November 19, 2025 • 38 mins
We all have that relative that tells us there was actually no green bean casserole at the first Thanksgiving. Yeah, we know, Grandma! But how much do we really know about that first feast between the Pilgrims and the Indians?
Well, a lot. But the story most of us learned in school is completely wrong. Author David J. Silverman, (This Land Is Their Land: The Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving) joins us to carve up the myths about Turkey Day and serve a nice helping of truth.
In this episode, Bob and David explore the origins of Thanksgiving, from the Wampanoag people’s strategic decision to ally with the English, to Abraham Lincoln’s role in turning that footnoted feast into a national holiday.
Tell your family to turn down the yacht rock and play this episode of American History Hotline as you avoid talking about politics and stir the gravy.
GUEST: David J. Silverman, author of This Land Is Their Land: The Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving. He has a new book coming out in February of 2026 titled, The Chosen and the Damned: Native Americans and the Making of Race in the United States
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
So it'd be like if my drunk neighbor is shooting
off his guns on a Sunday afternoon and I go
over to his house to see what's going on, and
he like gets out of six pack and says, come on,
let's let's have a couple of beers.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
It would be like you showing up with a gang
and him feeling like he doesn't have any choice but
to open the door for you.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
Good, good context.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
You've reached American History Hotline. You asked the questions, We
get the answers, leave a message, Hey, there are American
History Hotliners. Bob Crawford here, thrilled to be joining you
again for another episode of American History Hotline, the show
where you asked the questions. But today I want to
(00:49):
start things off a little bit differently. I want to
ask you a question for an upcoming show. We're going
to do an episode about the New York Times list
of one one hundred best films of the twenty first century.
What do you think about the list? Is it accurate?
Any snubs? And what do you think should have been
voted number one best film of the twenty first century?
(01:11):
Give us all your hot takes. We'd love it if
you could record a video or a voice memo and
email it to American History Hotline at gmail dot com.
For all questions, it's American History Hotline at gmail dot com. Okay,
now we're going to make a hard turn to today's topic,
(01:31):
which is Thanksgiving. Here to help me answer this question
today is David J.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
Silverman.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
He's a historian and author of the book This Land
Is Their Land, The Wampanog Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the
Troubled History of Thanksgiving. He's got a new book coming
out in February titled The Chosen and the Damned Native
Americans and the Making of Race in the United States. David,
thank you for joining us today.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
It's great to be here.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
Okay, here's the question we were hoping you could help
us answer.
Speaker 4 (02:03):
Hi, this is Jillian.
Speaker 5 (02:05):
My question is around the origins of Thanksgiving. So Native Americans,
pilgrims sitting together eating dinner at a table, this narrative.
I'm wondering how much of it is true and why
it is just continued to be told as kind of
like the only.
Speaker 4 (02:24):
Story that we hear about Thanksgiving and even early America. Yeah,
just like why this story has pervaded in history for
so long, and why it's still the only story surrounding
early Native American history that we hear in schools.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
Now, David, before we jump into answering this question, can
you give us just one fact we can bring to
our Thanksgiving table this year that's going to surprise our
family members.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
Sure, in direct answer to your listener's question, there was
probably no.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
Table, So you're saying it was more of a buffet.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
More of a buffet, it's lap eating.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
Okay, So let's start with the common narrative of Thanksgiving.
What is the story that most of us are taught
about Thanksgiving in school?
Speaker 2 (03:23):
Well, the question you mentioned is part of it. To
be sure, we have this patriotic story that the Pilgrims,
folks who cross the Atlantic in search of religious freedom,
land off Cape Cod and make contact with Native people
(03:43):
who almost always are unidentified in the stories. They're just Indians, right,
They're supposed to be symbols for Native America and large
After some wariness between the two parties, they make contact
with one another, they become friends, and then ultimately the
(04:04):
story goes the English invite. This is a problem with
the story invite the native people to a harvest feast.
They break bread together, celebrate together for a few days,
and then after the dishes are cleared, the natives wave
goodbye and fade into the mist, symbolically ceding their country
(04:30):
to the English, so that the English can found the
United States, and the United States can begin its march
to greatness. That's the story. It's a story about bloodless colonialism.
It's a story about colonialism carrying forth the best of America,
(04:54):
religious freedom, family, peace, and ultimately democracy. It's a story
designed to make us feel proud of America and its
colonial beginnings. So what really happened, Well, not not much
(05:15):
of that. It is certainly true that the English of
Plymouth Colony and the native people of what's now southeastern Massachusetts,
the Wampanogue people, created an alliance together. That's true. It
is true that the two parties did feast together, though
(05:38):
the Wampanos weren't so much invited as they just showed
up on an announcedent. The English really had no choice
of the matter but to concede to them.
Speaker 5 (05:48):
Slings.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
Well, so I think that's good.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
Let's let's kind of like dig in on that, Okay, Sure,
So they just showed up, like talk about this feast.
The doorbell rings and who's we have a caller at
this hour during our feast, Like, who's at the door.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
Right, So let's sketch out the power dynamics on the
ground when this feast occurs. When the Mayflower lands off
Cape Cod, there's about a one hundred English passengers. By
the time this feast occurs, there's less than half that number.
Half these folks have died over the previous year. Those
(06:25):
who have survived have done so because the wampa Ogg's
permitted it. There was a debate within Wampenagg society over
the course of the year sixteen twenty one as to
whether to wipe out this this settlement. The wampa Ogg's
had a one hundred year, one hundred year history with
(06:48):
Europeans before the arrival of the Mayflower, and by and
large that had not been a pleasant history. It had
been a history of European explorers in slaving people, in
ferrying their captives across the ocean, you know, for sale
into bondage. It had been a story about shoreline clashes,
(07:09):
you know, when one side read the worst into the
other's mostly unintelligible actions. But the wamp and Ogs when
the Mayflower arrived, are in a very very difficult spot
for two reasons. One is they had suffered a terrible
epidemic between sixteen sixteen and sixteen nineteen, almost certainly introduced
(07:34):
to them accidentally, but introduced to them by Europeans. And
this disease we don't know the name of it. I
suspect it was smallpox, but we can't be sure. It
wiped out a sizeable number of the wompon odgg people.
And when I say sizable, I'm not talking about COVID numbers.
I'm talking about more than half of the population.
Speaker 3 (07:55):
Which is insane because COVID numbers are big, right.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
But you know, our societal death rate from COVID was
less than one percent, and you saw, you know, we
all experienced what that did to our society in this case,
and we knew what it was, right, We had a
name for it, and we had means to combat it.
Not everyone took advantage of those means, but we had
means to combat it, and you know, so on and
so forth. In this case, you know, the Wampa ogs
(08:20):
have been attacked by a disease with no name. They
don't know how to explain its cause, you know, it
could be witchcraft, it could be their God's punishing them
for something they did or didn't do. They simply don't know.
