The First (North American) Thanksgiving. (With a shout out to Craig Beard, Canadian historian).

1621,with the Pilgrims and local Natives, right?

Not hardly, buckwheat.

1578 with Marin Frobisher and his men holding a Thanksgiving feast, somewhere in North America, thankful for not dying crossing the Atlantic.  It might have been in Newfoundland, or maybe on the Canadian Atlantic Arctic, or maybe somewhere else on the Canadian Atlantic coast.

Frobisher was an explorer and privateer and, interestingly enough, died in the manner depicted as a danger in Master and Commander. I.e, he was shot in an engagement with the Spanish and the surgeon extracted the ball, but not the patching, which infected.

Doesn't county? Well, some 39 years later, Samuel de Champlain held one in Quebec with the Québécois, probably not called that yet, and the Mi'kmaq. Cranberries were served.  I don't know about turkey, but could be.  Quebec is within the historic range of turkeys.

All of the above courtesy of Craig Beard.

But wait, Don Pedro Menéndez de Avilés had a Mass of Thanksgiving celebrated on September 8, 1565 upon his landing in Florida.  That beats out Frobisher by over a decade.  And if that doesn't count, coming after Frobisher, but before Champlain, was Juan de Oñate in 1598, who led an expedition of 500 people, and 7,000 head of livestock through the harsh Chihuahua to a location that is now El Paso and, on April 30, 1598 dedicated a day of Thanksgiving.

What does all this tell us?  Well, what we've noted before. Thanksgivings are a common thing in Christian cultures.  The "first" Thanksgiving really wasn't, and it wasn't particularly unique.

Sunday, November 12, 1623. Josaphat Kuntsevych, Bishop of the Ruthenian Catholic Church (Ukrainian Catholic Church, was martyred in Vitebsk, Belarus.

On this day in 1623 Josaphat Kuntsevych, Bishop of the Ruthenian Catholic Church (Ukrainian Catholic Church, was martyred in Vitebsk, Belarus, which was the part of the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth.

He had been ordained in as an Eastern Catholic priest in 1609.  Living in a region in which the Orthodox Church had been strong, he faced opposition in his clerical duties but movement towards union with Rome was building in the area and as there was building assent to the Union of Brest.  In 1620 this began to be opposed when Cossacks intervened in the region.  In 1623, Josaphat, by then a Bishop, ordered the arrest of the sole remaining priest who was offering Orthodox services in Vitebsk which resulted in his murder by some Orthodox townspeople.  Some have suggested that, however, Lithuanian Protestants were secretly the instigators of the action.

His body is in Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome, and he is recognized as a martyr by the Church.

This points out a lot of interesting aspects of history that in the United States, and indeed many places, are poorly understood.  For one thing, there have been repeated efforts to reunite the East and West in Apostolic Christianity, and on several occasions they've been highly successful.  The seeming final breach between the East and West did not really come until the fall of Constantinople in 1453 and indeed at that time the East and West were largely reunited. Following the return of the schism, over the next 500+ years various churches in the East have returned to communion with Rome.  The Schism should have completely ended following the Council of Florence, in which the Eastern Bishops agreed to reunion, but resistance at the parishioner level precluded it, just as can be seen to be a factor here.  Resistance higher up, sometimes violent, has also had an impact, however, as at least in one occasion Russian Orthodox Bishops affecting a reunion were murdered.  At the present time, it seems clear that the Metropolitan of Constantinople, the senior Bishop of the Eastern Orthodox, would end the schism as to his church but for fear of parishioner and cleric level resistance.

Rodrigo de Arriaga professed vows to become a Jesuit Priest.  He was one of the leading Spanish Jesuits of his day.

Today In Wyoming's History: Wyoming has 43 federal places with 'squaw' in the name. A recent order will change that. Taking a closer look.

Today In Wyoming's History: Today In Wyoming's History: Wyoming has 43 federal...: 

Today In Wyoming's History: Wyoming has 43 federal places with 'squaw' in the name. A recent order will change that. Taking a closer look.

Arapaho woman (Hisei), late 19th Century.

Today In Wyoming's History: Wyoming has 43 federal places with 'squaw' in the ...:   Wyoming has 43 federal places with 'squaw' in the name. A recent order will change that.

So, what are they?

Takluit woman, 1910.  The coins are Chinese.

First, a precautionary note. Even setting the word squaw aside, some of these could legitimately be regarded as otherwise offensive.  I.e., if you edit "squaw" out and substitute for Indian Woman, or Native American Woman, some would still be offensive.

Hopi woman, 1900.

Okay, according to the Federal Government, this is the list in Wyoming.

I'll note right away that I know this list to be inaccurate at least in so far as what things are apparently actually called, as the clearly offensive "Squaw Teat" actually also applies to a peak, or high hill, in Natrona County.

Mohave woman, 1903.

And the last item, in case anyone wonders, is listed there as it was renamed recently from a name that formerly included the word squaw in it.

