November 14, 2024 • 38 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Thanksgiving is the only American holiday that has actually remained relatively innocent—it’s not something that we have been able to commercialize. But there’s something going on here more than feasting, family, and football. Robert Tracy McKenzie is a professor of history at Wheaton College and is the author of The First Thanksgiving. He’s here to tell us the story of this quintessentially American holiday.
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Speaker 1 (00:12):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American stories.
In this show, we celebrate Thanksgiving, and it's the only
American holiday that's actually remained relatively innocent. It's not something
that we've been able to commercialize. But there is something
going on here that's more than just feasting, family and football.
(00:35):
Robert Tracy mackenzie is a professor of history at Wheaton College.
He's also the author of The First Thanksgiving. He's here
to tell us the story of this quintessentially American holiday.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Let's take a listen. The story of the Pilgrims in
the First Thanksgiving, in many respects, is one chapter in
a much, much larger story, a story that is grounded
in an enormous phenomen that we remember is the Protestant Reformation.
In the early years of fifteen hundreds, individuals like Martin Luther,
(01:08):
the German theologian in Monk, had begun to work toward
reforming the Catholic Church, changing some of its theological teachings,
some of its church practices, some of its governing structure,
and Luther found that that was essentially impossible to accomplish
within the confines of the Catholic Church. Ultimately, leading to
(01:32):
a break with the Catholic Church. In fifteen seventeen, on
Halloween evening, Luther famously put up his ninety five theses,
his ninety five statements of protest about Catholic teaching. This
caused his relationship with the Pope with the Catholic hierarchy
to deteriorate pretty rapidly, leading ultimately to the Pope declaring
(01:54):
Luther heretic in fifteen twenty and prompting Luther ultimately to
break with the Catholic Church to establish an independent church,
a protesting church, and so Protestantism was born. The president
Reformation reaches England maybe a generation later, during the reign
of King Henry the Eighth, and ultimately Henry himself also
(02:17):
breaks with the Catholic Church and establishes an independent Church
of England church we often remember as the Anglican Church.
The Anglican Church in many respects, though still retained a
lot of the teaching, a lot of the practices, a
lot of the hierarchy of Catholicism. So within England there's
a core group of English Christians who begin to work
(02:40):
to purify the Church of England of its Catholic remnants.
And they begin to be referred to, often quite sarcastically
and critically as Protestants. The group that's gathering at screwby
By about sixteen hundred or so is actually best thought
of as a radical kind of subset of English Protestants.
(03:03):
These are individuals who come to be known as Separatists.
The separatists basically not only believe that the Anglican Church
needed reformation, they'd actually arrived at the conclusion that the
Anglican Church was not a true church, that it was
so far in divergence from what they believed was the
true requirements of Scripture that they really couldn't in good
(03:25):
conscience associate or worship with Anglicans. They had to withdraw.
They had to separate from the Anglican Church. And so
we need to understand then this core group is the
most radical of the most radical protesting Christians. In separating
from the Anglican Church, they're actually defying the established Church
(03:47):
of England. They're actually defying the monarchy of England, and
so in a certain sense they are considered in many
respects outlaws against both church and state. This group ultimately
is going to face some persecution in Screwby. We can
exaggerate it, but we know that one member of the
congregation was in fact thrown into prison. Three other leaders
(04:11):
of the congregation were under suspicion. There were warrants out
for their arrest. They actually go into hiding, and ultimately
it led to the conclusion that this group was simply
not going to be allowed to worship separately, worship faithfully
as they understood it, and so they decided that they
would have no alternative but to leave England. Now, when
(04:35):
we remember the Pilgrim story, one of the ways that
we remember it incorrectly. I think it's really important to
go back and recapture this truth is that Pilgrims don't
leave England directly for New England. They don't leave Screwby
and head for North America. There's, in fact an intermediate
step in their migration. They actually go not to North
America but to Holland, and so they're able to get
(04:57):
out of the country. It's a complicated and danger undertaking,
but around the year sixteen oh eight they make their
way to Holland, settling first of all on Amsterdam, where
they stay for a matter of months, and then finally
relocating about thirty miles to the southwest of the town
of Leiden, and it's Lighten where they reside for the
next twelve years, and it's from Leiden that they migrate
(05:20):
to North America in sixteen twenty. We have to understand
that Leiden was although smaller than Amsterdam, it was still
a large city for its day. It had a population
of about forty thousand. These were individuals who had migrated
from a tiny, rural, agricultural village in England and they
found themselves in a vibrant, growing, industrializing city. It was
(05:43):
foreign in many many ways. You know, we sometimes talk
about how the Pilgrims came to a new world when
they migrated to North America, but in a real sense,
they were going to a new world when they migrated
to Holland. It was so foreign from what they knew,
so different rent that it's hard for us to exaggerate
the challenge. So now rural people were living in a
(06:05):
large city. Farm folk were having to earn their living
in industrial settings as employees in a textile manufacturing line
of work, and it was hard. And yet one of
the important things that they would have stressed is that
they experienced a great deal of religious freedom. Holland generally
(06:25):
was known for its religious toleration. It was religiously diverse,
but there were problems, starting with the economic challenges, and
they begin to worry about the future of their congregation.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
And you've been listening to Robert Tracy mackenzie tell the
story of the Pilgrims, their trek from England to Holland,
to the city of Leiden and a very different kind
of environment that they'd never experienced before, and soon to
be coming to the new world, a very new world.