What they know is that their kin are dying all
(08:41):
around them. And you know, and we don't have exact
numbers as to how many people died. We have a
very kind of general numbers. But here's what I can
tell you. The English say that when they arrive in
this part of the world, they encounter village sites that
are covered with skeleton.
Speaker 3 (09:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
In other words, the people died where they were, and
the living were so terrified of what was happening they
fled the scene, which means a lot because native people
were diligent about caring for the remains of their dead. Okay,
so the Wampaagus have been depopulated, So that's the first problem.
The second problem is their narrogancet enemies to the west
(09:24):
have not been depopulated, and the Narragansetts take advantage of
the Wompennagu's weakness to reduce them to the status of tributaries.
So when the English arrive, the Wampadogs have a choice
to make. Do they based on this previous one hundred
years of hostility, wipe out these strangers and eliminate the
(09:48):
potential danger that they pose to Wampadag people. Or and
this is the choice that their leader, Usumquin or massasoyt
Act finally makes. Do they try to ally with these
folks and take advantage of their firearms, their swords, their knives,
their hatchets, and all the other goods that they have
(10:11):
that are of appeal to Native people. That's the choice
they make. That is the context that leads to the
First Thanksgiving. It is not a matter of the Natives
just happen to be friendly. They are in a desperate
position and they're making a strategic decision for their own preservation.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
So, from the reading I've done recently Native Nations Kathleen
Duval and a few other books, one of the biggest
revelations for myself personally having a blind spot with Native
American history is that many Native American tribes thought to
themselves when the Europeans were coming, how can this work
(10:53):
for us?
Speaker 3 (10:54):
Like? How can we use them?
Speaker 5 (10:56):
Like?
Speaker 1 (10:56):
Are there ways that we can use them for our aims?
And so it sounds like what you're telling me is
is that the Wampanogh saw this possibility of an alliance
to actually, you know, protect them from another, from from
their their enemies from another.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
Yeah, that's exactly right. You know, we have a tendency,
or at least you know, the public has a tendency
in some circles to characterize the European arrival in North
America as an invasion. And that's understandable. You know, in
in Central and South America and the Caribbean, the Spanish
(11:39):
conquest was just that it was. It was a military invasion, right.
And what's more, eventually in North America, once Europeans have
a beachhead on the continent, they do start conquering Native territory,
but with very few exceptions, the first colonies or owned
(12:00):
there at the sufferance of Native people. Native people could
have wiped out almost all of these places if they
had wished to do so. Generally speaking, they did not
wish to do so. Not at first. They would learn
that these people posed an existential threat to them. They
can't see that at the beginning. One of the things
(12:21):
we have to understand when we're accounting for Native people's
actions is that they don't see themselves as a single
group of people. They don't see themselves as Indians or
Native Americans or indigenous people or any other general category
of that sort. They are divided into hundreds of different polities,
(12:41):
and these polities usually are no larger than twenty or
thirty thousand people, and they're constantly at odds with one another.
So they're constantly seeking advantage against other tribes. When the
Europeans arrived, well that's your advantage, right. You can get
their military wares, you can get other trade goods that
(13:05):
will help you attract more followers to your group, and
you can try to enlist their soldiers in your cause.
And that is precisely what one native group does after
another after another.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
So the Wampanogue and the Plymouth settlers sign a peace treaty.
So how long does this what is this treaty all about?
Speaker 3 (13:27):
And how long does it last?
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Well, it depends who you ask. And you know, one
of the things that we as an American society have
not done very well over the course of centuries is
ask what the wamp and Ogu's thought this peace treaty
was all about. Now, I can remember firsthand being assigned
this peace treaty as one of the earliest primary source
(13:51):
documents assigned to me in school. And you know, we
went through each each provision of the treaty or once
did we did the teacher think to ask us as students,
how might the natives have interpreted these these clauses. So
I'll give you an example of what we're talking about.
(14:13):
So there's a provision in this peace treaty. Right, you
have some of this stuff, you can you could take
it face value. We won't attack each other, Okay. I
think it's safe to assume the wamp and Ogu's agreed
to that if we're attacked by another party, we'll come
to one another's aid. Okay, that sounds exactly right. We'll
have trade with one another. Okay. But here's where it
(14:35):
gets tricky. Now, the wampan Ogus are subjects of King James. Well,
the Wampannoggs don't have a word for subject. They don't
have a word for it. It's not it's not a
concept to them. They have no idea who King James is,
Who's who's this guy on the other side of the ocean.
And there's simply no, no possible that even if they said,
(15:01):
oh yeah, yeah, sure, we subject ourselves to King James
that they understood what that meant.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
Is there any way for us to know the story
from the Wampanague side? Is there is there other primary
source documentation from the womp of Inagus.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
Here's what we can do. We can judge what the
treaty said versus the way the wampanoaguese behaved after the treaty,
and the Wampaagus after the treaty were signed did not
behave like they were subjects to the King of England.
What's more, you know, the treaty says that if the
Wampaoagus committed any crimes against the English, they will turn
(15:41):
over the accused to English justice, which is preposterous. The
English are guests in Wampanogu country. The Wampanoags are not
guests in England. The notion that they would turn over
any members of their community to a foreign people's mot
of justice is simple, simply nonsense. And how do we
(16:03):
know that? Well, for the next fifty years, whenever the
English demand the Wampa Dogs to turn over accused wrongdours,
they always say no. And when the English finally pushed
the issue, the two sides go to war. Native people simply.
You know, native people are sovereign in their own land.
They're not going to sign over their sovereignty to a
(16:24):
group of fifty people.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
So getting back to the first Thanksgivings, as we the
popularly told patriotic tale. Now with all this in mind,
now we have all this context, talk about this this feast.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
Sure, so you know, the English should been on the
brink of starvation since their arrival. They arrive late in
the year, it's too late to plant, so they have
to survive on whatever supplies they brought, whatever they can
scrub up in the cold of of a New England winter,
(17:01):
and whatever they can trade for or receive as gifts
from native people. And they managed to make it to
the planting season. And then they plant a bucket of
seed corn that they had stolen from a Wampadog village.
They dug up this buried seed corn and took it
(17:23):
with them. Eventually they pay the Wampa dogs for it.
But you know, initially it looks like what it was theft.
They grow crop. You know, the crop is harvested, and
then you know, that fall, for the first time since
they arrived, the English say we're gonna rest for a
couple of days. It's been a really it's been a
very hard nine or ten months.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
And this is before the treaty.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
But no, this is after the treaty as signed. So
you know they have this Treaty of Mutual Defense and Trade. Okay,
so the English start letting their hair down. There's probably
a fair amount of drinking. They engage in target practice
as part of their amusements. So in other words, they're
firing guns. The wamp and Ogs hearing these guns firing.
(18:11):
Presume I think we can assume that the colony is
under attack, and so Usamiquin or Massasoyat, the sachem or
chief of the Wamponogg people arrives at the colony with
ninety armed men. That's almost twice the size of the colony.