And we'd also note that one is a historical place name of a now abandoned settlement.  You probably can't, or at least shouldn't, do something in regard to that.

So let's next start first with the ultimate question  Is it offensive?

Native American woman in Oklahoma, 1939.

Let's take a look at an article recently published in Indian Country Today on that question, here's what they partially had to say on that.  For the full article, you should go to Indian Country Today.

Some historical connections

According to Dr. Marge Bruchac, an Abenaki historical consultant, Squaw means the totality of being female and the Algonquin version of the word “esqua,” “squa” “skwa” does not translate to a woman’s female anatomy. 

Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary defines the term as “often offensive: an American Indian woman” and “usually disparaging: woman, wife.”

The Urban Dictionary paints a different picture. It says the word squaw “Does not mean vagina, or any other body part for that matter. The word comes from the Massachusett (no S) Algonquian tribe and means: female, young woman. The word squaw is not related to the Mohawk word ‘ojiskwa’: which does mean vagina. There is absolutely no derogatory meaning in the word ‘squaw.’ ‘Squaw’ has been a familiar word in American literature and language since the 16th century and has been generally understood to mean an Indian woman, or wife.” It is worth noting the Urban Dictionary is not an authoritative Native source.

In her article “Reclaiming the word ‘Squaw’ in the Name of the Ancestors,” Dr. Bruchac wrote the following excerpt about the meaning of squaw.

“The word has been interpreted by modern activists as a slanderous assault against Native American women. But traditional Algonkian speakers, in both Indian and English, still say words like ‘nidobaskwa’=a female friend, ‘manigebeskwa’=woman of the woods, or ‘Squaw Sachem’=female chief. When Abenaki people sing the Birth Song, they address ‘nuncksquassis’=‘little woman baby’.”

“I understand the concern of Indian women who feel insulted by this word, but I respectfully suggest that we reclaim our language rather than let it be taken over,” wrote Bruchac.

The first recorded version of squaw was found in a book called Mourt’s Relation: A Journey of the Pilgrims at Plymouth written in 1622. The term was not used in a derogatory fashion but spoke of the “squa sachim or Massachusets Queen” in the September 20, 1621 journal entry.

Though the earliest historical references support a non-offensive slant on the meaning of squaw and support Bruchac’s claims, there are also several literary and historical instances of squaw being used in a derogatory or sexually connotative way.

According to some proponents on the inflammatory side of the words meaning, squaw could just as easily have come from the Mohawk word ojiskwa’ which translates politely to vagina.

In the 1892 book An Algonquin Maiden by Canadian writer Pauline Johnson, whose father was a Mohawk Chief, the word squaw indicates a sexual meaning.

“Poor little Wanda! not only is she non-descript and ill-starred, but as usual the authors take away her love, her life, and last and most terrible of all, reputation; for they permit a crowd of men-friends of the hero to call her a ‘squaw’ and neither hero nor authors deny that she is a squaw. It is almost too sad when so much prejudice exists against the Indians, that any one should write up an Indian heroine with such glaring accusations against her virtue…”

So, what can we say?

Well, not knowing for sure, as I'm certainly not a linguist with a knowledge of any of these languages, and it's clear that linguist don't agree themselves, I suspect that Dr. Burchac is correct. The origin is likely from a native language and unlikely to have had an offensive origin.

But that doesn't really fully answer the question, and it's a really touchy one, which I'd bet Dr. Burchac will acknowledge.

At its bare root, the word means an Indian, or perhaps more accurately now, a Native American, woman, the same way that "papoose" has been used in the past to describe a Native American baby, and "brave" has inaccurately been used to describe all Native American men (although also the much more offensive "buck" also shows up in that use).  Simply left at that, it's probably no more offensive than the word "Frau" and "Fräulein" are to describe German women, or Madam and Mademoiselle, or Señora and Señorita are in French and Spanish respectively.

Two Charger Woman, a Brule Sioux, 1907.

Indeed, in a certain context, maybe even less so, as it at least is an acknowledgement to culture.  And that sort of seems how the original use was.  The 1622 use is not only amazingly early, it was an attempt at being descriptive and providing an honorific, the "Massachusetts Queen".  In that context, the early use of the work seems to have conveyed gender and ethnicity at the same time.

Woman Of Many Deeds, the granddaughter of Red Cloud, 1907.  Note the crucifix, she was Catholic, as the Red Could family was.

It's later uses that become the problem.  And that takes us quite a ways back in and of itself.

European colonization of the New World can really be viewed as colonization by three different ethnic groups for the most part, two Catholic and one Protestant.*  While early on the original European view seems to have been largely similar among all three groups, by the mid 1600s this was changing.  It would not be fair, we'd note, to really lump this into two groups, as it wouldn't be fair to compare the Spanish with the French.  And from the lens of 2021 looking at things that occurred in 1621 is fraught with dangers inherent in misconceptions and filtration through current views.