(07:00):
The story of the Pilgrims, as told by Robert Tracy mackenzie.
It continues here on Our American Stories. Folks, if you
(07:31):
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(07:52):
donate button and help us keep the great American stories coming.
That's our American stories dot Com and we continue with
our American stories and with Robert Tracy mackenzie. He's a
(08:14):
professor of history at Wheaton College. He is also the
author of The First Thanksgiving. Let's pick up with the
story of the Pilgrims and the revival in Leiden.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Some of the adults were thinking about returning to England,
even with its restrictions on religious liberty. They thought, well,
at least we'll be able to eat there. At least
we want starve there. They found it a hard place
to raise their children. This is, in Bradford's word, a
licentious culture, a culture that really doesn't have the same
(08:46):
moral standards. Their lax in the way that they train
their children. They're critical of the Pilgrim parents as being
too stern in their child rearing practices, and that bothers
them as well. And it's in that context that they
began to consider looking for a new home, not in Europe,
but in fact across the Atlantic Ocean in North America.
(09:09):
You know, it's very common, I think, for us to
hear someone in referring to the Pilgrims to say that
they came to this country in search of religious freedom.
Now the reality is what they are struggling with really
is the cares of this world. It's kind of daily
challenges that so many of us face, that so many
of us can relate to, because even though they are
(09:32):
motivated by those kinds of economic concerns and family concerns,
all of their motivation in some way connects back to
their deep commitment not just to their families, but to
their church. And so their decision to migrate is not
a decision made by a bunch of individuals who happen
to leave simultaneously. It is a congregational decision. They are
(09:56):
basically deciding as a group that the only they're going
to be able to stay together is if they find
together a new home. The voyage of the Mayflower is
something that William Bradford, who wrote the main history of
the Pilgrims will and Bradford only talks about it in
about a page and a half and he doesn't share
(10:16):
a lot of details, but we do know that it
was an arduous and in many ways a terrifying experience
for them. To begin with, they hadn't been able to
leave England. They went from Holland back to England en
route to North America. They hadn't been able to leave
England nearly as early in the calendar year as they
(10:37):
had hoped. And then when they finally were in position
to leave one of the ships they had hoped to
take two ships, one of the ships immediately begins to
take on water and they have to return for repairs,
and that happens not once but twice before they finally
have to just give up on the idea that the
second ship, called the speed Well would be able to
(10:57):
accompany them. All of wish to say. Then they actually
don't leave England for good until September the sixth, in
the year sixteen twenty, and their voyage will take sixty
five days, And so if you do the math, it
comes out to an average of just at two miles
per hour for sixty five days. Because of the bad weather,
(11:19):
it would have been almost certain that they would have
remained below decks for the entire voyage, or almost for
the entire voyage. It was an area that was not
tall enough to stand up in, and for sixty five
days they're in an area that was about the size
of a good sized city bus, and in that space,
(11:40):
one hundred and two Pilgrim passengers. So as the Pilgrims
were preparing to leave from Leiden, it's probably good for
us just to stop for a moment, and in our
mind's eye, try to imagine that parting. If you're William Bradford,
for example, he's leaving a three year old son behind
just because it's not possibly. He just doesn't think it's
possible for his son to survive. Early on, he hopes
(12:03):
that his son would join him afterward. And those kinds
of goodbyes were being said repeatedly. And the way that
Bradford describes the departure in his history is very touching.