In almost any other colonial context, a group of ninety
(18:36):
native warriors showing up at a colony would have produced
a bloodbath. You know, someone would have gotten trigger happy
and everything would have gone wrong. That's not what happens here.
Enough trust had been cultivated between the two sides that
instead of firing on one another, the wampa Ogg's stay
(18:57):
and they contribute some venison to the meal, and the
two parties feast together. That's this first Thanksgiving.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
So it's like the Wampanox show up. They're like, what's
all this ruckus? And the settlers are like, it's a party,
come on, right, and they can see these music video.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
Right, and so let they crashed the party, and so,
you know, let's be clear, it's not like they received
a written invitation to this event, which is you know,
kind of how the story is normally normally told here.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
So it'd be like if my drunk neighbor is shooting
off his guns on a Sunday afternoon and I go
over to his house and see what's going on, and
he like gets out of six pack and says, come on,
let's let's let's have a couple of beers.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
It would be like you showing up with a gang
and him feeling like he doesn't have any choice but
to open the door for you.
Speaker 3 (19:53):
Good, good context.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
This is American History Hotline. I'm your host, Bob Crawford. Today,
my guest is David J.
Speaker 3 (20:07):
Silverman.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
He's a historian and author of the book This Land
Is Their Land, The Wampanog Indians, Plymouth Colony and the
Troubled History of Thanksgiving He's got a new book coming
out in February titled The Chosen and the Damned Native
Americans and the Making of Race in the United States.
We're talking about the origins of Thanksgiving. Remember to send
(20:29):
us your burning questions about American history, and also help
us out with an upcoming episode by telling us your
favorite films of the twenty first century. Record yourself using
the voice Memo app on your phone and email it
to American Historyhotline at gmail dot com. That's American History
Hotline at gmail dot com.
Speaker 3 (20:50):
Now back to the show.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
David, Thanksgiving didn't become a national holiday until hundreds of
years later during the Civil War. I was this the
time to create this holiday because of the Civil War?
Speaker 2 (21:07):
You know, Abraham Lincoln was lobbied by this woman named
Sarah Josepha Hale, who, Yeah, she's kind of like the
opera of the nineteenth century. She starts this this magazine
for women that becomes enormously popular, and you know, among
(21:28):
the ideas that she traffics in is that the country
needs a holiday to help bridge the divisions that led
to and were perpetrating the Civil War. Thanksgiving is that idea. Now,
Thanksgiving had been a Yankee holiday. So the only way
(21:50):
you were going to get Thanksgiving declared as a national
holiday was for the South to have seceded when that
announcement is made, and you know, so Lincoln, in the
spirit that this idea was proposed, takes it up and
declares the holiday. Up until this point, New Englanders had
(22:10):
celebrated days of Thanksgiving really since the seventeenth century, and
it had been an English tradition too. So let's be clear,
this is not a tradition that begins in New England.
It stretches back into the midst of time on the
other side of the ocean. Let's be clear too, almost
every Native American group has days of Thanksgiving. People all
(22:30):
over the world have days of Thanksgiving, so targeting which
one was first is really hard. But whereas in the
colonial period, days of Thanksgiving were haphazard, they would be
announced by the government depending on the circumstances of the time.
So if there was a victory in war, the end
of a drought, what have you, the government would say, Okay,
(22:51):
we're going to hold the following days a day of Thanksgiving.
Over time, the day became standardized, and eventually people began
selling librating these days of Thanksgiving when you closed your
account books for the year, you know, usually late fall,
and you know that was a time to celebrate, so
(23:11):
that becomes part of the routine. But let's be clear,
during that period, during the seventeenth century, the eighteenth century,
all the way into the nineteenth century, up till nearly
the time that Lincoln makes this declaration, nobody, nobody associated
the Thanksgiving holiday with Pilgrims and Indians.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
So how did this happen?
Speaker 1 (23:36):
How is that connection made.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
It's a couple of different ways. One has to do
with Plymouth Town's attempt to boost tourism. You know, Plymouth
Colony was a nothing place. You know, it's an underpopulated,
economically marginal colony where really only it's only important for
two reasons. One is it's the first English colony in
(24:01):
the Northeast that survives, and the second is, in sixteen
seventy five seventy six, it's the place where the Great
War between English colonists in New England and native people starts.
And this is the war that ends up devastating the
wamp and Dogs and giving the English effectively control of
the region. Otherwise, Plymouth gets annexed by Massachusetts in sixteen
(24:27):
ninety one, and that's it. It now is just part
of the mainstream of Massachusetts history. Well after the American Revolution,
Plymouth town is falling on hard times, and so a
group of men calling themselves like the Old Colony Club,
decide to start promoting the Pilgrims who had been You know,
(24:47):
they're an eccentric group of religious fanatics who no one
really paid attention to. They start promoting these guys as
colonial founding fathers and Plymouth's rock this you know, we
could have whole show on Plymouth Rock and the abuse
it's taken over the years, but they make up the
story that the Pilgrims landed on this rock, and they
(25:13):
try to get people to come to town and spend
their money so that that idea starts to start to circulate.
But the real key to associating the holiday with Pilgrims
and Indians is the publication of one of the two
primary sources of the original feast between the English and
the wamp and Ogs. The source is now called Mortz Relation.
(25:37):
It's a co authored piece by Edward Winslow, who was
a key figure in early Plymouth Colony and William Bradford,
who was the governor of the colony for a long time.
In this account, there's one paragraph about this feast. Likewise,
in Bradford's account to Plymouth Plantation called of Limit Plantation,
(26:01):
is a couple of lines about the face. Really not
a big deal. But the guy who edited this primary source,
he's a minister named Alexander Young. He adds a footnote
to this section, and he says in the footnote, this
was the first Thanksgiving the harvest festival of New England,
(26:22):
to my knowledge or to the knowledge of anyone else
who had studied the issue, no one had ever proposed
this idea before.
Speaker 3 (26:29):
So what year was that?
Speaker 2 (26:31):
Eighteen forty one?
Speaker 3 (26:32):
Eighteen forty one, So you know, we're.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
Now two hundred and twenty years after that supposed first Thanksgiving. Now, look,
I'm a historian. I work with footnotes. No one other
than fellow historians read footnotes. But somehow this footnote took
hold enough people read it, especially people in power, orators,
(26:58):
politicians and the like, that the idea started to get
trafficked around, so that by the time that Lincoln makes
his pronouncement that Thanksgiving will be a national holiday, the
notion that Thanksgiving began with Pilgrims and Indians had begun
to capture the public imagination. From that point forward, the
(27:24):
tie between the holiday and the mythical Pilgrim an Indian
story gets propagated by schools. Public schools would regularly hold
and I can remember being in one of these things
Thanksgiving pageants in which they have the kids dress up
like Pilgrims and Indians and reenact what people imagine that
(27:48):
feace would be. By the way I was a tree
in the play tells you something about my acting abilities
as a child. But you know, these pageants became standard fair,
especially in the North, until very recent times.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
In Plymouth today there's a plaque that commemorates a national
day of mourning every Thanksgiving.
