Thanksgiving - the true story behind it

[Art Blade]

Thanksgiving: celebrating the memory of a massacre, of Indians killed.

In 1637, in retaliation for the murder of a man the settlers believed the Wampanoags killed, they burned a nearby village, killing as many as 500 men, women, and children. Following the massacre, William Bradford, the Governor of Plymouth, wrote that for "the next 100 years, every Thanksgiving Day ordained by a Governor was in honor of the bloody victory, thanking God that the battle had been won."

Very interesting article. I had no idea. Even less than the author before he researched it.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/27/opinion/thanksgiving-history.html

[BinnZ]

It doesn't surprise me at all. I never knew the reason for thanksgiving, I was actually only hoping it wouldn't blow over to Europe, just like Black Friday did.

[PZ]

I am ashamed of the often questionable history of our country.

[fragger]

My understanding of Thanksgiving had always been the usual, idealized one. After all, I'm not American and thus never really had any inclination to delve into the real reasons behind it. Doesn't surprise me at all that the story has been whitewashed.

Australia too has a shameful past regarding treatment of natives. We can't really point any fingers at the USA. The only flimsy defense we could possibly mount is that whites didn't wipe out as many Aborigines as those in the USA did Native Americans, nor did they do it quite so systematically, but that's hardly an exoneration.

Speaking of American traditions, Halloween seems to be catching on here, for God-only-knows what reason. I know nothing about it, nor was I expecting it when last year there was a knock at my door at about 7:00pm and there was a gaggle of brats dressed in costumes outside yelling "trick or treat!" I heroically refrained from saying, "Get lost, we don't do that here" and it was only blind luck for them that I had some sweets in the place to give them.

But an hour later when there was another knock at the door and I opened it to find a trio of distinctly un-costumed and scruffy-looking 17- or 18-year-old sullen teenagers trying to sponge goodies off me, I wasn't quite so civil They didn't even say "trick or treat", they just stood there apparently expecting me to hand out bags of lollies. All I handed out was an admonition to leave my door unknocked upon in future.

Halloween in Australia... What's next, Fourth of July fireworks? Thanksgiving? If the Americanization of Oz gets to that stage, I'm gonna move to New Zealand.

[Art Blade]

Halloween started out very small over here about 30 years ago but has picked up speed over the past decade or so. Same as fragger, the question is, "WHY?" And lol @ 4th of July.. I'll move over to NZ wiv ya, mate

[Dweller_Benthos]

I can tell you my thoughts on why other countries are seeing "American only" holidays.... money. Companies are seeing the money raked in by pretty much every company in the USA that has access to these holidays, and want in on the action. Or, even more likely, the meeting in the board room goes like this:

CEO: "Our divisions around the world aren't seeing the profits during the 4th quarter that our American divisions do, why is that?"

Yes-man: "Holidays, boss, holidays. Americans have tons of them, and they are all commercialized and advertised to make people spend money, we need to have holidays everywhere so that our other division can capitalize on them too"

CEO: "Sounds good, think up some holidays other countries have that we can commercialize and make money on"

Yes-man: "Wouldn't it be just easier to export American holidays everywhere else?"

CEO: "I like the way you think, Bob"

So yeah, that's why you see American holidays that are already packaged and commercialized everywhere else now.

[Art Blade]

there's something to it.

[PZ]

NZ looks pretty good to me right now

[Art Blade]

 

[BinnZ]

I vote for a ban on Black Friday!

[mandru]

Yet another reason for whites in the U.S. to collectively hate ourselves and be deeply ashamed for existing as relayed by a purely unbiased person of color.

By Charles M. Blow

Opinion Columnist

Pilgrims: I Knowest what thee and me can do for giggles and shits.  Hie thee quickly.  Finisheth thy plate of thankfulness.  Whereupon thusly we can grabbest our flintlocks and axes and wipe out a tribe of wildmen whom livest nearby as a fitting dessert for our feast.



And the always forthright NY Times printed it.

Are you baiting me Art?  This is definitely political.