He really tells us that tears were flowing like water.
But and here is the passes that I love so much.
That they comforted themselves with what they believed to be true.
(12:27):
And what they believed to be true, among other things,
was that this world was not their home. As he
put it in his history, they reminded themselves that they
were Pilgrims. You know, that's the label that we use
for this group, that we use so much that it
loses all of its meaning, all of its power. But
in saying they knew that they were Pilgrims, he's almost certainly,
(12:47):
quoting from the thirteenth chapter of the Book of Hebrews
in the Christian New Testament, where the author says that
various heroes of the Christian faith knew that they were pilgrims,
that the world was not their home, and Bradford saying
that they found comfort in reminding themselves of that truth.
They were temporary sojourners in this land. Their ultimate hope
(13:08):
lay elsewhere, so they knew that they were pilgrims. One
of the things about this that really is, I think miraculous,
is that there was only one fatality among the one
hundred and two pilgrim passengers on board the Mayflower. This
was not really at all to be expected. There had
been a voyage of Puritans actually just the year before
(13:30):
to Virginia to resettle there, and a passenger list that
had one hundred and eighty individuals on it. Found that
by the end of that voyage one hundred and thirty
had died, and so surviving the voyage almost without loss
of life was pretty amazing. So they arrived on the
coast of New England in early November, actually the ninth
(13:52):
of November specifically, but they're considerably north of where they
had expected to land. They had entered into an agreement
with a corporation that had been authorized by the King
of England to settle what is today the area of Virginia,
the Carolina's Maryland on up to basically to Hudson River.
(14:13):
But they landed considerably north of that, actually off the
coast of Cape Cod. And so their first response is, well,
we have to turn south, we have to go to
the area where we've been authorized to settle, and they
try to do that, but the area there around Cape
Cod is really treacherous for navigation, and the captain, Captain Reynolds,
tells them that this is not going to happen. This
(14:33):
is too dangerous. We're not going to undertake this. And
it's on the twenty third of December, according to their records,
twenty third of December in the year sixteen twenty that
they go ashore on the site of what we know
today is the town of Plymouth, Massachusetts. The area actually
had been the site of a Native American village, a
(14:55):
village inhabited by a tribe called the Patuxent, but the
Puck had been devastated by disease sometime probably not too
long before sixteen twenty, certainly after sixteen fifteen, so fairly
recently the Ptuccent had been literally wiped out. Historians are
(15:17):
not sure what the disease was. It may have been
viral hepatitis. So where the pilgrims land is sort of
like a ghost village in essence, and they're arriving right
at the onset of a bitter New England winter. And
if I could just say this parenthetically, this really surprises them.
They know that they're going to be late in the year,
(15:39):
but they really were not expecting such severe weather. And
you might think why in the world not. If you
look at a map, you'll actually find that, in terms
of latitude, present day Massachusetts is pretty much on the
same line of latitude as Madrid, Spain. So the Pilgrims
(16:00):
actually traveling substantially south, about six hundred miles south of London,
and so they're actually expecting a temperate climate even as
late as sixteen twenty two. A couple of years later,
one pamphlet that's advertising the settlement is saying that it's
going to be sort of like a garden spot. This
is going to be sort of like a place in
the Riviera and what they get, of course, is very,
(16:22):
very different. So the next few months are just awful.
One historian would later call this the starving time, and
that actually is a misunderstanding I think of what was
going on. They actually have enough food to avoid starvation.
What they don't have is shelter, and so they mostly
live on board the Mayflower. But every day when they
(16:44):
want to work trying to build these structures, they have
to find a way to get to shore.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
And you're listening to our Thanksgiving special, and you're listening
to Robert Tracy mackenzie tell the story of the Pilgrims,
and we learn that they were in Leiden and they
had religious freedom there, but the cultural influences of the
big city just didn't match up with the interests of
the Pilgrims and how they wanted to raise their family.
And so the congregation decides to head well, to head
(17:13):
to America. And by the way, what a surprise to
find out. Though they sailed six hundred miles south, the
brutal winters of New England were not to be expected.