Speaker 3 (28:13):
Tell us what that's all about.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
Right, So, once the holiday of Thanksgiving gets tied to
the Pilgrim an Indian story, it becomes the major story
that white Americans tell themselves about the role of Native
people in the country's past. Yeah, and it's a bedtime story.
(28:39):
It's a fairy tale of colonists and native people making friends,
and Native people conceding to their own disposition, right, which
is patent nonsense. You know, Colonial America is a blood bath.
Quite frankly, you can narrate the history of colonial America
(29:02):
as one colonial Indian war after another after another after another,
you know, because colonists want Native land without Native people
on it, full stop, and Native people aren't going to
concede to any such a geta, So it's a war.
So Native people in the country have to listen to
(29:27):
this idea year after year after year. And let's be clear,
these Thanksgiving pageants that I mentioned, these are performed in
Native American boarding schools, right, This story is propagated two
Native kids in Native American boarding schools, never mind to
(29:50):
Native kids who are in majority white schools all around
the country. I have heard first and testimony from multiple
Wampanogs people about what it's like to be a school
age child in a classroom where a teacher is promoting
this nonsense, and almost invariably they say, it's followed up
(30:13):
by some kids saying well where are the Indians, and
the teacher saying, oh, well, they're all gone, even as
there's a Wampannog kid sitting right there who the teacher
can't conceive of as Indian because the kid doesn't fulfill
the stereotypes of Native people that Hollywood has been trafficking
in for the laste hundred years.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
So it's fairly obvious why there's only one version of
this story of Thanksgiving.
Speaker 2 (30:38):
Right. So fast forward to the year nineteen seventy. We're
in the middle of the Civil Rights movement. We're in
the early days of the Red Power movement, in which
Native activists around the country begin protesting for their own
rights and dignity. And there's a Wampanog activist named Frank
(31:02):
James who says, you know, I've had it with this.
I simply have. He's a student of history. He had
been asked to speak at a statewide Massachusetts commemoration of
the founding of Plymouth Colony, and when he submitted his
speech for review, the white organizers wouldn't accept it. They
(31:22):
said it was too provocative. So he said, the hell
with this. I'm gonna have my own event. I'm going
to deliver the speech, and he called the event the
National Day of Mourning, and he held it in Plymouth
Town on a hill overlooking Plymouth Rock and a replica
of the Mayflower right near a statue of Massasoiot or Usamiquin.
(31:45):
And you know what did he say in the speech.
It's not all that provocative. We have what he's fundamentally
what he says is, look, I know, for you wife, folks,
this is a day of celebration right at the beginning
of what you consider to be your civilization. But you
need to understand that this is the beginning of the
end for my people. The story that you tell as
(32:08):
a triumph is for us a tragedy, and we are
your countrymen and women, and our experience counts too. Furthermore,
he says, recognize we're still here. We we haven't gone anywhere,
and we still have sovereign rights that we're trying to defend.
Since that time, this event has grown into an annual tradition,
(32:33):
and Native people from all over the country and indeed
all over the world show up at this National Day
of Mourning rally in Plymouth Town. For some Native people
and Wampinog's especially, they now, instead of holding a day Thanksgiving,
hold a day morning. Some people do both, and some
(32:54):
people have no use for the day of morning and
hold just a traditional thanks saving. There's a range of
ways Native people honor this this event, but it has
become such a big deal that Pliboth Town now has
that plaque that you that you mentioned.
Speaker 1 (33:09):
We celebrate Thanksgiving, we try to as a day of
coming together, and it seems in recent years that it's
no longer settlers and Native Americans. It's now one part
of the family who harbors certain political view views versus
(33:30):
the other part of the family who harbors, you know,
opposite political views. Is there a way we can we can, uh,
in your opinion, you know, capture this day and this
idea of coming together to to create peace amongst you know,
honor the Native Americans who who were here first, who
(33:52):
suffered horrible abases at the hands of Europeans, and also
learn to love our family men members who we really
disagree with.
Speaker 2 (34:02):
Sure, you know, I'm not the guy to proffer up
solutions for the very deep and substantive political divisions in
our society. But let me observe this basic point about
those divisions. On the right, there's a belief that the
(34:24):
purpose of a history education is to cultivate patriotism. Right, So,
in other words, history is supposed to be in the
service of political aims. I'm a professional historian. I don't
care whether you come from the history that I write
that I teach feeling patriotic, antiatriot, unpatriotic, or indifferent. That
(34:49):
is neither here nor there for me. My only goal
is to capture a complex history in all of its complexity.
That's it, full stop. And I think on the left
side of the political spectrum, you have a wide population,
mostly who have been college educated and thus also take
(35:10):
that approach to the study of history. And it becomes
very hard to have a conversation about history and truth
and its role in our society when you're coming at
it from such polar opposite views. So back to the
issue of Thanksgiving. So what do we do with it? Look,
I am all in favor of getting together with family
(35:33):
and friends and offering thanks for what's good in our lives.
I think we should do it more often than just
once a year. And let me be clear, contrary to
some of the detractors of this book that I've written,
I am not calling for replacing Thanksgiving with a day
of mourning, or canceling Thanksgiving, or declaring war on Thanksgiving
(35:57):
or any such things. But here is what I am saying.
If we're going to invoke Pilgrims and Indians in relation
and Thanksgiving holiday. Let's get story straight. We're all grown ups.
We can deal with the truth, right, But I don't
think we have to do that. We know who wants
(36:18):
to talk about genocide and then serve up a meal?
Speaker 4 (36:22):
Right?
Speaker 2 (36:23):
How about we go back to the original Thanksgiving, which
didn't invoke Pilgrims and Indians at all, and just focus
on family and friends and what we're grateful for in
our lives. The myth of the First Thanksgiving is just
that it's a myth. It is not true. What's more,
it's an untruth that is deeply insulting to our indigenous
(36:48):
countrymen and women. And they've suffered a lot for the
creation of this country. They shouldn't have to revisit it
every single year.
Speaker 1 (36:58):
Well said, Well said, Well, David, I really appreciate you
taking the time to answer Jillian's question and being on
American History Hotline.
Speaker 3 (37:08):
I've been talking with David J. Silverman.
Speaker 1 (37:11):
He's a historian and author of the book This Land
Is Their Land, The Wampanog Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the
Troubled History of Thanksgiving. He's got a new book coming
out in February titled The Chosen and the Damned Native Americans,
and the making of race in the United States. David,
I wish you and yours a wonderful, peaceful thanksgiving.
Speaker 2 (37:35):
Same to you and yours.
Speaker 1 (37:40):
You've been listening to American History Hotline, a production of
iHeart Podcasts and Scratch Track Productions. The show is executive
producer is James Morrison. Our executive producers from iHeart are
Jordan Runtall and Jason English.