Dusty Dress, 1910.

Very generally, however, English colonists had a fascination with Native Americans when they first landed in North America, and were pretty open to the native cultures.  French colonization started at just about the same time as the English, for all practical purposes, and the French had a highly open view of the Native populations.  The Spanish started almost 3/4s of a century earlier, and their early interactions are considerably more complicated.  All three populations were not averse to mixing with Native populations at first, with the French and Spanish being very open to it, particularly in the case of the French whose Catholic faith had instructed them that the Natives were just as much children of God as they were.  This was also true of the Spanish, but the Spanish had met with considerably more armed resistance even by the 17th Century than either the English or the French had.

Papago woman, 1907.

Things really began to fall apart, however, for the English with King Philips War, which broke out in 1675 and ran through 1678.  Hard and brutally fought, the English began to pretty quickly modify their view of Native Americans in general. While, from our prospective, the war was a cleverly fought and logical Native reaction to an invasion, from the English prospective of the period it was a bitter betrayal by a heathenous people.

Lucy  Coyote

From that point on the English, and soon we might say the American, view of Native Americans was much different than the French or the Spanish one.  The French had their run-ins with native bands, but having colonized New France to a much smaller degree, they also tended to engage the Natives in commerce really quickly and their Catholicism caused them to regard the Natives in their region as souls to be brought into the Church, with intermarriage soon to be common.  The Spanish largely took the same view, although in their case they also ran into some large, and well organized, bands that put up fierce resistance to their presence, giving them, as previously noted, a more nuanced view. Nonetheless, the view of Spanish colonists is perhaps best reflected in that the populations of much of South and Central America today are from mixed Spanish and Native heritage.  In what became Canada it gave rise ultimately to the Métis, a recognized "native", but in fact mixed heritage, group of people with their own unique history.

In the Thirteen Colonies it gave rise to pretty bitter struggles which merged into bitter American ones with native bands once the Crown was ejected from what became the United States.  The intent here isn't to give a legal or military history of the events, but to only note it in the context of what's being discussed.

Alice Pat-E-Wa, 1900.

Humans being human, the ethnic struggle did not prove to be a bar to intermixing. This occurred simply naturally, and violently.  And this resulted in an interesting and opposing set of views.

"The Trapper's Bride" by Alfred Jacob Miller.  Miller painted versions of this scense at least three times, probably by request.

On the frontier, which was male dominated, frontiersmen fairly routinely began to take Native American wives.  For those of French origin this was highly common, but it was quite common for those of English heritage, or "American" heritage as well. At the same time, however, Native Americans were a looked down upon minority class who were in the way of what was regarded as progress, even though they were simultaneously celebrated as "noble savages".  Reconciling these views is difficult to do, but they were held be Americans simultaneously.  

Annie Kash-Kash, 1899.

What we can say, however, is that these relationships were likely as varied as any other, but we shouldn't presume by any means that they were forced.  In some instances, they likely were, or were relationships darned near akin to slavery.  An earlier article on Sacajawea we published here discussed a circumstance that certainly raises such questions.  At the same time, however. you can find such as Wyoming frontiersman John Robinson who married Native women twice and genuinely.  Famed scout Kit Carson had more than one Native bride.  And an extended view may be given of a Swiss artists, whose name I have forgotten, who went West to sketch Plains Indians and returned to Switzerland with a Native bride, an illustration of whom shows upon the book Man Made Mobile.

An historically important example is given in the example of William Bent and Owl Woman, the latter of whom was a Cheyenne.  Bent, who together with his brother Charles, were very successful traders in Colorado and New Mexico ultimately ended up with three Cheyenne wives, as he followed a Cheyenne custom and married Owl Woman's two younger sisters.  Charles became Governor of New Mexico.  William Bent and Owl Woman had a large, and historically significant family, although she died when some of their children were still quite young and her sister Island became their surrogate mother.  His two Cheyenne wives ultimately abandoned him, and then he married a "mixed" Indian/European woman of age 20, when he was 60, dying the following year.

George Bent and his wife Magpie.  Bent served as an underaged cavalryman in the Confederate Army before he was captured and paroled.  Upon his return to Colorado his father sent him to live with his aunt with the Cheyenne and he was at Sand Creek when it was attacked by Colorado militia.  Ironically, a brother of his was serving with the militia as a scout.  Bent was married three times, with all of his wives being Native Americans.

All of this is noted as William Bent's marriage into a Cheyenne family worked enormously to his advantage.  At the same time, his children lived in both worlds, taking part in the Plains struggle largely on the Cheyenne side.  George Bent contributed to one of the great accounts of the period.  William Bent's marriage into a Native family was not held against him.

Native woman from Pacific Northwest.

These matches show how complicated such things can become in some ways, and how simple in others.  They were mostly men taking Native women as brides, but there are few examples at least that are the other way around.    Nonetheless, at the same time, European Americans could dismiss Native brides pretty condescendingly as well as their husbands, who ended up with the pejorative "Squaw Men".