When we come back. More of this remarkable story, The
Pilgrim's story, the story of Thanksgiving is a part of
our Thanksgiving special here on our American Stories. And we
(18:08):
continue with our American stories and with Robert Tracy Mackenzie
telling the story of the first Thanksgiving. Let's pick up
where we last left off.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
The Mayflower had come with a long boat. They expected
to use this boat for fishing, but they had had
to disassemble the boat to fit it into the hold,
and it had been damaged en route, so it took
quite a while to repair that boat. So for actually
several weeks, the adults who would go ashore to work
would have to wade through the frigid water in December
(18:41):
and January in Massachusetts, and not just a short space
because the harbor was so shallow. The Mayflower is anchored
probably between three quarters of a mile and a mile
from shore. So the first thing they'll do every day
is to wade through this icy water up to their
chest for three quarters of a mile or more. And
(19:02):
then the last thing they'll do, after having worked all day,
is to repeat the journey in the opposite direction. And
so you can imagine the real theory. I think the
more likely theory is that they will die in droves
from pneumonia, so that by spring. Of the one hundred
and two passengers originally on the Mayflower, fifty two have
(19:23):
died and every family's affected. There were twenty six different
family groups among the passengers, and only four were spared
from at least one death, so twenty two of the
families had at least one family member die. There were
eighteen married couples on the Mayflower and fourteen have one
of the two partners die. And much to I think
(19:46):
our amazement ought to amaze us. When the weather allows
the Mayflower to return to England in the spring of
sixteen twenty one, the survivors are given the opportunity to
return to England and they and now they are needing
to be wholly absorbed in the work of completing their settlement,
planting crops, and hopefully preparing for their survival during the
(20:11):
next winter to come. It's in this context that they
have really their first significant encounter with Native American peoples
in the area. And in the spring of sixteen twenty one,
they actually are visited on two occasions by Native American visitors,
two different individuals who actually are able to speak English,
(20:32):
and they're floored by that. The better known of these
two was a Native American man named Squanto. His full
name was Tisquantum. Squanto story is very fascinating. He had
actually learned English because he had been kidnapped by European
fishermen sometime before the Great Epidemic struck his tribal community.
(20:53):
He had been kidnapped and taken to Spain, where actually
his freedom, after a time, was purchased by some Spanish
monks who facilitated his escape to England. There he worked
for a time as a servant to an English sea captain.
Ultimately is able to get passage on a ship back
to North America and make his way overland to Protuccent
(21:16):
to what is now Plymouth, where, to his great horror,
he finds that all of his people have now been
victims of the epidemic. He was made a prisoner of
another Native American tribe that was in the area, and
this was the Wampanoag tribe. The Wampanoag had also been
devastated by disease, though not wiped out, and they're the
peoples that will ultimately interact most intimately with the Pilgrims
(21:39):
in the immediate months and years to come. There are
a variety of ways that they helped the Pilgrims, and
some of these details you probably have heard from your childhood.
One of the things that the Wampanoag will do is
to help the Pilgrims master a form of agriculture that's
really appropriate for the terrain and the climate of the area.
(22:00):
And so these kinds of sort of life hacks, we
would say today, are things that the Wampanoag teach to
the Pilgrims that surely were very central to their survival.
And so that leads to a cause for celebration. In
the fall of sixteen twenty one, the sum total of
evidence that we have about the event that we call
(22:22):
the First Thanksgiving comes from a letter that was written
by one of the Pilgrims, a man named Edward Winslow,
and he writes this letter toward the end of sixteen
twenty one, when there's an opportunity to send it back
to England with a ship that is passing by, and
in this letter he describes what has occurred in some
(22:44):
total of four sentences which add up to one hundred
and fifteen words, he basically says that with the harvest
being in their Governor William Bradford basically said, and I'm
paraphrasing here said. Let's say, and so Bradford sends four
men of the community out into the woods to hunt
(23:05):
for fowl, for birds as they were celebrating. According to Winslow,
the Indians, as he says, many of the Indians came
among us, and for three days they entertained them and
feasted together. So this is the sum total of what
we actually know. One hundred and fifteen words and four sentences.
And let's think about it for just a moment. Actually,
(23:28):
it doesn't tell us much about what was on the menu.
There's a reference to fowl, but does it say turkey.
By the way, the Pilgrim records that survived talk about
swans and geese and herons and cranes and ducks, and
so probably the main menu at the gathering would have
been these kinds of delicacies. We also don't have any
(23:50):
reference to candy yams, or to pumpkin pie, or to
any things that we associate with a traditional Thanksgiving dinner.