Speaker 3 (37:55):
Original music composed by me Bob Crawford. Please keep in touch.
Speaker 1 (38:01):
Our email is Americanhistoryhotline at gmail dot com. If you
like the show, please tell your friends and leave us
a review in Apple Podcasts. I'm your host, Bob Crawford.
Feel free to hit me up on social media to
ask a history question or to let me know what
you think of the show. You can find me at
(38:22):
Bob Crawford Base. Thanks so much for listening.
Speaker 3 (38:25):
See you next week.
So it'd be like if my drunk neighbor is shooting
off his guns on a Sunday afternoon and I go
over to his house to see what's going on, and
he like gets out of six pack and says, come on,
let's let's have a couple of beers.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
It would be like you showing up with a gang
and him feeling like he doesn't have any choice but
to open the door for you.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
Good, good context.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
You've reached American History Hotline. You asked the questions, We
get the answers, leave a message, Hey, there are American
History Hotliners. Bob Crawford here, thrilled to be joining you
again for another episode of American History Hotline, the show
where you asked the questions. But today I want to
(00:49):
start things off a little bit differently. I want to
ask you a question for an upcoming show. We're going
to do an episode about the New York Times list
of one one hundred best films of the twenty first century.
What do you think about the list? Is it accurate?
Any snubs? And what do you think should have been
voted number one best film of the twenty first century?
(01:11):
Give us all your hot takes. We'd love it if
you could record a video or a voice memo and
email it to American History Hotline at gmail dot com.
For all questions, it's American History Hotline at gmail dot com. Okay,
now we're going to make a hard turn to today's topic,
(01:31):
which is Thanksgiving. Here to help me answer this question
today is David J.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
Silverman.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
He's a historian and author of the book This Land
Is Their Land, The Wampanog Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the
Troubled History of Thanksgiving. He's got a new book coming
out in February titled The Chosen and the Damned Native
Americans and the Making of Race in the United States. David,
thank you for joining us today.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
It's great to be here.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
Okay, here's the question we were hoping you could help
us answer.
Speaker 4 (02:03):
Hi, this is Jillian.
Speaker 5 (02:05):
My question is around the origins of Thanksgiving. So Native Americans,
pilgrims sitting together eating dinner at a table, this narrative.
I'm wondering how much of it is true and why
it is just continued to be told as kind of
like the only.
Speaker 4 (02:24):
Story that we hear about Thanksgiving and even early America. Yeah,
just like why this story has pervaded in history for
so long, and why it's still the only story surrounding
early Native American history that we hear in schools.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
Now, David, before we jump into answering this question, can
you give us just one fact we can bring to
our Thanksgiving table this year that's going to surprise our
family members.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
Sure, in direct answer to your listener's question, there was
probably no.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
Table, So you're saying it was more of a buffet.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
More of a buffet, it's lap eating.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
Okay, So let's start with the common narrative of Thanksgiving.
What is the story that most of us are taught
about Thanksgiving in school?
Speaker 2 (03:23):
Well, the question you mentioned is part of it. To
be sure, we have this patriotic story that the Pilgrims,
folks who cross the Atlantic in search of religious freedom,
land off Cape Cod and make contact with Native people
(03:43):
who almost always are unidentified in the stories. They're just Indians, right,
They're supposed to be symbols for Native America and large
After some wariness between the two parties, they make contact
with one another, they become friends, and then ultimately the
(04:04):
story goes the English invite. This is a problem with
the story invite the native people to a harvest feast.
They break bread together, celebrate together for a few days,
and then after the dishes are cleared, the natives wave
goodbye and fade into the mist, symbolically ceding their country
(04:30):
to the English, so that the English can found the
United States, and the United States can begin its march
to greatness. That's the story. It's a story about bloodless colonialism.
It's a story about colonialism carrying forth the best of America,
(04:54):
religious freedom, family, peace, and ultimately democracy. It's a story
designed to make us feel proud of America and its
colonial beginnings. So what really happened, Well, not not much
(05:15):
of that. It is certainly true that the English of
Plymouth Colony and the native people of what's now southeastern Massachusetts,
the Wampanogue people, created an alliance together. That's true. It
is true that the two parties did feast together, though
(05:38):
the Wampanos weren't so much invited as they just showed
up on an announcedent. The English really had no choice
of the matter but to concede to them.
Speaker 5 (05:48):
Slings.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
Well, so I think that's good.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
Let's let's kind of like dig in on that, Okay, Sure,
So they just showed up, like talk about this feast.
The doorbell rings and who's we have a caller at
this hour during our feast, Like, who's at the door.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
Right, So let's sketch out the power dynamics on the
ground when this feast occurs. When the Mayflower lands off
Cape Cod, there's about a one hundred English passengers. By
the time this feast occurs, there's less than half that number.
Half these folks have died over the previous year. Those
(06:25):
who have survived have done so because the wampa Ogg's
permitted it. There was a debate within Wampenagg society over
the course of the year sixteen twenty one as to
whether to wipe out this this settlement. The wampa Ogg's
had a one hundred year, one hundred year history with
(06:48):
Europeans before the arrival of the Mayflower, and by and
large that had not been a pleasant history. It had
been a history of European explorers in slaving people, in
ferrying their captives across the ocean, you know, for sale
into bondage. It had been a story about shoreline clashes,
(07:09):
you know, when one side read the worst into the
other's mostly unintelligible actions. But the wamp and Ogs when
the Mayflower arrived, are in a very very difficult spot
for two reasons. One is they had suffered a terrible
epidemic between sixteen sixteen and sixteen nineteen, almost certainly introduced
(07:34):
to them accidentally, but introduced to them by Europeans. And
this disease we don't know the name of it. I
suspect it was smallpox, but we can't be sure. It
wiped out a sizeable number of the wompon odgg people.
And when I say sizable, I'm not talking about COVID numbers.
I'm talking about more than half of the population.
Speaker 3 (07:55):
Which is insane because COVID numbers are big, right.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
But you know, our societal death rate from COVID was
less than one percent, and you saw, you know, we
all experienced what that did to our society in this case,
and we knew what it was, right, We had a
name for it, and we had means to combat it.
Not everyone took advantage of those means, but we had
means to combat it, and you know, so on and
so forth. In this case, you know, the Wampa ogs
(08:20):
have been attacked by a disease with no name. They
don't know how to explain its cause, you know, it
could be witchcraft, it could be their God's punishing them
for something they did or didn't do. They simply don't know.
What they know is that their kin are dying all
(08:41):
around them. And you know, and we don't have exact
numbers as to how many people died. We have a
very kind of general numbers. But here's what I can
tell you. The English say that when they arrive in
this part of the world, they encounter village sites that
are covered with skeleton.
Speaker 3 (09:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
In other words, the people died where they were, and
the living were so terrified of what was happening they
fled the scene, which means a lot because native people
were diligent about caring for the remains of their dead. Okay,
so the Wampaagus have been depopulated, So that's the first problem.