This, then is what gives rise to the problem.  By the late 19th Century if not considerably earlier, the use of the word "squaw" could mean simply a woman of Native ethnicity, or it could be a slam on the woman herself and her entire ethnicity.  And of course, for most Native women the word was not one from their own languages and therefore only had the meanings that others from the outside attributed to it.

Cheyenne woman, 1910.

That legacy has continued on, although the word simply isn't used now, at least not without intending to convey a shocking insult.

Be that as it may, that leaves us with the over 40 place names that bear that name in Wyoming and numerous others in other states. What did those people mean?  At the time they named them, they may have simply been so acclimated to the term that they meant nothing in particular. "Squaw Creek", for example, displays an obvious intent to name a creek after an Indian woman or women, but why?  Most of the others are the same way. The odd exception may be the ones named after breasts, but then the Grand Tetons are as well, and it isn't really clear whether we should regard the nameless French trapper who termed them that as of a higher mind, for naming the mountains after breasts in general, rather than after those for women who happened to be around, or whether we ought to simply dismiss all such names as of an excessively prurient nature, which would probably be more accurate, really.

Cayuse woman, 1910.

So what to do?

Well, whatever is done, I hope they don't scrub the women out of the names.  Squaw Creeks, for example, were named after Native women for some reason. That ought to be preserved.

And beyond that, there's a terrible tendency to treat these matters, which are cosmetic, as if they really pay attention to deeper problems that face Native Americans today.  Far too often those who seek to "help" Native Americans imagine them as a people of the past, when in fact they're very much a people of the present.  Ignoring that fact does no good for them at all.

Footnotes:

*This obviously omits the Russians, who were the original colonizers of Alaska and who had a settlement as far south as California, and it unfairly lumps the English and Scottish together, even though they are seperate people and that reflected itself in early immigration to North America.

Blog Mirror: Could you do Thanksgiving like it's 1621? An Agrarian Thanksgiving

Could you do Thanksgiving like it's 1621? An Agrarian Thanksgiving

 - November 25, 2021

I wrote out a blog entry for Lex Anteinternet on what the first Thanksgiving Dinner in 1621 must have been like.

Pheasants.

It really surprised me, even though it shouldn't.  We modern Americans are so used to the "poverty of resources of our ancestors" story that, well, we believe it.  In reality, that first gathering in English North America to celebrate God's bounty and give thanks for it, no matter how imperfect the Church of England and Puritan celebrants, and the native ones as well, was a really bountiful feast.  I've joked in the past that it probably consisted of salt cod, but in fact it seems likely to have featured waterfowl, maybe turkey, deer, mussels and quite an abundance of other foods stuffs.

Unlike now, what it didn't feature was pie, probably, even though pies of all sorts were a feature of the English diet, although at this point I frankly wonder. What would have kept there from being pie would have been a lack of wheat, as that crop wouldn't have come around for at least a few years. And the lack of a grain crop meant that there wouldn't have been beer, if that's something your Thanksgiving usually features (mine does).  It's an open question if there would have been wine.  There would have been a lot of fresh vegetables, however, as well as fresh foul, venison and fresh fish.

It would have been a good meal, in some ways one we'd recognize, but also one in which we might note some things were missing.  No potatoes, for example.

This set me to wondering what a killetarian/agrarian like me might end up with if allowed to do a  Thanksgiving Dinner all of stuff I'd shot or gathered.  Could I do it?

Well, there'd be no mussels on my table, but most years there would be fare similar to what the first celebrants had.  There are wild turkeys in my region, although I failed to get one this year.  Events conspired against me and I didn't get a deer (at least yet) either.  But if I had a major dinner, and time, I think I could muster it.  It might be pheasant rather than turkey, or a wild turkey, which is really no different in taste, only in bulk, from the domestic ones.

The challenge, however, would be vegetables, depending upon how feral I'd take this endeavor.  If I went full hunter/gatherer, here I'd really be in trouble.  I frankly know next to nothing about edible wild plants.

Now, starting off, I'd note that in my region, like the rest of the globe, a vegetarian would have starved to death in a few days prior to production agriculture.  It's not only an unnatural diet, but it's impossible up until that time.  Indeed, one of the ironies of agriculture has been the introduction of unnatural diets.  When you read, for example, of the Irish poor living on potatoes and oatmeal, while that's not what their Celtic ancestors had eaten prior to 1) row crop agriculture, and 2) the English.  Shoot, potatoes aren't even native to Ireland.

Anyhow, I note that as the native peoples of the plains were more heavily meat eaters than anything else, as that's what there was to eat.  But there is some edible vegetation.

I just don't know much about it.