There's good reason for that. The Pilgrims didn't have. Pretty
much everything that they would have been able to fix
at this time would have been boiled or roasted. They
didn't have sugar, they didn't have flour for pie crusts.
(24:11):
The reality is that they probably are eating lots of
water fowl. They're probably eating what they would have called sauce,
which basically means fixings or trimmings like turnips and parsnips
and cabbage and collared greens. I often joe quite possible
that they had turnips and eels, and in fact, it's
(24:32):
more likely that they had turnips and eels than that
they had turkey and dressing. The one other thing on
the menu that we want to call attention to is
a venison, and this is in that four sentence account
from Edward Winslow. We're told that the Native American people
who came brought with them five deer, which leads us
(24:52):
to think a little bit about the presence of the
Native Americans there. One of the things that's not in
the historical record, that we often assumes in the historical
record is the idea that the Pilgrims actually invited the
Wampanoig to be a part of their celebration. And Winslow
doesn't say that. His language is much more oblique than that.
(25:13):
It says Indians came among us, and so it's at
least possible that they were unexpected guests. And we do
know that the Wampanoa did from time to time come
into the Pilgrim settlement and often did expect to stay
for some period of time, and often did expect to
enjoy some of the Pilgrim's store of food, and so
it wouldn't have been the first time. The fact is,
(25:35):
the Pilgrims and the Wampanoig were able to survive. As
different as they were, they were able to benefit one another.
They avoided war, and these are wonderful kinds of things
to call attention to. The account from Winslow says that
the Pilgrims exercised their arms, that's his wording, which basically
means they got out their guns and they sort of
(25:57):
went through military drill, and we might imagine and sort
of both sides in different ways trying to demonstrate their prowess,
trying to make sure that the other side knew that
they were not to be trifled with.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
And you're listening to Robert Tracy McKenzie tell the story
of the First Thanksgiving and so much more, including the
story of the Pilgrims. My goodness, that passage from the Mayflower,
fifty two passengers died, twenty two of the families lost
at least one family member, and not being prepared for
that brutal winter, my goodness, and then to learn that
(26:31):
they had to walk a mile each way back to
the Mayflower where they had to reside. And if you've
ever been in New England waters I grew up in
New Jersey, you can't know just how bitter cold it
is even in March, but the winter, it's quite remarkable.
And anytime you're complaining about cold water or about your life,
think about the story of the pilgrims and what they
(26:52):
endured for the love of their God and for the
love of their church and their families. When we come
back more of this remarkable American story the First Thanksgiving
here on our American Stories, and we continue here with
(27:38):
our American stories and with Robert Tracy mackenzie, who's a
professor of history at Wheaton College. He's also the author
of The First Thanksgiving. Let's pick up where we last
left off.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
The account from Winslow says that King massis Wit, who
is the leader of the Wampanoag tribe, brought with him
about ninety men. Let's think about the pilgrims themselves. Fifty survivors,
overwhelmingly male. Because females have died in greater proportions than males.
There are about five males for every female among the
(28:14):
pilgrims at the first Thanksgiving. Our estimate is that by
the end of all those deaths in the winter, there
was maybe only one pilgrim over forty years old. The
governor of the colony, William Bradford, is thirty. Just one
of the thought as you see them in your mind's eye.
Evidence from the time suggests that they had not yet
(28:35):
built much in the way of furniture. They certainly would
not have had lots of long tables. You always see
the pictures of the long tables set up outside. They
didn't have forks at all. Forks were a relatively recent
innovation in England, and it was often thought very pretentious.
To use a fork was a sign that you were
a fop, and so they would have had knives and spoons.
(28:57):
They would almost certainly been sitting on the ground. Not
only young, they're colorful, you know. The standard stereotype, which
actually dates to the late eighteen hundreds, shows Pilgrims not
wearing all black, really tall hats. They have buckles on
every sort of part of their clothing, but the records
from the Colony of the Property of People when they
(29:19):
die suggests that their clothes were bright colors. The governor,
William Bradford has a red cape and a purple vest.
The Pilgrims actually thought of Thanksgiving as a very solemn
holy day, So we use the word holiday, which really
(29:41):
is an illusion of holy day, and it's very unlikely
that what we remember is the first Thanksgiving is actually
something that they would have called a Thanksgiving. They believe
that the Bible authorized God's people to declare these special
kinds of holy celebrations in response to some extraordinary circumstance.
