, it could always be worse....). We were all taught in Government Schools.....er...public schools, that we owe our existence as a nation to the charity and goodness of the friendly, helpful Wampanoag nation of Native Americans, and especially to one named Squanto, who learned to speak English just so we could communicate with each other. After the first successful harvest, with help from the tribe, the Pilgrims, all dressed in black, with cute hats and buckles and blunderbusses, held a feast in honor of the Wampanoags, and to give thanks for their survival. All nice and fuzzy...right?
This myth has persisted since 1863, when then President Abraham Lincoln declared a National Holiday of Thanksgiving for the Union, right after sending the US Army out to exterminate, or run the starving Sioux out of Minnesota. He made the declaration to soften the national mood, because the US had grown weary of the Civil War, and to focus international attention away from our treatment of Native Americans. Since then, the holiday had shifted between the 3rd Thursday in November to as late as Dec. 6th. In 1941, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed a bill fixing the date as the 4th Thursday in November as the permanent date for the holiday. Football games soon followed....
When studying history, it is important to remember that official 'histories' are written by the victors, and will always show them in the best light. Imagine how the history of WW-II would read had the Axis prevailed. With this in mind, by researching contemporary documents such as logs, diaries, and official reports, we get a different picture of events than what the Politically-Correct historians have spewed out. We also have verbal accounts from first-hand witnesses, passed down from generation-to generation by surviving Eastern Native American tribes. The picture we get from all of this evidence is that our 'Thanksgiving' holiday may be one of histories greatest cover-ups, hiding atrocities committed by early American settlers that are second only to the Holocaust in their inhumanity and brutality. It is time the truth was told....
We'll start at the beginning. The Pilgrims were not the first northern Europeans to land on American soil. The Dutch East India Company had sponsored several expeditions to America, and captured Native Americans to be sold as slaves on the European market. In 1614, a Patuxet tribesman named Tisquantum (later shortened to Squanto by historians), along with several hundred other Native Americans, was captured and shipped back to England to be sold as slaves. With some help from well-meaning Englishmen, he was eventually able to escape, and make his way back across the Pond to Cape Cod. Unfortunately, while he was gone, his tribe had been decimated by the gift from the Europeans that kept on giving...smallpox. He was the last surviving member of his people. Sympathetic Wampanoags allowed him to live with them.
Both the unsuccessful Roanoke Colony, and Jamestown had been founded well before the Pilgrims arrival. The 'Pilgrims' were actually Seperatists, a group of religious fanatics that were too radical even for the Puritans. As far as England was concerned, they were the 1600s equivalent of Shite extremists. They advocated the overthrow of the current English government, and actually did so in 1649. They were 'Enemies Of The Crown, and most of the 'Congregation' had warrants for their arrests, so they fled England to the Netherlands. They also ran into trouble in the Netherlands, and the Dutch gave the English permission to round them up and take them back for trial, but Pastor John Robinson, Church Elder William Brewster and William Bradford were able to negotiate a land patent from the London Virginia Company, and financing from Merchant Adventures, inc. to obtain supplies and passage to the New World, where it was hoped it would be more trouble than it was worth for the English authorities to pursue them there. The Separatists had few useful skills among them that would be useful in establishing a colony, and most were adverse to any hard work. To offset this, the financiers assigned some of their people to keep an eye on their investment in the New World, namely Myles Standish, a former British Army Officer then working for the Company as a mercenary. He had a reputation for brutality and, shall we say, preemptive action, which was probably why he was no longer an Army officer. He was appointed Assistant Governor, and in charge of the military contingent. Christopher Martin, a merchant, was appointed Governor and tasked with keeping records and seeing to it that the financiers were repaid, and their shares were collected and sent back. These, and a few other 'added' personnel were known as the 'Strangers'. Two ships, the Mayflower, and the Speedwell, were chartered for the voyage, but the Speedwell was sabotaged en-route by it's master, forcing them to put in at Darmouth port. The master of the Speedwell did not want to entail the wrath of the English by transporting fugitives, and he had his ship declared 'unseaworthy' in port. As many as could transferred to the other ship, so the voyage was made by the Mayflower, seriously overcrowded, and under-provisioned for that many people.
The Pilgrims only had a patent to settle at the mouth of the Hudson River, but the Mayflower was blown far to the north in a North Atlantic storm, and did not have enough provisions to sail down the coast in search of the correct location. Plymouth Rock was outside the jurisdiction of the chartering company, and there were no treaties or agreements in effect with the local Native Americans. They were on their own. Most of the 'Pilgrims' had little or no useful skills for establishing a colony in the Wilderness. The first year was a disaster, with many deaths from cold and starvation. To make matters worse, they were all Communists, and did all of their farming and other duties collectively. There was no Private Property in Plymouth Rock at that time. Communism didn't work any better in the 1600s than it does now, and in a desperate attempt to save the colony, Governor Martin abolished the communal system and parceled out land to individuals, making them responsible for it. All agreed to majority rule, and one of the colonists first actions under the new rule was to fire Martin and elect John Carver as the new Governor. Carver soon died from illness and was replaced by William Bradford. Under Bradfords administration, thievery was rampant, and many even took to stealing the local Native Americans winter stores to get by, killing any 'savages' that got in their way.
Their neighbors were the Wampanoag Nation. They were not happy with the situation, and in council, wiping out the colony was seriously considered. They probably could have done it, but cooler heads prevailed, reasoning that more white settlers from across the sea would probably arrive, and it might be better in the long run to get on their good-side, rather than have to fight wave, after wave, after wave of an enemy with unknown capabilities. The cannons mounted on the stockade walls were a good indication of what their warriors could expect from future tenants, so it was decided that they would freely share their stores with their white neighbors in the hopes that the thievery and killing would stop. This made the Pilgrims America's first welfare recipients. Tisquantum (Squanto) was appointed as an ambassador of sorts, because he spoke the Pilgrims language.
