The dark history behind the origins of Thanksgiving
Written by: María Paula Marín 10B
Thanksgiving is an American holiday meant to celebrate and be grateful for our blessings and the friendship of others. However, what we may not know is the dark history behind this celebration. Even though the overall idea behind it is great; it still doesn’t change the fact that it’s a holiday surrounded by tales of blood, brutality, and slaughter.
As kids, many of us probably learned a sanitized version of the first Thanksgiving story. As a matter of fact, many history books include this so-called “sanitized” version of the story. Hence why we need to be careful with how reliable the information we receive can be. Most of the human history we learn at school and through text books is based on the point of view of white supremacists or people who back in the day had a lot of power, and therefore twisted the events of a story to their liking. Given this idea, one can claim that Thanksgiving is an American holiday whose background story is included as one of the many biggest lies taught throughout history. While it's true that the settlers at Plymouth and their allies from the Wampanoag tribe gathered in 1621 for a three-day feast to celebrate the settlers' first successful harvest, that's far from the end of the tale.
Initially, the Plymouth settlers (Pilgrims) held rather good relations with the Wampanoag tribe, yet this friendship quickly eroded. Gradually, the colonists of Plymouth, though indebted to the Wampanoag, took over their land and strained them. Even though the natives had been nothing but kind to the Pilgrims after their arrival in the New World; they endured oppression and injustice. Later on, after having had enough and willing to fight back, a new leader rose to power among the Wampanoag: Metacomet. In 1675, Metacomet ordered raids against the colonies after many of his men were executed for murdering a Ponkapoag interpreter. As a result, in 1675 the conflict led to a calamitous, all-out war. And the consequences, surely enough, were catastrophic. On top of famine and disease, raids grew increasingly common. Abductions and slaughter became everyday affairs; but whereas the colonists had the privilege of relocating to more fortified settlements, the Wampanoag were simply forced to leave their villages and flee to distant regions.
To say Native Americans suffered greatly with the arrival of ambitious conquerors is putting it mildly. Their homes were obliterated, their way of life was basically destroyed, and their community was massacred. Therefore, I consider that Thanksgiving should be much more than a day in which we are grateful for our blessings and the friendship of others. Thanksgiving should also be a day of remembrance of those who were unfairly killed due to human greed.
Sources:
- https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/holidays/thanksgiving-ideas/a33446829/thanksgiving-history/
- https://culturacolectiva.com/history/true-and-bloody-origins-of-thanksgiving