(30:04):
But when that happened, they anticipated gatherings that would have
been solemn, that would have been centered on link the preaching,
prayer and singing, not on feasting, certainly, not on games,
not on military drill. And so what they're doing at
this gathering in the fall of sixteen twenty one is
(30:26):
they're having just a kind of harvest celebration that they
would have known from their youth in rural England. A
good question that comes to mind is just why is
it that we attach such significance to the Pilgrim celebration
of sixteen twenty one. And I think there's probably a
variety of answers, but I have a theory that I'd
like to share with you has to do with when
(30:48):
Americans actually discovered this event. And that may strike you
as odd even to put it that way, but the
reality is the American people didn't remember this gathering for
a very long time, for more than two centuries after
it occurred. The main description of it, as I've mentioned,
was in a letter that was written and taken back
(31:08):
to England, was actually published in England as part of
the pamphlet, but then it gradually sort of went out
of circulation and there was just no historical record of
this event. But a copy of the pamphlet is not
actually discovered in North America until the eighteen twenties, until
two centuries after the First Thanksgiving is discovered by a
(31:32):
sort of amateur historian who's a minister in New England,
and he actually includes it in a history that he
is writing about the origins of New England, and in
a book that was published in the year eighteen forty one,
two hundred and twenty years after the event. And in
this book he tells his readers when he repeats the
description by Edward Winslow, and here is the first Thanksgiving
(31:56):
that ever occurred in New England. By the eighteen forties,
New England had come to celebrate Thanksgiving every fall. It
had become a really sort of treasured tradition. Thanksgiving actually
wasn't celebrated in the South, It wasn't celebrated in much
of the Western United States. It was a New England holiday,
but it was a cherished New England holiday. And then
this minister in eighteen forty one tells New Englanders and
(32:18):
here's where it all started. This was the origin of
the celebration. And so all of a sudden individuals have discovered,
they believe the source of their tradition, and pretty quickly
they begin to emphasize it as one of those sort
of seminal moments in the early history of the country.
As late then as the eighteen forties, Thanksgiving is still
pretty much a regional holiday. It does get a boost
(32:41):
about twenty years later during the American Civil War. Abraham Lincoln,
president of the United States. During this period, of course,
is being lobbied by a female writer named Sarah Josepha Hale,
who is an editor of a prominent ladies magazine, and
she's contacting Lincoln every fall and saying, you need to
declare this as a national holiday. And the way that
(33:02):
Hale makes her case is to say that all of
the holidays at that point that were recognized nationally, they
were for men. And there were really just two holidays
national holidays at the time. One was the fourth of July.
She thought of that as a male holiday. The other
was George Washington's birthday, and that would also have been
a time predominantly when men gathered together, where there were
(33:25):
speeches and so forth. And she thought that Thanksgiving is
the perfect woman's holiday. It was a domestic holiday. It
centered around entertainment within the home, centered around a fine meal,
and so forth. And so she keeps lobbying Lincoln, and
in eighteen sixty three, Lincoln finally relents, and he issues
a proclamation in the fall of that year calling for
(33:46):
Thanksgiving toward the end of November of eighteen sixty three.
He actually repeats that in subsequent proclamation in the fall
of eighteen sixty four, and then, of course he is
assassinated in early eighteen sixty five. But what Lincoln has
done is to establish a precedent, and from that point
on presidents would issue a national proclamation declaring a day
(34:07):
of Thanksgiving, usually on the fourth or the final Thursday
of the month. One other question we might want to
think about before we concluded, what happens to the Plymouth
Colony after all this is over. Bradford lives into the
sixteen fifties and for most of his time in New
England he is the governor of the Plymouth Colony, and
(34:28):
he writes at length about what is occurring, and what
he is describing is a time of fragmentation of the
Pilgrim community. And the reason why this is so is prosperity.
And that's not what we expect to hear. I suppose
the Pilgrims had struggled for years to keep body and
soult together, and then toward the end of the sixteen
(34:50):
twenty something had happened that really changed their economic fortunes,
and that was the establishment of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
So the Massachusetts Bay Colony is a far larger colony,
beginning with what's sometimes called the Great Puritan Migration. That
leads to the migration of thousands, not just of a
couple of hundred, but thousands of Puritan migrants over a
(35:11):
period of years to New England, and the center of
that Massachusetts colony will be only about thirty thirty five
miles to the north at Boston. But the individuals who
are coming need supplies just like the Pilgrims had needed them.