The second problem is their narrogancet enemies to the west
(09:24):
have not been depopulated, and the Narragansetts take advantage of
the Wompennagu's weakness to reduce them to the status of tributaries.
So when the English arrive, the Wampadogs have a choice
to make. Do they based on this previous one hundred
years of hostility, wipe out these strangers and eliminate the
(09:48):
potential danger that they pose to Wampadag people. Or and
this is the choice that their leader, Usumquin or massasoyt
Act finally makes. Do they try to ally with these
folks and take advantage of their firearms, their swords, their knives,
their hatchets, and all the other goods that they have
(10:11):
that are of appeal to Native people. That's the choice
they make. That is the context that leads to the
First Thanksgiving. It is not a matter of the Natives
just happen to be friendly. They are in a desperate
position and they're making a strategic decision for their own preservation.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
So, from the reading I've done recently Native Nations Kathleen
Duval and a few other books, one of the biggest
revelations for myself personally having a blind spot with Native
American history is that many Native American tribes thought to
themselves when the Europeans were coming, how can this work
(10:53):
for us?
Speaker 3 (10:54):
Like? How can we use them?
Speaker 5 (10:56):
Like?
Speaker 1 (10:56):
Are there ways that we can use them for our aims?
And so it sounds like what you're telling me is
is that the Wampanogh saw this possibility of an alliance
to actually, you know, protect them from another, from from
their their enemies from another.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
Yeah, that's exactly right. You know, we have a tendency,
or at least you know, the public has a tendency
in some circles to characterize the European arrival in North
America as an invasion. And that's understandable. You know, in
in Central and South America and the Caribbean, the Spanish
(11:39):
conquest was just that it was. It was a military invasion, right.
And what's more, eventually in North America, once Europeans have
a beachhead on the continent, they do start conquering Native territory,
but with very few exceptions, the first colonies or owned
(12:00):
there at the sufferance of Native people. Native people could
have wiped out almost all of these places if they
had wished to do so. Generally speaking, they did not
wish to do so. Not at first. They would learn
that these people posed an existential threat to them. They
can't see that at the beginning. One of the things
(12:21):
we have to understand when we're accounting for Native people's
actions is that they don't see themselves as a single
group of people. They don't see themselves as Indians or
Native Americans or indigenous people or any other general category
of that sort. They are divided into hundreds of different polities,
(12:41):
and these polities usually are no larger than twenty or
thirty thousand people, and they're constantly at odds with one another.
So they're constantly seeking advantage against other tribes. When the
Europeans arrived, well that's your advantage, right. You can get
their military wares, you can get other trade goods that
(13:05):
will help you attract more followers to your group, and
you can try to enlist their soldiers in your cause.
And that is precisely what one native group does after
another after another.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
So the Wampanogue and the Plymouth settlers sign a peace treaty.
So how long does this what is this treaty all about?
Speaker 3 (13:27):
And how long does it last?
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Well, it depends who you ask. And you know, one
of the things that we as an American society have
not done very well over the course of centuries is
ask what the wamp and Ogu's thought this peace treaty
was all about. Now, I can remember firsthand being assigned
this peace treaty as one of the earliest primary source
(13:51):
documents assigned to me in school. And you know, we
went through each each provision of the treaty or once
did we did the teacher think to ask us as students,
how might the natives have interpreted these these clauses. So
I'll give you an example of what we're talking about.
(14:13):
So there's a provision in this peace treaty. Right, you
have some of this stuff, you can you could take
it face value. We won't attack each other, Okay. I
think it's safe to assume the wamp and Ogu's agreed
to that if we're attacked by another party, we'll come
to one another's aid. Okay, that sounds exactly right. We'll
have trade with one another. Okay. But here's where it
(14:35):
gets tricky. Now, the wampan Ogus are subjects of King James. Well,
the Wampannoggs don't have a word for subject. They don't
have a word for it. It's not it's not a
concept to them. They have no idea who King James is,
Who's who's this guy on the other side of the ocean.
And there's simply no, no possible that even if they said,
(15:01):
oh yeah, yeah, sure, we subject ourselves to King James
that they understood what that meant.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
Is there any way for us to know the story
from the Wampanague side? Is there is there other primary
source documentation from the womp of Inagus.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
Here's what we can do. We can judge what the
treaty said versus the way the wampanoaguese behaved after the treaty,
and the Wampaagus after the treaty were signed did not
behave like they were subjects to the King of England.
What's more, you know, the treaty says that if the
Wampaoagus committed any crimes against the English, they will turn
(15:41):
over the accused to English justice, which is preposterous. The
English are guests in Wampanogu country. The Wampanoags are not
guests in England. The notion that they would turn over
any members of their community to a foreign people's mot
of justice is simple, simply nonsense. And how do we
(16:03):
know that? Well, for the next fifty years, whenever the
English demand the Wampa Dogs to turn over accused wrongdours,
they always say no. And when the English finally pushed
the issue, the two sides go to war. Native people simply.
You know, native people are sovereign in their own land.
They're not going to sign over their sovereignty to a
(16:24):
group of fifty people.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
So getting back to the first Thanksgivings, as we the
popularly told patriotic tale. Now with all this in mind,
now we have all this context, talk about this this feast.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
Sure, so you know, the English should been on the
brink of starvation since their arrival. They arrive late in
the year, it's too late to plant, so they have
to survive on whatever supplies they brought, whatever they can
scrub up in the cold of of a New England winter,
(17:01):
and whatever they can trade for or receive as gifts
from native people. And they managed to make it to
the planting season. And then they plant a bucket of
seed corn that they had stolen from a Wampadog village.
They dug up this buried seed corn and took it
(17:23):
with them. Eventually they pay the Wampa dogs for it.
But you know, initially it looks like what it was theft.
They grow crop. You know, the crop is harvested, and
then you know, that fall, for the first time since
they arrived, the English say we're gonna rest for a
couple of days. It's been a really it's been a
very hard nine or ten months.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
And this is before the treaty.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
But no, this is after the treaty as signed. So
you know they have this Treaty of Mutual Defense and Trade. Okay,
so the English start letting their hair down. There's probably
a fair amount of drinking. They engage in target practice
as part of their amusements. So in other words, they're
firing guns. The wamp and Ogs hearing these guns firing.
(18:11):
Presume I think we can assume that the colony is
under attack, and so Usamiquin or Massasoyat, the sachem or
chief of the Wamponogg people arrives at the colony with
ninety armed men. That's almost twice the size of the colony.
In almost any other colonial context, a group of ninety
(18:36):
native warriors showing up at a colony would have produced
a bloodbath. You know, someone would have gotten trigger happy
and everything would have gone wrong. That's not what happens here.