I guess I'd start off with that I knwo that there's a collection of native berries you can eat.  I mostly know about this as my mohter used to collect some and make wine with them, and I've had syrup and jelly made with them as well. UW publishes a short pamphlet on them, which is available here.  There are also wild leeks, which my mother and father, and at least one of my boyhood friends would recognize, which my mother inaccurately called "wild onions".

And that's about all I know about that.

Which isn't enough to make much of a meal.

Now, a person could probably research this and learn more, and I should, simply because I'd like to know.  Indeed, on the Wind River Indian Reservation there's a "food sovereignty" movement which seeks to reintroduce native foods to the residents there in order to combat health problems, which is a really interesting idea and I hope it has some success.  I hope that they also publish some things on this topic, assuming that they haven't already.

So, in short, at least based on what the present state of my knowledge is, the Thanksgiving fare would be pretty limited, vegetable wise.

Now, what about grow your own?

Well, if expanded out to include what I can grow myself, well now we're on to something else indeed. . . assuming that I can get my pump fixed, which I haven't, solely due to me.

If I were to do that, then I'm almost fully there for a traditional Thanksgiving Dinner, omitting only the bread and cranberry sauce.

And I'm not omitting the cranberry sauce.

I'm not omitting the bread, either.

Frankly, I think the modern "bread is bad for you" story is a pile of crap.  People have incorporated grains into their diet for thousands of years.  To the extent that its bad for you, it's likely because Americans don't eat bread, they eat cake.  That's what American bread is.

Of course, I think the keto diet is a pile of crap too, which I discuss on another Lex Anteinternet post.  So here, I'd have to make bread, or buy it, and I'd prefer to make it. Soda bread more particularly.

On this, I'd be inclined, if I could to have an alcoholic beverage for the table, which is another thing, albeit a dangerous one, that humans have been doing since . . . well too long to tell.  The Mayflower sojourners started off their voyage with a stock of beer. . . ironically in a ship that had once been used to haul wine, but they were out when they put in at Plymouth Rock.  By the fall of 1621 it's unlikely that they'd brewed any. as they lacked grain.  The could have vinted wine, however.  If they did, we don't know about it.

So in my hypothetical, if I stuck to local stocks, I could probably do the same.  I don't know how to do it, but I could learn.  But I'm not going to do so, as frankly my recollections of that wine aren't sufficiently warm to cause me to bother with it, and I recall it took tons of sugar, which obviously isn't something I'm going to produce myself.

I'm not going to brew beer either, although plenty of people do.  I don't have the time, or the inclination, and either I'd end up with way too much or not enough.

And this reflects the nature of agrarianism, really.  A life focused on nature with agriculture as part of that.  I don't have to make everything myself, but I have to be focused on the land, have a land ethic, and focus on what's real.

Maybe next year I'll try this.

Saturday August 13, 1921. The Plymouth Pageant.

"Mounted Performers", Pilgrim Tercentenary Pageant, Plymouth, Mass.

"Royal Progress".

 

Monday August 1, 1921. Looking at the 300th Anniversary of the founding of Plymouth, MA, from the prospective of the 400th

On this day in 1921, President Harding addressed a crowd at Plymouth, Massachusetts, in celebration of the 300th anniversary of the founding of an English colony there.  Why they regarded the founding as 1621 in 1921, and we regard it as 1620 in 2021, isn't really clear to me.

At any rate, apparently this year there's been trouble actually figuring out how to celebrate the anniversary, with COVID 19 playing a definite role in that.  Celebrations planned last year were pushed into this year, and a news story indicates they're still up in the air.

A 400th anniversary only comes about once, of course, so something ought to be done to mark the event, although the big shadow that hangs over it is the reassessment of the country's early history and its association with colonization, imperialism, and race.  This started prior to 2021 with the New York Times releasing its 1620 Project, which has been controversial, and under the Trump Administration sparked the 1776 Project, which in turn was immediately terminated following the election of President Biden.  Nonetheless, this may be an event which the dampening impact of SARS-CoV-2 which is oddly a good thing in some ways, although the disease and pandemic certainly are not.

On the same day, President Harding informed Congress that the US was obligated to loan $5,000,000 to Liberia under an agreement reached in September, 1918.  The loan itself had come about in the context of World War One, and was part of an inducement for the Liberian declaration of war against Germany.  Germany had constituted 75% of Liberian trade prior to the war.

It was the first flight for the Curtis CR-1, a racing airplane designed for the U.S. Navy.

A grand total of four were built.

If it seems odd that a racing plane was built for the navy, racing aircraft were a major feature of fighter, or as they were then called "pursuit" aircraft development between the wars. Even the Supermarine Spitfire was developed from a racer.

The relationship between the CR-1 and the Curtis Hawk series of biplane fighters is obvious.

Curtis P-6.

I've always thought the P-6 was one of the most beautiful biplanes every built.

In Spain, riots broke out and troops mutinied over recent Spanish defeats in Morocco. At this point, in fact, Spanish Morocco was in control of the Rifian government, save for a small portion still held by the Spanish.

