Kang's Black Belt Academy
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Friday, November 1, 2013 A Little History About Thanksgiving In September 1620, a small ship called the Mayflower left Plymouth, England, carrying 102 passengers.
After a terribly treacherous crossing that lasted 66 days, they dropped anchor near the tip of Cape Cod, far north of their
intended destination at the mouth of the Hudson River. One month later, the Mayflower crossed Massachusetts Bay, where the
Pilgrims, as they are now commonly known, began to establish a village at Plymouth.The first winter was brutal and most of the colonists remained on board the ship, where
they suffered from exposure, scurvy and outbreaks of contagious disease. Only half of the Mayflower’s original passengers
and crew lived to see their first spring in New England. In March, the remaining settlers moved ashore, where they received
an astonishing visit from an Abenaki Indian who greeted them in English. Several days later, he returned with another Native
American, Squanto, a member of the Pawtuxet tribe who had been kidnapped by an English sea captain and sold into slavery before
escaping to London and returning to his homeland on an exploratory expedition. Squanto taught the Pilgrims, weakened by malnutrition
and illness, how to cultivate corn, extract sap from maple trees, catch fish in the rivers and avoid poisonous plants.Governor William Bradford organized a celebratory feast and
invited a group of the fledgling colony’s Native American allies, including the Wampanoag chief Massasoit. Now remembered
as America’s “first Thanksgiving” — although the Pilgrims themselves may not have used the term at
the time — the festival lasted for three days. While no record exists of the historic banquet’s exact menu, the
Pilgrim chronicler Edward Winslow wrote in his journal that Governor Bradford sent four men on a “fowling”
8:08 am edt mission in preparation for the event,
and that the Wampanoag guests arrived bearing five deer. Historians have suggested that many of the dishes were likely prepared
using traditional Native American spices and cooking methods. Because the Pilgrims had no oven and the Mayflower’s sugar
supply had dwindled by the fall of 1621, the meal did not feature pies, cakes or other desserts, which have become a hallmark
of today’s celebrations. Additionally, surprising to many, turkey cannot be confirmed as the actual fowl that was part
of the first Thanksgiving dinner either. did not want to pledge allegiance to the Church of England, which they believed was nearly as corrupt and idolatrous as the Catholic Church it had replaced, any longer. (They were not the same as the Puritans, who had many of the same objections to the English church but wanted to reform it from within.) The Separatists hoped that in Holland, they would be free to worship as they liked.In fact, the Separatists (they called themselves “Saints”) did find religious freedom in Holland, but they also found a secular life that was more difficult to navigate than they’d anticipated. For one thing, Dutch craft guilds excluded the migrants, so they were relegated to menial, low-paying jobs. Even worse was Holland’s easygoing, cosmopolitan atmosphere, which proved alarmingly seductive to some of the Saints’ children. (These young people were “drawn away,” Separatist leader William Bradford wrote, “by evill [sic] example into extravagance and dangerous courses.”) For the strict, devout Separatists, this was the last straw. They decided to move again, this time to a place without government interference or worldly distraction: the “New World” across the Atlantic Ocean.Retrieved from: http://www.history.com/topics/mayflower |
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