We haven’t gone trick-or-treating, yet the store shelves are stocked with Christmas decorations. Wait. What happened to Thanksgiving? Isn’t there another holiday sandwiched between October and December?
Some opponents to Thanksgiving cite the bloody and unharmonious relations between the Native Americans and the Pilgrim newcomers as a reason to stop Thanksgiving. They cite how Pilgrims robbed Wampanoag graves and unleashed the epidemic which led to the “Great Dying.” According to the newsletter Cultural Survival, within 50 years of the Pilgrims and other Europeans arriving in America, the Wampanoag and other tribes were devastated by disease and warfare, and dispossessed of their ancestral lands.
Many Native Americans do not celebrate Thanksgiving, rather, in 1970, a growing number began celebrating the National Day of Mourning, acknowledging the deplorable conditions imposed on Native Americans over the years. They are utilizing the fourth Thursday of November as an opportunity for their voices to be heard and changes to be made.
Other historical accounts include the Pilgrim perspective. They stayed aboard the Mayflower during the first brutal winter. Only half of the passengers lived to see the first spring in New England. Those survivors moved ashore in March when an Abenaki tribe member greeted them in English.
He returned days later with Squanto, a member of the Patuxet tribe who had been kidnapped and sold into slavery by an English sea captain. Squanto had later escaped to London and eventually made his way home only to discover that his entire village had perished from disease in his absence.
An eyewitness account of that first Thanksgiving by Edward Winslow, Pilgrim chronicler helps us see why other Americans choose to celebrate this holiday:
“Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a special manner rejoice together, after we had gathered the fruits of our labors; they four in one day killed as much fowl, as with a little help beside, served the Company almost a week, at which time amongst other recreations, we exercised our arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and amongst the rest their greatest king Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five deer, which they brought to the plantation and bestowed on our governor, and upon the captain and others. And although it be not always so plentiful, as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want, that we often wish you partakers of our plenty.”
In their rare time of plenty, Edward Winslow chose to focus on their abundance. Perhaps we can look to Squanto as a bridge between these two diverse experiences and an example going forward.
Native Americans indeed suffered harsh treatment at the hands of the Englishmen including genocide and disease. Squanto’s entire support system including family and tribe were wiped out likely as a result of the Pilgrims’ arrival. Yet he did not wreak vengeance. Rather, seeing the weakened and emaciated conditions the Pilgrims were suffering from, he educated them on how to survive using native plant and animal resources. He also helped them ally with the Wampanoag tribe, an alliance that endured for more than 50 years, one of the few examples of harmonious living between the European colonists and Native Americans.
Can we be more like Squanto? Whether we choose to celebrate Thanksgiving with its traditional feast or celebrate the Day of Mourning to affect necessary changes, let’s do it with a spirit of cooperation and support, open-minded to others’ experiences and views, not bitter, but striving to be better.
Most of all, let’s take this day literally. Let us give thanks. No matter what our past experience has been, it has held good at times. Even small memories of abundance like the Pilgrims’ are worth focusing on. At times we may be starving for justice, deprived of freedom, faint from striving. What we focus on grows. Let’s take a day to focus on giving thanks for the good. Let’s strive to be grateful and look intentionally for things that bring happiness. Let’s serve to make another’s day better.
Let’s be like Squanto. He used his past experiences to help others. We, too, can not only give thanks ourselves but in serving others, also give them something to be thankful for.
– by Karen Munson
Feature image caption: Harvest season.
Read youth articles about Thanksgiving starting with The Little Things by Timber Wood.
Karen M. Munson – Escalante
Karen is an associate editor at The Byway. She is fascinated and fulfilled by all things involved with writing. After graduating from BYU, she taught English at Escalante High School for three years. She pursues opportunities to write and support others in their writing. Karen has published three books with four more scheduled to be released in 2024. She and Reed are the parents of ten children and the grandparents of 35 grandchildren.
Karen is the author of two columns in The Byway, A New Twist on Mental Health and Lyle’s Corner.