December 21, 1620. The Mayflower Passengers Land.

 That is, exactly 400 years ago.

The landing was partially precipitated by the fact that the Mayflower had run out of beer, which was a more important matter than it might sound.  The English were overall used to drinking beer, but the reason was that beer, because of the way that it was made, was safe to drink. Running out of things to drink is bad anyway you look at it.

In modern times its become common to levy all sort of criticism and virtue signaling on this event, noting how "horrible" Europeans were for colonizing North America.  All of that views the world from was the comfortable late 20th and early 21st Century prospective which has only been shook up a little by the visitation of a plague upon is, something that people in the 17th Century regarded as one of life's norms.  It is true, of course, that the Mayflower passengers were essentially landing where they weren't invited to take land that wasn't theirs, but they didn't see it that way. And its important to remember that the native residents of the land that they were essentially if unknowingly invading viewed the world much differently than anyone in North America does today, through eyes that tended to regard their own tribes as "the people" with everyone else being some sort of alien people.

Indeed, the Mayflower passengers were only in possession of marginally technically superior implements than their unwilling hosts, who themselves were a more or less constant state of war, near war, or soon to be war, with their neighbors.  It's not true, as some have suggested as a reactionary counterfactual, that the Europeans were regarded as one more tribe. They were definitely different. But early on the technological advantage that's so often assumed to be there simply wasn't.  In warfare the natives were every bit the equals, and maybe the superiors in every sense to the new arrivals.

And none of this is to suggest the old grade school version of the "pilgrims" either. They were religious bigots whose situation was brought about by the fact that they couldn't get along at all with the Church of England or darned near anyone else.  They would have regarded Catholics, which all the British had been less than a century ago, as heretics and they didn't view the Church of England cheerfully.  They had adopted very rigorous concepts of Calvinism and regarded most people damned by God to Hell from the moment of their conception, a novelty that no  Christian had held before the Reformation.  Our concept of them and what they approved of and didn't approve of is accordingly massively off the mark.  They approved of piety, but because it was temporal proof of their predestination. As noted, unlike many who look back to them now as religious ancestors, they approved of alcohol as well.  They were also huge supporters of marital sex, which is something we don't associate their piety with.

They disapproved of most forms of entertainment, which was another thing that had gotten them in trouble in Europe.  They required church attendance on Sunday by law, but then that was also a legal norm in much of Europe. They'd approved of the Calvinist ban of sports on Sunday in England during the Cromwell era.

Not everyone on board the Mayflower was a member of their group by any means.  Indeed, the "pilgrim" passengers.  The ship held 102 passengers but some were just that, not religious dissenters.  Be that as it may, the puritans dominated the ship in culture and conduct, and as colonist.

Their journey was no doubt arduous, and coming in winter, risky in more ways than one.  One person died on the way, and another was born.

I personally have no known connection with them.  The first of my ancestors to set sail across the Atlantic for the New World left from Normandy, not Holland, and arrived in Quebec, not New England.  I'm completely comfortable with that.  But my much more American by ancestry wife has a demonstrated ancestral connection with the 102 passengers of the Mayflower but, as her curiosity on historical matters is much lower than mine, if I asked her right now who it was, she wouldn't recall, and wouldn't be interested in looking it up. Still, that means my two children likewise have ancestors who landed at Plymouth Rock in 1620.

And its important to note, that really was something, no matter how human or failed those people may have been.  I can't say, as I look around, that people are doing much better in any segment of human conduct today.

September 16, 1620. The day the "Pilgrims" . . .

 set sail for the New World.

It was at sea for ten weeks, putting in near Cape Cod on November 11, 1620.

August 27, 1920. Recalling Plymouth Rock.

Three hundredth anniversary of the landing of the pilgrims, Provincetown, Mass., August 27, 1920

 

Thanksgiving Reflections

Puritans on their way to church.

It's become sort of an odd tradition in the US in recent years to either criticize a holiday in general or to lament how weakened its become in the modern observance of it. The two are diametrically opposed feelings of course, but they seem to be equally present.

In regard to Thanksgiving, the trend has been by some to comment on how we just don't grasp how the very first Thanksgiving is misunderstood.  This commentary takes the form of the mild, in noting that the Mayflower immigrants and their Indian guests were just as likely to have had deer on the table as they were to have turkey (although there's frankly no reason not to suppose they had turkey. . . or maybe goose), to hardcore comments on their being nasty colonialist.  The commentary on the early menu is historically interesting but latent prejudging of their overall natures is seemingly rarely done accurately and opens up moderns to criticism as well.

Of course, this website itself hasn't been immune to that as we've noted more than once that the "first Thanksgiving" wasn't that.  Thanksgiving feasts are common feature of every society that farms, which means almost every society.  Those feasts are, it should be noted, uniformly religious in nature.

