Thanksgiving

One of the most cherished American holidays is Thanksgiving, a day that Abraham Lincoln officially declared in 1863 in praise of “our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.” In the early 1900s, Gimbels and Macy’s saw dollar signs and commandeered the celebration, evicted the heavenly Father altogether, added a parade with Santa Claus, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Every American school child learns of the harvest feast where the friendly local Indians broke bread and shared turkey with the black-hatted, big-buckled European Pilgrims in a festival of interracial harmony and mutual respect. Yet, there is almost nothing true about that idyllic scenario—not even the turkey. This comforting mythology has concealed some of the bloodiest acts of race hate in American history. Let us pull the stuffing out of this Thanksgiving myth and get down to the bones of the Thanksgiving idea, which has some harsh and disturbing truths.

First, let us look at these so-called Pilgrims. Most people don’t know that there were 102 British passengers on the 1620 voyage of the Mayflower, but those we now call Pilgrims numbered only 35—the rest were an assortment of dregs, cutthroats, and criminals. Their journey to Indian lands was financed by wealthy Englishmen, who sought profits from the exploitation of the lumber and furs found there in abundance. The quest for “religious liberty” was hardly the concern of these investors and one would be hard-pressed to find God anywhere near the venture. The “Pilgrim Fathers”—who, interestingly, called themselves Separatists, not Pilgrims—came to this new world with many more muskets than bibles; indeed, they came ready to conquer, not to pray. By the time the Mayflower arrived, the Indians, who had barely survived an earlier invasion of Europeans, shunned contact with these newcomers and retreated inland.

They were smart. As soon as the Europeans set foot upon the shore (there actually never was a “Plymouth Rock”), and before the Whites even saw their first Indian, they set about to pillage their surroundings:

To the Indians this was frighteningly familiar. Still, they tried to make peace with these strange and violent people from across the sea. The Indian Squanto had been kidnapped in an earlier British invasion and forcibly taken to Europe. Somehow he made his way back to America, and, having learned English, he was sent out to “greet” the newcomers.

Despite the assistance of the Indian farmers the Pilgrim crop had failed miserably in 1621, but the Indians produced twenty acres of corn without which the colonists would have surely perished. They held a feast and invited the Indian leader Massasoit, and it was Massasoit—not the Pilgrims—who then invited ninety or more of his fellow Indians. No turkey, cranberry sauce, or pumpkin pie was served; no prayers were offered and the Indians were not invited back. The Pilgrims did however consume a good deal of beer. In fact, each Pilgrim drank at least a half gallon of ale a day, which they preferred even to water. It may be about the only Thanksgiving tradition that has survived intact to this day.

But there is more troubling reality behind this interracial gathering. The Europeans erected an 11-foot-high wall around their entire settlement for the purpose of keeping the Indians out. Just days before the “feast,” a gang of Pilgrims actively sought to murder a local Indian leader. They eventually killed and beheaded an Indian, brought the head to their Plymouth compound, where they impaled it on a wooden spike, and displayed it for many years.

By 1636, these Pilgrims had been joined by many more even “holier” European colonists known as Puritans, and their thirst for Indian blood could only be described as insatiable. They trapped some 700 Pequot Indian men, women, and children near the mouth of the Mystic River and attacked them with unrelenting military force. Only a handful escaped and few prisoners were taken. They wrote proudly of the massacre: “To see [the Indians] frying in the fire, and the streams of their blood quenching the same, and the stench was horrible; but the victory seemed a sweet sacrifice, and they gave praise thereof to God.” This event marked what was most likely the first actual Thanksgiving.

Soon, the European intruders were in a full-scale war with the Indians. A people who had for thousands of years been peaceable farmers were now forced into humiliating submission. They struck out in 1675 with raids on several isolated frontier towns, but the unrelenting aggression of the White man was too much to overcome. It took only a half a century for the Europeans to annihilate the Red nation—it must have been a record even for them. Historian Douglas Edward Leach describes the bitter end: “The ruthless executions, the cruel sentences … were all aimed at the same goal—unchallengeable white supremacy in southern New England.”

When Captain Benjamin Church tracked down and murdered the Indian leader Metacomet, his body was cut into four parts and “left for the wolves.” His hands were cut off and sent to Boston and his head went to Plymouth, where it was set upon a pole on Thanksgiving Day, 1676! Metacomet’s nine-year-old son was destined for execution, the Puritan reasoning being that the offspring of the devil must pay for the sins of their father. He was instead shipped to the Caribbean to serve his life in slavery.

In the midst of the Holocaust against the Red Man, Massachusetts Governor Joseph Dudley declared in 1704 a “General Thanksgiving”—not to celebrate the brotherhood of man, but for “[God’s] infinite Goodness to extend His Favors … In defeating and disappointing … the Expeditions of the Enemy [Indians] against us, And the good Success given us against them, by delivering so many of them into our hands …”

Just two years later one could reap about a $100 reward in Massachusetts for the scalp of an Indian. According to one scholar, “Hunting redskins became … a popular sport in New England, especially since prisoners were worth good money …”

If this is the first time you have heard any of this history, don’t get mad at The Nation of Islam. Ask your teachers why they didn’t tell you. Ask them what’s behind their other cherished holidays and traditions.