And the Pilgrims had a ten year head start on
Massachusetts Bay, and they had slowly begun to build flocks
(35:31):
of sheep and herds of cattle. And so they find
in the migrants to Massachusetts Bay a ready market. And
the bottom line is, at least as when Bradford tells
the story, is that many of the Pilgrims consciously decided
to move away from Plymouth, to move away from the
church there, because they saw more economic opportunity somewhere else.
(35:53):
So it's actually a story that in some sense is bittersweet.
It was a story of great sacrifice to keep the
church together under adverse conditions, followed by a gradual weakening
of the church in a time of prosperity, So much
so that when Bradford actually ends his history of Plymouth
Plantation by suggesting that the small group of survivors that
(36:16):
still lived in Plymouth were much like, as he put it,
a mother that had been abandoned by her children. And
that's a sorrowful, mournful kind of note that Bradford ends
with the significance of this though, I think is also
great for us as we remember the story, because we
think of the challenges that we face often in terms
(36:39):
of adversity, and so we look to the Pilgrim story
and we see an example of perseverance, courage, ultimately victory
in adversity. But I think the Pilgrim story tells us
that adversity comes in a variety of forms. You remember
the parable of Jesus about the cares of this world
being a kind of thorn that can choke out the
fruitfulness of the plant. As it turns out, the cares
(37:02):
of this world sort of traveled with the Pilgrims. There's
no getting away from them, and in the end, the
temptation to have a desire for other things was there.
So it's a complicated story, but as we dig into
its complexity, it becomes richer and it challenges us in
New Ways takes on a relevance that it would lack otherwise.
Speaker 1 (37:23):
And a great job is always by Greg Angler on
the production and the storytelling. And a special thanks again
to Robert Tracy McKenzie his book The First Thanksgiving. Go
to Amazon or the usual suspects to pick it up,
and he's so right. It is rich, it is complicated,
and surviving success can be as hard, or possibly harder
(37:45):
than adversity. And what I was most struck by in
the stories, they're a profound belief that they were pilgrims
and what that word meant to them, because the heroes
of the Christian faith, they said, were indeed pilgrims. Two
centuries oh bye, before we even discover the story. It
is a regional thing at best. The Thanksgiving celebration Lincoln,
(38:07):
Abraham Lincoln, changed that the story of Thanksgiving.
Speaker 2 (38:12):
Here on our American story
This is Lee Habib and this is our American stories.
In this show, we celebrate Thanksgiving, and it's the only
American holiday that's actually remained relatively innocent. It's not something
that we've been able to commercialize. But there is something
going on here that's more than just feasting, family and football.
(00:35):
Robert Tracy mackenzie is a professor of history at Wheaton College.
He's also the author of The First Thanksgiving. He's here
to tell us the story of this quintessentially American holiday.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Let's take a listen. The story of the Pilgrims in
the First Thanksgiving, in many respects, is one chapter in
a much, much larger story, a story that is grounded
in an enormous phenomen that we remember is the Protestant Reformation.
In the early years of fifteen hundreds, individuals like Martin Luther,
(01:08):
the German theologian in Monk, had begun to work toward
reforming the Catholic Church, changing some of its theological teachings,
some of its church practices, some of its governing structure,
and Luther found that that was essentially impossible to accomplish
within the confines of the Catholic Church. Ultimately, leading to
(01:32):
a break with the Catholic Church. In fifteen seventeen, on
Halloween evening, Luther famously put up his ninety five theses,
his ninety five statements of protest about Catholic teaching. This
caused his relationship with the Pope with the Catholic hierarchy
to deteriorate pretty rapidly, leading ultimately to the Pope declaring
(01:54):
Luther heretic in fifteen twenty and prompting Luther ultimately to
break with the Catholic Church to establish an independent church,
a protesting church, and so Protestantism was born. The president
Reformation reaches England maybe a generation later, during the reign
of King Henry the Eighth, and ultimately Henry himself also
(02:17):
breaks with the Catholic Church and establishes an independent Church
of England church we often remember as the Anglican Church.