We noted all of that in our first posts here, in 2012, that dealt with the holiday:

When we were kids were taught, back in the old days, that the holiday was thought up by the Pilgrims, those Puritan colonist who landed at Plymouth Rock, as an original day, celebrated with their Indian neighbors, to give thanks for their first harvest.  That's not really true.  I'm sure it's true that they celebrated a Thanksgiving, but then they would have for a variety of reasons. The most significant of those would have been that a Thanksgiving was the European norm.

Thanksgiving was a universally recognized religious celebration recognized in every European country.  The holiday gave thanks to God for the harvest.  At some point in Europe the celebration came to be formally recognized in the Catholic Church, centered date wise around the harvest in southern Europe, by a few days of fasting prior to the Church recognized holiday.  How the Reformation effected this I do not know, but I am certain that the Puritan colonists would have celebrated Thanksgiving in England and in Holland prior to every having celebrated it in the New World.  Indeed, as is sometimes missed, not all of the Mayflower passengers were Puritans by any means, and this is no less true for the other passengers on that vessel. They all would have come from a relatively rural English background and they all would have been familiar with a Thanksgiving Day.

Thanksgiving remained a generally recognized religious based holiday in North America well before it was established as a national holiday in the United States, and in Canada (on a different day).  In the United States, the first Federal recognition of the holiday came during the Civil War, during which time Abraham Lincoln sought fit to note it, in the context of the terrible national tragedy then ongoing.  While that may seem odd to us now, there were real efforts even while the war was raging to try to fit what was occurring into context, which would eventually lead to Decoration Day and Memorial Day (essentially the same holiday). During the war, noting what was occurring on Thanksgiving seemed fitting.  The holiday was seemingly moved around endlessly for many years, and even as late as Franklin Roosevelt's administration new dates for it were fixed, all generally in November. States got into the act too, such as Wyoming, with governors occasionally fixing the date.  The current date stems from a 1941 statutory provision.

We also noted there, regarding its religious nature:

It's interesting to note that up until the mid 20th Century the norm was to take a turkey home alive, and dispatch it at home.  This is rare now, as people have become somewhat delusional and wimpy about food, with some even going so far to believe that if they abstain from meat entirely, that they're not killing anything, a delusion which demonstrates a complete lack of knowledge of any kind of farming or food transportation (more animals die smacked by trucks on the road than most can begin to imagine).  That meant that the turkey was no doubt pretty darned fresh, as well as tasty.

Man bringing home Thanksgiving dinner.

Boy with plucked Thanksgiving dinner.

Connecticut farmer plucking turkey for sale.

Outside of a big gathering, for many people a church service was part of Thanksgiving, and for quite a few it still is.  Other than that, activities that occurred were, according to what I've read, games.  Various types of games seemed quite popular for such gatherings.  Thanksgiving football goes back amazingly far in the United States, and I've seen a poster advertising a college game that dates back to 1903.  If it dated back to 1903, I'd presume it went back somewhat further than that.

What all of this tells us, as noted before, is that the observance of the holiday has been incredibly consistent for an extremely long time.

Efforts to formalize it as a national holiday, only dealt with in part, really came about during the Civil War and it was clear right from that time that effort, which built upon an already existing civil custom, were both familial in nature, tied to the harvest, and had an emphasis on giving thanks to God.

Indeed, on that latter point, Thanksgiving is one of those days like Christmas that frankly makes no sense whatsoever outside of a religious context.  While I'm well aware that there are people who don't make it a religious observation and have the holiday anyhow, it seems weird and even hollow if they don't.  I've been, for example, to Thanksgiving dinners in which no prayer of thanksgiving was done and they seem really lacking. And not only is something lacking, but it's obviously lacking.  Be that as it may, in spite of feeling that way, I come across poorly as I never make a personal attempt to intervene and offer one.  I say one to myself.

Anyhow, with this in mind it strikes me for an odd reason how this holiday, celebrated across the US and in every culture, is one that is really carried over from a distinctly Protestant tradition, and indeed a tradition within a tradition.  I'll not go into it too deep, but its associated with the Puritans for a reason.

The "Pilgrims" as we used to hear them called more often, where Calvinist Puritans who had very distinct and strict religious views.  They didn't practice religious tolerance whatsoever, although at that first English Thanksgiving in North America they no doubt had to as they were a religious minority at the time, something rarely noted about them.

Indeed, the English colonist who came over on the Mayflower were buy and large not Puritans, a religious sect that had grown up in the early English Reformation and which was hostile to the Church of England, with the Church of England being in turn hostile to it.  The history of the early English Reformation is something we'll not deal with here, but we'll note that the early Church of England reflected a schism, rather than an outright separation, from the Catholic Church.  The first Bishops and Priests of the Church of England had all been ordained as Catholic Priest and they all had Catholic theology as their primary view in spite of following Henry VIII into schism on the question of his claimed right to head the church.  Indeed, it's really doubtful that many of them took his claims all that seriously, quite frankly, and the Church of England as a Protestant Church didn't really come about until some time later.  Henry had advisers who were Protestant in their views right from the onset (at least one lost his head for heresy) and he had one wife, if I recall correctly, who was hardcore Protestant, so the door was open.   But he no doubt went to his death in 1547 at age 55 thinking he was a Catholic.