Enough trust had been cultivated between the two sides that
instead of firing on one another, the wampa Ogg's stay
(18:57):
and they contribute some venison to the meal, and the
two parties feast together. That's this first Thanksgiving.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
So it's like the Wampanox show up. They're like, what's
all this ruckus? And the settlers are like, it's a party,
come on, right, and they can see these music video.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
Right, and so let they crashed the party, and so,
you know, let's be clear, it's not like they received
a written invitation to this event, which is you know,
kind of how the story is normally normally told here.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
So it'd be like if my drunk neighbor is shooting
off his guns on a Sunday afternoon and I go
over to his house and see what's going on, and
he like gets out of six pack and says, come on,
let's let's let's have a couple of beers.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
It would be like you showing up with a gang
and him feeling like he doesn't have any choice but
to open the door for you.
Speaker 3 (19:53):
Good, good context.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
This is American History Hotline. I'm your host, Bob Crawford. Today,
my guest is David J.
Speaker 3 (20:07):
Silverman.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
He's a historian and author of the book This Land
Is Their Land, The Wampanog Indians, Plymouth Colony and the
Troubled History of Thanksgiving He's got a new book coming
out in February titled The Chosen and the Damned Native
Americans and the Making of Race in the United States.
We're talking about the origins of Thanksgiving. Remember to send
(20:29):
us your burning questions about American history, and also help
us out with an upcoming episode by telling us your
favorite films of the twenty first century. Record yourself using
the voice Memo app on your phone and email it
to American Historyhotline at gmail dot com. That's American History
Hotline at gmail dot com.
Speaker 3 (20:50):
Now back to the show.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
David, Thanksgiving didn't become a national holiday until hundreds of
years later during the Civil War. I was this the
time to create this holiday because of the Civil War?
Speaker 2 (21:07):
You know, Abraham Lincoln was lobbied by this woman named
Sarah Josepha Hale, who, Yeah, she's kind of like the
opera of the nineteenth century. She starts this this magazine
for women that becomes enormously popular, and you know, among
(21:28):
the ideas that she traffics in is that the country
needs a holiday to help bridge the divisions that led
to and were perpetrating the Civil War. Thanksgiving is that idea. Now,
Thanksgiving had been a Yankee holiday. So the only way
(21:50):
you were going to get Thanksgiving declared as a national
holiday was for the South to have seceded when that
announcement is made, and you know, so Lincoln, in the
spirit that this idea was proposed, takes it up and
declares the holiday. Up until this point, New Englanders had
(22:10):
celebrated days of Thanksgiving really since the seventeenth century, and
it had been an English tradition too. So let's be clear,
this is not a tradition that begins in New England.
It stretches back into the midst of time on the
other side of the ocean. Let's be clear too, almost
every Native American group has days of Thanksgiving. People all
(22:30):
over the world have days of Thanksgiving, so targeting which
one was first is really hard. But whereas in the
colonial period, days of Thanksgiving were haphazard, they would be
announced by the government depending on the circumstances of the time.
So if there was a victory in war, the end
of a drought, what have you, the government would say, Okay,
(22:51):
we're going to hold the following days a day of Thanksgiving.
Over time, the day became standardized, and eventually people began
selling librating these days of Thanksgiving when you closed your
account books for the year, you know, usually late fall,
and you know that was a time to celebrate, so
(23:11):
that becomes part of the routine. But let's be clear,
during that period, during the seventeenth century, the eighteenth century,
all the way into the nineteenth century, up till nearly
the time that Lincoln makes this declaration, nobody, nobody associated
the Thanksgiving holiday with Pilgrims and Indians.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
So how did this happen?
Speaker 1 (23:36):
How is that connection made.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
It's a couple of different ways. One has to do
with Plymouth Town's attempt to boost tourism. You know, Plymouth
Colony was a nothing place. You know, it's an underpopulated,
economically marginal colony where really only it's only important for
two reasons. One is it's the first English colony in
(24:01):
the Northeast that survives, and the second is, in sixteen
seventy five seventy six, it's the place where the Great
War between English colonists in New England and native people starts.
And this is the war that ends up devastating the
wamp and Dogs and giving the English effectively control of
the region. Otherwise, Plymouth gets annexed by Massachusetts in sixteen
(24:27):
ninety one, and that's it. It now is just part
of the mainstream of Massachusetts history. Well after the American Revolution,
Plymouth town is falling on hard times, and so a
group of men calling themselves like the Old Colony Club,
decide to start promoting the Pilgrims who had been You know,
(24:47):
they're an eccentric group of religious fanatics who no one
really paid attention to. They start promoting these guys as
colonial founding fathers and Plymouth's rock this you know, we
could have whole show on Plymouth Rock and the abuse
it's taken over the years, but they make up the
story that the Pilgrims landed on this rock, and they
(25:13):
try to get people to come to town and spend
their money so that that idea starts to start to circulate.
But the real key to associating the holiday with Pilgrims
and Indians is the publication of one of the two
primary sources of the original feast between the English and
the wamp and Ogs. The source is now called Mortz Relation.
(25:37):
It's a co authored piece by Edward Winslow, who was
a key figure in early Plymouth Colony and William Bradford,
who was the governor of the colony for a long time.
In this account, there's one paragraph about this feast. Likewise,
in Bradford's account to Plymouth Plantation called of Limit Plantation,
(26:01):
is a couple of lines about the face. Really not
a big deal. But the guy who edited this primary source,
he's a minister named Alexander Young. He adds a footnote
to this section, and he says in the footnote, this
was the first Thanksgiving the harvest festival of New England,
(26:22):
to my knowledge or to the knowledge of anyone else
who had studied the issue, no one had ever proposed
this idea before.
Speaker 3 (26:29):
So what year was that?
Speaker 2 (26:31):
Eighteen forty one?
Speaker 3 (26:32):
Eighteen forty one, So you know, we're.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
Now two hundred and twenty years after that supposed first Thanksgiving. Now, look,
I'm a historian. I work with footnotes. No one other
than fellow historians read footnotes. But somehow this footnote took
hold enough people read it, especially people in power, orators,
(26:58):
politicians and the like, that the idea started to get
trafficked around, so that by the time that Lincoln makes
his pronouncement that Thanksgiving will be a national holiday, the
notion that Thanksgiving began with Pilgrims and Indians had begun
to capture the public imagination. From that point forward, the
(27:24):
tie between the holiday and the mythical Pilgrim an Indian
story gets propagated by schools. Public schools would regularly hold
and I can remember being in one of these things
Thanksgiving pageants in which they have the kids dress up
like Pilgrims and Indians and reenact what people imagine that
(27:48):
feace would be. By the way I was a tree
in the play tells you something about my acting abilities
as a child. But you know, these pageants became standard fair,
especially in the North, until very recent times.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
In Plymouth today there's a plaque that commemorates a national
day of mourning every Thanksgiving.
Speaker 3 (28:13):
Tell us what that's all about.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
Right, So, once the holiday of Thanksgiving gets tied to
the Pilgrim an Indian story, it becomes the major story
that white Americans tell themselves about the role of Native
people in the country's past. Yeah, and it's a bedtime story.