The Wampanoags taught the settlers proper agriculture techniques and that years crop was a little better. But tensions between the settlers remained. Myles Standish actively pitted local tribes against each other, namely the Massachusetts, Wampanoages, and other local members of the Iroquois, and Algonquian Federations. One of Standish's favorite 'tricks' was to infiltrate a camp, often posing as a friendly trader, kill a few people, and blame it on a neighboring tribe. Any Native American who came within sight of the stockade walls was subject to imprisonment, slavery, robbery, or murder. In one incident, Standish sneaked into a Massachusetts camp and beheaded a man named Wituwamet. He brought the head back to Plymouth Rock, where it was impaled on a spike and set outside the walls as a warning to other Native Americans. When the mans younger brother came to investigate his siblings disappearance, he was hanged from the rafters. After this incident, the Massachusetts referred to the settlers as Wotowquenange, meaning “cut-throats”. This went on for several years, and the Pilgrims were making enemies faster than they could develop defenses, so they eventually negotiated a mutual defense treaty with the most powerful tribe around, the Wampanoags. There was a 'feast' of sorts held then, but only for the negotiating of the treaty, and the Wampanoags brought all of the food. Now, their major foe was the Pequots, a very large, hostile and powerful tribe near present day Boston. With the Pilgrims now allied with the Wampanoags, and the Puritans of the Boston area, full scale warfare resulted. Bounties were offered for killing any Native American of any tribe, age, or sex. Scalps were used as proof by both whites and allied Native Americans. The stage was set for the first 'Thanksgiving'.
Every year, the Pequots held a Green Corn Feast to celebrate the harvest, usually around mid October. They would all gather in Longhouses in groups of several hundred families, to feast and enjoy each others company. In 1637, near what is now Groton, Connecticut, over 700 men, women, children and elderly Pequots had gathered for the feast, and were sleeping in the longhouse. Just before dawn, a combined force of Dutch and English settlers surrounded the compound and set the longhouse on fire. Anyone who ran out was shot, or clubbed to death. The women, children and elderly inside were allowed to burn alive. Afterwords, the settlers held a feast to give thanks to God for their 'victory'. The first 'Thanksgiving' was to celebrate the cold-blooded murder of over 700 unarmed human beings. They continued to practice genocide, and as each village or tribe was devastated, they would hold a Thanksgiving feast. Many years later, newly elected President George Washington (a slave-owner, veteran of the French and Indian Wars, and definitely no lover of Native Americans, or any other non-white race) declared that henceforth, there would be one all-inclusive annual celebration, instead of many on-going local ones. Thus, the first official annual Thanksgiving holiday was born....from the blood of the Eastern Native Americans, who's only crime was to be here first.
The Thanksgiving Myth was developed during the later 1800s in an attempt to create a sense of National Unity. Unlike other countries, the U.S. had no long history, and other than Native Americans, no indigenous people. Everyone was a descendent of someone from somewhere else, and our entire population was made up of diverse ethnic groups. The modern story of Thanksgiving is mostly the work of editor Sarah Josepha Hale, author of the nursery rhyme “Mary Had A Little Lamb”. The country was being ravaged by the (un) Civil War, and she thought the country needed a unifying identity. She published countless editorials with the mythical story of the first Thanksgiving that is taught to children today, and she also wrote dozens of letters to senators and congressmen to declare a Day of Thanksgiving to heal the country's wounds and bring us all back together as a nation. In 1863, President Lincoln declared Thanksgiving a National holiday.
Now, you know the whole story.
Happy Holidays.
Sources:
(1) Berkhofer, Jr., R.F., "The White Man's Indian," references to frontier concepts of savagery in index.
(2) Jennings, Francis, "The Invasion of America," the myth of savagery, pp. 6-12, 15-16, & 109-110.
(3) Berkhofer, Jr., R.F., "The White Man's Indian," references to Puritans, pp. 27, 80-85, 90, 104, &
(4) Blitzer, Charles, "Age of Kings," Great Ages of Man” series, references to Puritanism, pp. 141, 144 & 145-46.
(5) Jennings, Francis, "The Invasion of America," references to Puritan human motives, pp. 4-6, 43- 44 and 53.
(6) "Chronicles of American Indian Protest,"
(7) Also see Armstrong, Virginia I., "I Have Spoken,"
(8) Also see Jennings, Francis, "The Invasion of America,"
(9) "Chronicles of American Indian Protest," pp. 6-9.
(10) Berkhofer, Jr., R.F., "The White Man's Indian," the comments of Cotton Mather, pp. 37 & 82-83.
(11) Larsen, Charles M., "The Real Thanksgiving," the letter of Edward Winslow dated 1622, pp. 5-6.
(12) Larsen, Charles M., "The Real Thanksgiving," pp. 3-4.
(13) Graff, Steward and Polly Ann, "Squanto, Indian Adventurer."
(14) "Handbook of North American Indians," Vol. 15, the reference to Tsquantum on p. 82.
(15) Benton-Banai, Edward, "The Mishomis Book," as a reference on general "Anishinabe" (the Algonkin speaking peoples) religious beliefs and practices.
(16) Larsen, Charles M., "The Real Thanksgiving," reference to religious life on p. 1.
(17) Larsen, Charles, M., "The Real Thanksgiving," pp. 8-11, "Destruction of the Massachusetts Indians."
(18) Graff, Stewart and Polly Ann, "Squanto, Indian Adventurer."
(19) Bradford, Sir William, "Of Plymouth Plantation," and "Mourt's Relation."
By: Dr. Joel C. B
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