Because happiness is overrated.
Amerigo Vespucci (1000+ posts) Thu Nov-25-10 01:02 PM
Original message
First "Thanksgiving" celebrated safe return home after murdering 700 Pequot men, women, & children.
Richard Greener
Novelist and award-winning essayist
Posted: November 25, 2010 10:04 AM
The True Story Of Thanksgiving
The idea of the American Thanksgiving feast is a fairly recent fiction. The idyllic partnership of 17th Century European Pilgrims and New England Indians sharing a celebratory meal appears to be less than 120 years-old. And it was only after the First World War that a version of such a Puritan-Indian partnership took hold in elementary schools across the American landscape. We can thank the invention of textbooks and their mass purchase by public schools for embedding this "Thanksgiving" image in our modern minds. It was, of course, a complete invention, a cleverly created slice of cultural propaganda, just another in a long line of inspired nationalistic myths.
The first Thanksgiving Day did occur in the year 1637, but it was nothing like our Thanksgiving today. On that day the Massachusetts Colony Governor, John Winthrop, proclaimed such a "Thanksgiving" to celebrate the safe return of a band of heavily armed hunters, all colonial volunteers. They had just returned from their journey to what is now Mystic, Connecticut where they massacred 700 Pequot Indians. Seven hundred Indians - men, women and children - all murdered.
This day is still remembered today, 373 years later. No, it's been long forgotten by white people, by European Christians. But it is still fresh in the mind of many Indians. A group calling themselves the United American Indians of New England meet each year at Plymouth Rock on Cole's Hill for what they say is a Day of Mourning. They gather at the feet of a stature of Chief Massasoit of the Wampanoag to remember the long gone Pequot. They do not call it Thanksgiving. There is no football game afterward.
How then did our modern, festive Thanksgiving come to be? It began with the greatest of misunderstandings, a true clash of cultural values and fundamental principles. What are we thankful for if not - being here, living on this land, surviving and prospering? But in our thankfulness might we have overlooked something? Look what happened to the original residents who lived in the area of New York we have come to call Brooklyn. A group of them called Canarsees obligingly, perhaps even eagerly, accepted various pieces of pretty colored junk from the Dutchman Peter Minuet in 1626. These trinkets have long since been estimated to be worth no more than 60 Dutch guilders at the time - $24 dollars in modern American money. In exchange, the Canarsees "gave" Peter Minuet the island of Manhattan. What did they care? They were living in Brooklyn.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-greener/the-true-...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x9629956Some DUmmies are more than happy to scourge themselves with brambles:
nadinbrzezinski (1000+ posts) Thu Nov-25-10 01:15 PM
Response to Original message
2. Sh... Going against the myth
By the way remember to raise your glass to remember the slaves, both black and white, that built the colonial economy, as well as the Indian captives.
Oh I do, madeinbrzybrzybrzybrzy. If they were here, I'd offer them all a turkey leg.
Gregorian (1000+ posts) Thu Nov-25-10 01:16 PM
Response to Original message
3. I wonder how many native Americans celebrate Thanksgiving.
Greyhound (1000+ posts) Thu Nov-25-10 01:27 PM
Response to Original message
8. Yes, celebrating slaughter with a feast goes back further than recorded history.
This has always been an ambiguous day to me as well.
panader0 (1000+ posts) Thu Nov-25-10 01:33 PM
Response to Original message
9. Hmmm................I rec'd this and it's still at zero
Some folks are uncomfortable with the truth.
Or maybe they're just tired of the condescending, "We should all be ashamed" shit. Ya think?
Some DUmmies
are tired of it:
cherokeeprogressive (1000+ posts) Thu Nov-25-10 01:12 PM
Response to Original message
1. Mmmm I love turkey, Thanksgiving with my family... football... n/t
cherokeeprogressive (1000+ posts) Thu Nov-25-10 01:22 PM
Response to Reply #3
5. This one does, heartily and with gusto... with friends, family, football...
and without shame. I loves me some turkey dinner.
My whole Native American family does as well.
Strange to be the only person awake at my house though, we had a late night last night. Oh well, the bird is stuffed and in the oven. That's all that counts at the moment!
Cherokeeprogressive is one of the less distasteful primitives of the political forums. Someone needs to tell him, though, that his family is obviously self-loathing and has sold out to the white power structure. Preferably, it should be a white Northeastern suburban trust fund liberal who tells him, because they know best.
hfojvt (1000+ posts) Thu Nov-25-10 01:36 PM
Response to Original message
10. of course, that is not the true story of the first
I was just reading this on wiki yesterday
"The event now commemorated by the United States at the end of November each year is more properly termed a "harvest festival". The original festival was probably held in early October 1621 and was celebrated by the 53 surviving Pilgrims, along with Massasoit and 90 of his men. Three contemporary accounts of the event survive: Of Plymouth Plantation by William Bradford; Mourt's Relation probably written by Edward Winslow; and New England's Memorial penned by Plymouth Colony Secretary – and Bradford's nephew – Capt. Nathaniel Morton.<41> The celebration lasted three days and featured a feast that included numerous types of waterfowl, wild turkeys and fish procured by the colonists, and five deer brought by the Native Americans.<42>"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plymouth_Colony#.22First_T...
The slaughter at Mystic took place on May 26th, 1637 - so it is not anywhere near the date of our Thanksgiving celebration, although people do generally give thanks when their husbands or sons or brothers or uncles return safely from a battle.
Interestingly enough, a detail I am just reading, the last of the Pequots were killed, not by the English, but by the Mohawks - other Indians! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pequot_War#The_Mystic_mass...
But I hate to spoil the celebration of another "white-people-are-so-evil" day. So cheers. Down with whitey!
I'll be outside on the roof, trying to get a tan. Which is really tough to do this late in November.
But while I am up there, I may try to rig up the stupid lights, which is even more of a pain. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yasSkqJBytk
Awwwww. Talk about a turd in a punchbowl.
Bold Lib (501 posts) Thu Nov-25-10 01:49 PM
Response to Reply #13
17. Truth? This event happened 16 years AFTER the first Thanksgiving.
That is the truth.
NoodleyAppendage (1000+ posts) Thu Nov-25-10 02:07 PM
Response to Original message
20. Well...we're not celebrating the day in that manner in anymore. Prototypical jerk post.
This is exactly why we have communication problems with those on the Right and fail to capture more of the populace towards our way of thinking. Give it a rest.
What do you hope to accomplish (other than pissing people off)?
niyad (1000+ posts) Thu Nov-25-10 01:48 PM
Response to Original message
15. ah, more unrec;s--heaven forfend we should learn how the european invaders "settled" an inhabitied
land.
Yeah, like we don't hear this kind of BS from you every Thanksgiving...and Columbus Day...and Christmas...and Independence Day...and Veterans Day...and Memorial Day...and Flag Day...and... ...