(Much of this information with references can be found in the book The Hidden History of Massachusetts: A Guide for Black Folks.)
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You are fully at liberty to believe what the Wiki tells us about Squanto. I am suspicious.

Squanto ex Wiki
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Tisquantum ( c. 1585 (±10 years?) – late November 1622 O.S.), more commonly known as Squanto, was a member of the Patuxet tribe best known for being an early liaison between the Native American population in Southern New England and the Mayflower Pilgrims who made their settlement at the site of Tisquantum's former summer village. The Patuxet tribe had lived on the western coast of Cape Cod Bay, but they were wiped out by an epidemic infection, likely brought by previous European explorers.

Tisquantum was kidnapped by English explorer Thomas Hunt who carried him to Spain, where he sold him in the city of Málaga. He was among a number of captives bought by local monks who focused on their education and evangelization. Tisquantum eventually traveled to England, where he may have met Pocahontas, a Native American from Virginia, in 1616–1617.^[1] He then returned to America in 1619 to his native village, only to find that his tribe had been wiped out by an epidemic infection; Tisquantum was the last of the Patuxets, and went to live with the Wampanoags.

The Mayflower landed in Cape Cod Bay in 1620, and Tisquantum worked to broker peaceable relations between the Pilgrims and the local Pokanokets. He played a key role in the early meetings in March 1621, partly because he spoke English. He then lived with the Pilgrims for 20 months, acting as an interpreter, guide, and advisor. He introduced the settlers to the fur trade and taught them how to sow and fertilize native crops; this proved vital, because the seeds which the Pilgrims had brought from England mostly failed. As food shortages worsened, Plymouth Colony Governor William Bradford relied on Tisquantum to pilot a ship of settlers on a trading expedition around Cape Cod and through dangerous shoals. During that voyage, Tisquantum contracted what Bradford called an "Indian fever". Bradford stayed with him for several days until he died, which Bradford described as a "great loss".
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True or false? Pass. True in parts, I suspect. Lying by omission is easier to get away with the the lie direct.

Mayflower ex Wiki
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Mayflower was an English ship that transported a group of English families, known today as the Pilgrims, from England to the New World in 1620. After a grueling 10 weeks at sea, Mayflower, with 102 passengers and a crew of about 30, reached America, dropping anchor near the tip of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, on November 21 [O.S. November 11], 1620.

Differing from their contemporaries, the Puritans (who sought to reform and purify the Church of England), the Pilgrims chose to separate themselves from the Church of England because they believed it was beyond redemption due to its Roman Catholic past and the church's resistance to reform, which forced them to pray in private. Starting 1608, a group of English families left England for the Netherlands, where they could worship freely. By 1620, the community determined to cross the Atlantic for America, which they considered a "new Promised Land," where they would establish Plymouth Colony.^[2]^: 44

The Pilgrims had originally hoped to reach America by early October using two ships, but delays and complications meant they could use only one, Mayflower. Arriving in November, they had to survive unprepared through a harsh winter. As a result, only half of the original Pilgrims survived the first winter at Plymouth. If not for the help of local Indigenous peoples to teach them food gathering and other survival skills, all of the colonists might have perished. The following year, those 53 who survived,^[3] celebrated the colony's first fall harvest along with 90 Wampanoag Native American people,^[4] an occasion declared in centuries later the first American Thanksgiving.^[5]

Before disembarking the Mayflower, the Pilgrims wrote and signed the Mayflower Compact, an agreement that established a rudimentary government, in which each member would contribute to the safety and welfare of the planned settlement. As one of the earliest colonial vessels, the ship has become a cultural icon in the history of the United States.^[6] Celebrations for the 400th Anniversary of the landing were planned during 2020 in the U.S., United Kingdom and the Netherlands, but the COVID-19 pandemic put some of those plans on hold. The U.S. Postal Service issued a new Mayflower stamp which went on sale September 17, 2020.
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It was English immigration in fact. They were mainly Puritans, self righteous bores who didn't like the attitudes of the Church of England. The crew were rather different it seems.

New England ex Wiki
New England is a region comprising six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York to the west and by the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick to the northeast and Quebec to the north. The Atlantic Ocean is to the east and southeast, and Long Island Sound is to the southwest. Boston is New England's largest city, as well as the capital of Massachusetts. Greater Boston is the largest metropolitan area, with nearly a third of New England's population; this area includes Worcester, Massachusetts (the second-largest city in New England), Manchester, New Hampshire (the largest city in New Hampshire), and Providence, Rhode Island (the capital of and largest city in Rhode Island).