After that the period of turmoil he'd unleashed in his country really ramped up and as we've addressed elsewhere the Elizabethan Religious Settlement ultimately came about through the imposition of certain views by Queen Elizabeth I.  The degree to which she herself agreed with them is open to question, at least one unconformable story holds that she rejected her own clerics on her deathbed as being false clerics, but the settlement was only partially that. While England would become rabidly anti Catholic in later years, that would take years and years and it would have at least two Catholic monarchs after Elizabeth's death, thereby making her sister Mary not the last one.

Oliver Cromwell, Puritan Lord Protector.

One party that didn't accept the settlement was the Puritans.  With no really definable origin, they came up originally as a party within the Church of England that was steadfastly opposed to all of its retained Catholic nature.  Hitting their high water mark during the dictatorship of Puritan Oliver Cromwell, they fit in with the group of British Protestants who were darned near opposed to every sort of religious and even civil custom that the English had. That operated to make them really hated and when the Restoration came about not too surprisingly they were suppressed by an English population that was sick to death of them.  That caused some to relocate to the Netherlands which had religious tolerance due to a religious split existing in that country between a Catholic and Protestant population, but even the Dutch grew sick of them pretty darned quickly.

Mary Dyer, Puritan evangelist, going off to execution in Boston in 1660.

And that caused them to relocate to North America.  Or more properly, for some of them to undertake to do that.

As this isn't a history of the Puritans in North America, we'll basically stop their history there, other than to note that they became really unpopular in the colonies as well. So much so, that even some female Puritan evangelist were executed for returning to a colony from which they'd been earlier expelled.

Anyhow, all of that is noted for a simple reason.

The Puritans were amazing opposed to almost every form of human celebration as we'd recognize it.  Religious holidays that were deeply ingrained in Christianity and which Protestant religions kept right on observing after the start of the Reformation were banned in Puritan regions, including all of England while the dictatorship was ongoing.  Attendance at church on Sundays was compulsory and omission of attendance was punishable as a crime, but Christmas and Easter were banned and actually outlaws.  Sports on Sunday, an English tradition, was also banned.  Certain sorts of sports were completely banned.  May Day was banned.

But Thanksgiving, a day of thanks for a bountiful harvest, never was.  And that's really remarkable.

Thanksgiving was a feature of England's Catholic culture that survived the Reformation and continued to survive into the Puritan era.  It seems to be the one pre Reformation religious observation they were okay with, perhaps because it was a custom, rather than a Canon.

So we now have a civil holiday in the United States with deep religious roots. A Catholic origin, but Protestantized, and proving resistant to real secularization.

With that noted, one thing that's interesting in addition to note is how its a Western tradition, by which we mean that came up in the Latin Rite of the Church as a cultural institution, but not in the Eastern one. And that really shows as its in November.

Having the holiday in October, which Canada does, would actually make just as much sense as having it in November.  Maybe more sense actually.  Most places have actually harvested by late October at the latest.  When I used to have a large garden, which I continue to think I'll do again every year, I'd harvest anything not already harvested on the opening day of deer season, which is in early November.

In the West, the Christmas Season really opens up with Thanksgiving.  Indeed, the setting of the holiday in its current calendar setting was partially influenced by the Christmas shopping seasons.

The time leading up to Christmas is, of course, advent.  This year Advent starts on December 1.

In the west, Advent has become a time of celebratory anticipation of Christmas, and this custom is the case everywhere in the west.  Advent also exists in the East, but the focus is really different.

Indeed, in the East, the forty days prior to Christmas is a second Lent featuring a Nativity Fast.  For Byzantine and other Eastern Rite Catholics as well as the Orthodox that is going on right now.

The rigor of the fast varies by Rite and location and I'm not qualified to really comment on it.  As I understand it, and I may not understand it correctly, in the U.S. the fast basically applies to Monday, Wednesday and Friday.  Like other Eastern fasts, its more strict than the ones that have come to exist in the Latin Rite.

This expresses the view that "there is no feast without the fast", a quote that I'm sure others know the source of but which I do not.  There is a lot to it. Father Michael O'Loughlin, of Catholic Stuff You Should Know fame, holds that the cycle of fasting and feasting puts things in order.  And indeed it might.

Cycling back to Thanksgiving, the Puritans, in spite of their hostility to all things Catholic, and the nation, during the tragedy of the Civil War during which the holiday was first somewhat instituted as a national holiday, got that.  Indeed, both Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt, in taking steps to institutionalize it on the nation's civil calendar, got that as well.  It's not an accident that all of those event took place during periods during which there was something equivalent to a vast national fast going on.

Something to consider.