Woodrow Whipple And for all of you..... I did a little research on Thanksgiving and wanted to share it with all of you.... Thanksgiving 1621 Research by Whipple Interested in a less Eurocentric view of Thanksgiving, or looking for a way to honor the Indians who helped the Pilgrims? Curious about just who those Indians at the first Thanksgiving were? The Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe claims that its members are the descendants of the people who first met the Pilgrims in America. The tribe is still located in Massachusetts, and celebrates its proud heritage and its connection with the Mayflower immigrants. For several centuries, the Mashpee Wampanoag, who also has their own town, governed itself as any independent Massachusetts town. When they lost Indian control of the government through the democratic process, they decided that it was time to finally be recognized as a separate Indian Nation. The people we’ve come to know as Pilgrims didn’t even call themselves Pilgrims. Those who were members of the Separatist Church Movement referred to themselves as ‘Saints.’ About 60 others who came over in the Mayflower with them were called ‘Strangers.’ But they all knew how to have fun and enjoy life. They made and drank a lot of beer, hard cider and something like today’s brandy. Occasionally there was drunkenness and fighting. When the settlers had the first Thanksgiving giving in 1621, they almost certainly had eel, which the Indians taught them to catch; Turkeys are not mentioned until many years after 1621. There were 90 Indians in attendance – and only 50 English. That’s considerably different from the pictures you see of many black-garbed Pilgrims sitting around a table with an Indian at each end. We know the Pilgrims wore very colorful clothes. And the settlers wore boots, not the black shoes with the big buckles you always see in pictures. That was a style of clothing that came along many years later in England. What’s more, the first Thanksgiving didn’t take place in November. The celebration we’ve come to call Thanksgiving is really an outgrowth of the harvest home celebration that goes all the way back to the middle Ages. It was a celebration held when a bumper crop came in and was almost always held in September or October at the latest. AND I BET YOU DID NOT KNOW THIS: November is American Indian Heritage Month…. And thanksgiving is the Native American Indian “Day of Mourning” started in 1970. Who can blame them, but you cannot change history and what is happening now…. The majority of Americans celebrate Thanksgiving as a National Holiday and a day of Thanksgiving with the main meat in the meal being a Turkey. Approximately 45 million turkeys are killed and eaten on Thanksgiving Day…. And it has been celebrated as a Federal Holiday since 1863 and on the last Thursday of November. President George H.W. Bush was the first to actually offer a turkey pardon. On November 14, 1989, he announced that year’s bird had “been granted a presidential pardon as of right now.” He sent the turkey on his way to the perhaps unfortunately named Frying Pan Park in Herndon, Virginia, and with that, a tradition was born. LA FIN….
Posted on: Wed, 26 Nov 2014 20:51:25 +0000
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