(28:39):
It's a fairy tale of colonists and native people making friends,
and Native people conceding to their own disposition, right, which
is patent nonsense. You know, Colonial America is a blood bath.
Quite frankly, you can narrate the history of colonial America
(29:02):
as one colonial Indian war after another after another after another,
you know, because colonists want Native land without Native people
on it, full stop, and Native people aren't going to
concede to any such a geta, So it's a war.
So Native people in the country have to listen to
(29:27):
this idea year after year after year. And let's be clear,
these Thanksgiving pageants that I mentioned, these are performed in
Native American boarding schools, right, This story is propagated two
Native kids in Native American boarding schools, never mind to
(29:50):
Native kids who are in majority white schools all around
the country. I have heard first and testimony from multiple
Wampanogs people about what it's like to be a school
age child in a classroom where a teacher is promoting
this nonsense, and almost invariably they say, it's followed up
(30:13):
by some kids saying well where are the Indians, and
the teacher saying, oh, well, they're all gone, even as
there's a Wampannog kid sitting right there who the teacher
can't conceive of as Indian because the kid doesn't fulfill
the stereotypes of Native people that Hollywood has been trafficking
in for the laste hundred years.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
So it's fairly obvious why there's only one version of
this story of Thanksgiving.
Speaker 2 (30:38):
Right. So fast forward to the year nineteen seventy. We're
in the middle of the Civil Rights movement. We're in
the early days of the Red Power movement, in which
Native activists around the country begin protesting for their own
rights and dignity. And there's a Wampanog activist named Frank
(31:02):
James who says, you know, I've had it with this.
I simply have. He's a student of history. He had
been asked to speak at a statewide Massachusetts commemoration of
the founding of Plymouth Colony, and when he submitted his
speech for review, the white organizers wouldn't accept it. They
(31:22):
said it was too provocative. So he said, the hell
with this. I'm gonna have my own event. I'm going
to deliver the speech, and he called the event the
National Day of Mourning, and he held it in Plymouth
Town on a hill overlooking Plymouth Rock and a replica
of the Mayflower right near a statue of Massasoiot or Usamiquin.
(31:45):
And you know what did he say in the speech.
It's not all that provocative. We have what he's fundamentally
what he says is, look, I know, for you wife, folks,
this is a day of celebration right at the beginning
of what you consider to be your civilization. But you
need to understand that this is the beginning of the
end for my people. The story that you tell as
(32:08):
a triumph is for us a tragedy, and we are
your countrymen and women, and our experience counts too. Furthermore,
he says, recognize we're still here. We we haven't gone anywhere,
and we still have sovereign rights that we're trying to defend.
Since that time, this event has grown into an annual tradition,
(32:33):
and Native people from all over the country and indeed
all over the world show up at this National Day
of Mourning rally in Plymouth Town. For some Native people
and Wampinog's especially, they now, instead of holding a day Thanksgiving,
hold a day morning. Some people do both, and some
(32:54):
people have no use for the day of morning and
hold just a traditional thanks saving. There's a range of
ways Native people honor this this event, but it has
become such a big deal that Pliboth Town now has
that plaque that you that you mentioned.
Speaker 1 (33:09):
We celebrate Thanksgiving, we try to as a day of
coming together, and it seems in recent years that it's
no longer settlers and Native Americans. It's now one part
of the family who harbors certain political view views versus
(33:30):
the other part of the family who harbors, you know,
opposite political views. Is there a way we can we can, uh,
in your opinion, you know, capture this day and this
idea of coming together to to create peace amongst you know,
honor the Native Americans who who were here first, who
(33:52):
suffered horrible abases at the hands of Europeans, and also
learn to love our family men members who we really
disagree with.
Speaker 2 (34:02):
Sure, you know, I'm not the guy to proffer up
solutions for the very deep and substantive political divisions in
our society. But let me observe this basic point about
those divisions. On the right, there's a belief that the
(34:24):
purpose of a history education is to cultivate patriotism. Right, So,
in other words, history is supposed to be in the
service of political aims. I'm a professional historian. I don't
care whether you come from the history that I write
that I teach feeling patriotic, antiatriot, unpatriotic, or indifferent. That
(34:49):
is neither here nor there for me. My only goal
is to capture a complex history in all of its complexity.
That's it, full stop. And I think on the left
side of the political spectrum, you have a wide population,
mostly who have been college educated and thus also take
(35:10):
that approach to the study of history. And it becomes
very hard to have a conversation about history and truth
and its role in our society when you're coming at
it from such polar opposite views. So back to the
issue of Thanksgiving. So what do we do with it? Look,
I am all in favor of getting together with family
(35:33):
and friends and offering thanks for what's good in our lives.
I think we should do it more often than just
once a year. And let me be clear, contrary to
some of the detractors of this book that I've written,
I am not calling for replacing Thanksgiving with a day
of mourning, or canceling Thanksgiving, or declaring war on Thanksgiving
(35:57):
or any such things. But here is what I am saying.
If we're going to invoke Pilgrims and Indians in relation
and Thanksgiving holiday. Let's get story straight. We're all grown ups.
We can deal with the truth, right, But I don't
think we have to do that. We know who wants
(36:18):
to talk about genocide and then serve up a meal?
Speaker 4 (36:22):
Right?
Speaker 2 (36:23):
How about we go back to the original Thanksgiving, which
didn't invoke Pilgrims and Indians at all, and just focus
on family and friends and what we're grateful for in
our lives. The myth of the First Thanksgiving is just
that it's a myth. It is not true. What's more,
it's an untruth that is deeply insulting to our indigenous
(36:48):
countrymen and women. And they've suffered a lot for the
creation of this country. They shouldn't have to revisit it
every single year.
Speaker 1 (36:58):
Well said, Well said, Well, David, I really appreciate you
taking the time to answer Jillian's question and being on
American History Hotline.
Speaker 3 (37:08):
I've been talking with David J. Silverman.
Speaker 1 (37:11):
He's a historian and author of the book This Land
Is Their Land, The Wampanog Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the
Troubled History of Thanksgiving. He's got a new book coming
out in February titled The Chosen and the Damned Native Americans,
and the making of race in the United States. David,
I wish you and yours a wonderful, peaceful thanksgiving.
Speaker 2 (37:35):
Same to you and yours.
Speaker 1 (37:40):
You've been listening to American History Hotline, a production of
iHeart Podcasts and Scratch Track Productions. The show is executive
producer is James Morrison. Our executive producers from iHeart are
Jordan Runtall and Jason English.
Speaker 3 (37:55):
Original music composed by me Bob Crawford. Please keep in touch.
Speaker 1 (38:01):
Our email is Americanhistoryhotline at gmail dot com. If you
like the show, please tell your friends and leave us
a review in Apple Podcasts. I'm your host, Bob Crawford.
Feel free to hit me up on social media to
ask a history question or to let me know what
you think of the show. You can find me at
(38:22):
Bob Crawford Base. Thanks so much for listening.
Speaker 3 (38:25):
See you next week.
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