[Art Blade]

mandru, of course not. I wasn't even remotely aware of the possibility that it could be perceived as a political subject. I see it as a history lesson and I don't judge by skin colour.

[mandru]

Art the person that wrote that article is an opinion columnist not a journalist.  Not that any of the journalists of the NY Times have qualms about making up wild untruths as long as it tickles the ears of their readers.

History is one thing but to rewrite it to warp the public perception of the factual events is one of the filthiest types of p0L!t!cs.

The Pilgrims were a religious group who understood persecution and only sought to live free to practice their perception of a spiritual life.  They based their interaction with the natives they encountered and traded with on the 10 commandments.  The scriptural text they depended on was the Geneva Bible which was a Protestant translated English version so that any literate person could directly study the scripture or at least hear and understand from it being read to them.  They sought the undiluted and unaltered teachings of Christ.

European Nobles were persecuting and killing anyone associated with or for possessing the Geneva Bible which caused the Pilgrims to flee to America.

This Charles Blow guy even tries to place the blame of deadly plague on the Pilgrims due to the rats escaping their (I.e. the Pilgrim's) ship.

The ship was not theirs.  They did not pilot the ship to where it landed.

The Pilgrims were deposited on the shores of Cape Cod in Plymouth Harbor when they had paid to make landfall inland on the Hudson river (in what is now New York). (Google: "Who owned the Mayflower")

I've spent a fair amount of time searching over the last few hours but I'm not finding a reference of the so called massacre due to the Pilgrim's activities.  Though it is sited that a local tribe had been wiped out by plague and diseases from other exploratory forrays before the Pilgrims arrived.

In reading the article I only find an effort by the author to urinate on and despoil a commonly accepted American tradition through lies and half truths.  I see this action as being in accord with the progressive socialist counter culture that is set on tearing down commonly held traditions and historical heroes.  The bottom line being uninformed, uneducated and frightened (even self loathing) people are the easiest class of citizenry to maintain power over.

In keeping with the effort to destroy heroes many Universities here in the U.S have altered (read that as skewed) their guidelines so that it is now possible to graduate with a bachelor's degree as a major in American history and never hear or read more than a paragraph about George Washington, Ben Franklin or Thomas Jefferson.

But everything the U.S. has ever done wrong sure gets hauled up for close examination and absolutely poured over.

Would you care to venture a guess which political party has stacked the staffing of all key positions of the National Education Association that sets the curriculum and textbook content that is allowed in schools from kindergarten through the courses required for doctorate degrees?

(sigh  ) - Maybe it's just a matter of back story and the perceptional lens of the individual reader that makes anything the NY Times publishes appear as factory produced political misdirection.

Sorry, I've tried to stop making long posts and connecting the numerous dots but Blow's article got under my skin. 

So much energy spent typing this up defending turkey day when my allergies keep me from eating poultry or various other related salmonella bearing species. 

[Art Blade]

Oh man, your turkey problem is really bad when it comes to Thanksgiving

Regarding what will follow from here on in this post, I want to use part of one of your lines and continue it with my version: "So much energy spent typing this up" although I'm not even an American and I don't even have the slightest relation to that "turkey day"

It can't be easy to get to the bottom of it all. We'll only find biased sources and we are limited by the internet. I guess a good portion of authentic sources are still only available in written on paper and likely only accessible if you're some kind of professional with credentials. There are exceptions, of course, like transcriptions made available online such as this: (about Indians)

"It resteth I speake a word or two of the naturall inhabitants, their natures and maners, leauing large discourse thereof vntill time more conuenient hereafter: nowe onely so farre foorth, as that you may know, how that they in respect of troubling our inhabiting and planting, are not to be feared; but that they shall haue cause both to feare and loue vs, that shall inhabite with them."

https://docsouth.unc.edu/nc/hariot/hariot.html

What we can find on the net also depends on how successful we are making search engines deliver what we're looking for. The sources we may find will be biased either from the point of view of religions or white men or red men. Well, or opinion makers.

And I think it's fair to say,

overall, I think good Mr Blow exaggerated when he said Thanksgiving was (only) for celebrating victory over Indians.