In 1620, the Pilgrims, Puritan Separatists from England, established Plymouth Colony, the second successful English settlement in America, following the Jamestown Settlement in Virginia founded in 1607. Ten years later, more Puritans established Massachusetts Bay Colony north of Plymouth Colony. Over the next 126 years, people in the region fought in four French and Indian Wars, until the English colonists and their Iroquois allies defeated the French and their Algonquian allies in America. In 1692, the town of Salem, Massachusetts, and surrounding areas experienced the Salem witch trials, one of the most infamous cases of mass hysteria in American history.^[3]

In the late 18th century, political leaders from the New England colonies initiated resistance to Britain's taxes without the consent of the colonists. Residents of Rhode Island captured and burned a British ship which was enforcing unpopular trade restrictions, and residents of Boston threw British tea into the harbor. Britain responded with a series of punitive laws stripping Massachusetts of self-government which the colonists called the "Intolerable Acts". These confrontations led to the first battles of the American Revolutionary War in 1775 and the expulsion of the British authorities from the region in spring 1776. The region played a prominent role in the movement to abolish slavery in the United States, and it was the first region of the U.S. transformed by the Industrial Revolution, initially centered on the Blackstone and Merrimack river valleys.

The physical geography of New England is diverse. Southeastern New England is covered by a narrow coastal plain, while the western and northern regions are dominated by the rolling hills and worn-down peaks of the northern end of the Appalachian Mountains. The Atlantic fall line lies close to the coast, which enabled numerous cities to take advantage of water power along the many rivers, such as the Connecticut River, which bisects the region from north to south.

Each state is generally subdivided into small municipalities known as towns, many of which are governed by town meetings. While unincorporated areas do exist, they are limited to roughly half of Maine, along with some isolated, sparsely populated northern regions of New Hampshire and Vermont. New England is one of the U.S. Census Bureau's nine regional divisions and the only multi-state region with clear, consistent boundaries. It maintains a strong sense of cultural identity,^[4] although the terms of this identity are often contrasted, combining Puritanism with liberalism, agrarian life with industry, and isolation with immigration.

Wampanoag ex Wiki
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The Wampanoag /ˈwɑːmpənɔːɡ/, also rendered Wôpanâak, are a Native American people. They were a loose confederation of several tribes in the 17th century, but today Wampanoag people encompass five officially recognized tribes. The Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe and the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head in Massachusetts are federally recognized, and the Chappaquiddick Wampanoag Tribe, Herring Pond Wampanoag Tribe, Assawompsett-Nemasket Band of Wampanoags, and Pocasset Wampanoag Tribe (Pokonoket) are recognized by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.^[3] They lived in southeastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island in the beginning of the 17th century, at the time of first contact with the English colonists, a territory that included the islands of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket. Their population numbered in the thousands; 3,000 Wampanoag lived on Martha's Vineyard alone.

From 1615 to 1619, the Wampanoag suffered an epidemic, long suspected to be smallpox. Modern research, however, has suggested that it may have been leptospirosis, a bacterial infection which can develop into Weil's syndrome. It caused a high fatality rate and decimated the Wampanoag population. Researchers suggest that the losses from the epidemic were so large that colonists were able to establish their settlements in the Massachusetts Bay Colony more easily.^[4] More than 50 years later, King Philip's War (1675–1676) of the Narragansett and their allies against the colonists and their Native American allies resulted in the death of 40 percent of the surviving tribe. Many male Wampanoag were sold into slavery in Bermuda or the West Indies, and some women and children were enslaved by colonists in New England.

The tribe largely disappeared from historical records after the late 18th century, although its people and descendants persisted. Survivors continued to live in their traditional areas and maintained many aspects of their culture, while absorbing other peoples by marriage and adapting to changing economic and cultural needs in the larger society. Jessie Little Doe Baird, a member of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, founded the Wôpanâak Language Reclamation Project in 1993.
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They faded away? It can take a degree of ruthlessness to survive this wicked world.

Norsemen in North America ex Wiki
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The Norse exploration of North America began in the late 10th century, when Norsemen explored areas of the North Atlantic colonizing Greenland and creating a short term settlement near the northern tip of Newfoundland. This is known now as L'Anse aux Meadows where the remains of buildings were found in 1960 dating to approximately 1,000 years ago.^[1]^[2]^[3] This discovery aided the reignition of archaeological exploration for the Norse in the North Atlantic.^[4] This single settlement, located in the island of Newfoundland and not in the North American mainland, was abruptly abandoned.

The Norse settlements on the North American island of Greenland lasted for almost 500 years. L'Anse aux Meadows, the only confirmed Norse site in present-day Canada,^[5] was small and did not last as long. Voyages are likely to have occurred for some time, but there is no evidence of any Norse settlement on mainland North America lasting beyond the 11th century.

The Norse exploration of North America has been subject to numerous controversies concerning the European exploration and Settlement of North America.^[6] Numerous pseudoscientific and pseudo-historical theories have emerged since the public acknowledgment of these Norse expeditions and settlements.^[6] Various archaeological hoaxes and misattributed findings have also plagued this topic, with many of these spawning from fringe theories of extensive Norse exploration and settlement in North America.
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They came, they went. C'est la vie.

Thanksgiving

Where’s the ‘Thanks’ in Thanksgiving?