However. What the article did was make us think, discuss, question. That alone isn't a bad thing I dare say. And thanks to you, I tried to find out more, too.

I've spent a fair amount of time searching over the last few hours but I'm not finding a reference of the so called massacre due to the Pilgrim's activities.

I think the key to that is called King Phillip's War.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Phillip%27s_War

"King Philip's War began the development of an independent American identity. The New England colonists faced their enemies without support from any outside government or military"

I'm not sure but you may have missed out on checking the hyperlinks in the text. The very first (from the Manataka American Indian Council) may give you some insight. Unless you say it's biased because it's written by people with red skin but I think that's what it is all about so I recommend reading it. It contains quite a few hints to atrocities. However, I think it's important to read the whole page with all the articles there are as it will form a good summary in your mind.

"It is sad to think that this happened, but it is important to understand all of the story and not just the happy part. Today the town of Plymouth Rock has a Thanksgiving ceremony each year in remembrance of the first Thanksgiving. There are still Wampanoag people living in Massachusetts. In 1970, they asked one of them to speak at the ceremony to mark the 350th anniversary of the Pilgrim's arrival.

Here is part of what was said:  Frank James speech was written but was suppressed and he did not speak at the ceremony.

"Today is a time of celebrating for you -- a time of looking back to the first days of white people in America. But it is not a time of celebrating for me. It is with a heavy heart that I look back upon what happened to my People. When the Pilgrims arrived, we, the Wampanoags, welcomed them with open arms, little knowing that it was the beginning of the end. That before 50 years were to pass, the Wampanoag would no longer be a tribe. That we and other Indians living near the settlers would be killed by their guns or dead from diseases that we caught from them. Let us always remember, the Indian is and was just as human as the white people."

https://www.manataka.org/page269.html

And regarding diseases wiping out Indians, there is this link to an article not by a journalist opinion maker but by Peter C. Mancall who "is the Andrew W. Mellon professor of the humanities, University of Southern California, Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences." Unless you consider CNN as too political but it's hard to avoid connections as history and politics around this subject are kind of hard to separate. I'd say check it out as well, I found it interesting.

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/11/25/health/pilgrim-survival-disease-conversation-wellness/index.html

My first "outside" (of the Blow article) search came up with stuff from History channel but that has always been a tad too dramatic as in trying to compete with Hollywood and at times they were definitely getting the facts wrong or omitted important parts in the past so after briefly skimming them I skipped them altogether not to waste my time. However, the first best link that I found interesting was this:

https://time.com/4577425/thanksgiving-2016-true-story/#

And I found a link that I suppose is way less controversial than others and is more about the "normal" Thanksgiving. It was a good read, too.

https://historyofmassachusetts.org/the-first-thanksgiving/

By the way, as an alternative to google I use https://duckduckgo.com/ that keeps coming up with completely different stuff albeit not always what I was looking for. You should try that independent (from google) search engine as an addition to google just to get different results

[mandru]

I'll allow that there is compelling examples among the links but on closer examination even they are largely put forward by liberal sources and even more liberal authors.

Here's Blow's submissions to the NY Times.  You decide if he's a valid source and anything but political.
https://www.nytimes.com/by/charles-m-blow

CNN

I view CNN as unredeemable purveyors of toxic poison intent on swaying their viewers away from all decency and into social collapse.  They favor and tout every wrong side.  On setting up my satellite antenna they are among the first thing pulled out of the directory to thin out the trash.

And it wasn't your two skin color references towards me (that felt as if you were trying to slap me with the racist brush which I choose to ignore) it was the source's refusal to lay aside their unburied axes they carry and accept that there was a possibility that European settlers could have hosted a feast (apparently lasting 3 days by one of the linked accounts) with the local natives having no other motive than sharing the joy of having a plentiful harvest and good amicable company.

Whatever assaults came after that in the years following whether from the Puritan side or from the local natives should not detract from that first outreach between the two groups.  Both sides contributed to the feast and both shared from that plentiful (if imperfect) bounty.

So we will need to agree to disagree as to whether the annual onslaught of demeaning and discrediting voices against Thanks Giving Day is political or not.