The Anglican Church in many respects, though still retained a
lot of the teaching, a lot of the practices, a
lot of the hierarchy of Catholicism. So within England there's
a core group of English Christians who begin to work
(02:40):
to purify the Church of England of its Catholic remnants.
And they begin to be referred to, often quite sarcastically
and critically as Protestants. The group that's gathering at screwby
By about sixteen hundred or so is actually best thought
of as a radical kind of subset of English Protestants.
(03:03):
These are individuals who come to be known as Separatists.
The separatists basically not only believe that the Anglican Church
needed reformation, they'd actually arrived at the conclusion that the
Anglican Church was not a true church, that it was
so far in divergence from what they believed was the
true requirements of Scripture that they really couldn't in good
(03:25):
conscience associate or worship with Anglicans. They had to withdraw.
They had to separate from the Anglican Church. And so
we need to understand then this core group is the
most radical of the most radical protesting Christians. In separating
from the Anglican Church, they're actually defying the established Church
(03:47):
of England. They're actually defying the monarchy of England, and
so in a certain sense they are considered in many
respects outlaws against both church and state. This group ultimately
is going to face some persecution in Screwby. We can
exaggerate it, but we know that one member of the
congregation was in fact thrown into prison. Three other leaders
(04:11):
of the congregation were under suspicion. There were warrants out
for their arrest. They actually go into hiding, and ultimately
it led to the conclusion that this group was simply
not going to be allowed to worship separately, worship faithfully
as they understood it, and so they decided that they
would have no alternative but to leave England. Now, when
(04:35):
we remember the Pilgrim story, one of the ways that
we remember it incorrectly. I think it's really important to
go back and recapture this truth is that Pilgrims don't
leave England directly for New England. They don't leave Screwby
and head for North America. There's, in fact an intermediate
step in their migration. They actually go not to North
America but to Holland, and so they're able to get
(04:57):
out of the country. It's a complicated and danger undertaking,
but around the year sixteen oh eight they make their
way to Holland, settling first of all on Amsterdam, where
they stay for a matter of months, and then finally
relocating about thirty miles to the southwest of the town
of Leiden, and it's Lighten where they reside for the
next twelve years, and it's from Leiden that they migrate
(05:20):
to North America in sixteen twenty. We have to understand
that Leiden was although smaller than Amsterdam, it was still
a large city for its day. It had a population
of about forty thousand. These were individuals who had migrated
from a tiny, rural, agricultural village in England and they
found themselves in a vibrant, growing, industrializing city. It was
(05:43):
foreign in many many ways. You know, we sometimes talk
about how the Pilgrims came to a new world when
they migrated to North America, but in a real sense,
they were going to a new world when they migrated
to Holland. It was so foreign from what they knew,
so different rent that it's hard for us to exaggerate
the challenge. So now rural people were living in a
(06:05):
large city. Farm folk were having to earn their living
in industrial settings as employees in a textile manufacturing line
of work, and it was hard. And yet one of
the important things that they would have stressed is that
they experienced a great deal of religious freedom. Holland generally
(06:25):
was known for its religious toleration. It was religiously diverse,
but there were problems, starting with the economic challenges, and
they begin to worry about the future of their congregation.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
And you've been listening to Robert Tracy mackenzie tell the
story of the Pilgrims, their trek from England to Holland,
to the city of Leiden and a very different kind
of environment that they'd never experienced before, and soon to
be coming to the new world, a very new world.
(07:00):
The story of the Pilgrims, as told by Robert Tracy mackenzie.
It continues here on Our American Stories. Folks, if you
(07:31):
love the great American stories we tell and love America
like we do, we're asking you to become a part
of the Our American Stories family. If you agree that
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A monthly gift of seventeen dollars and seventy six cents
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(07:52):
donate button and help us keep the great American stories coming.
That's our American stories dot Com and we continue with
our American stories and with Robert Tracy mackenzie. He's a
(08:14):
professor of history at Wheaton College. He is also the
author of The First Thanksgiving. Let's pick up with the
story of the Pilgrims and the revival in Leiden.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Some of the adults were thinking about returning to England,
even with its restrictions on religious liberty. They thought, well,
at least we'll be able to eat there. At least
we want starve there. They found it a hard place
to raise their children. This is, in Bradford's word, a
licentious culture, a culture that really doesn't have the same
(08:46):
moral standards. Their lax in the way that they train
their children. They're critical of the Pilgrim parents as being
too stern in their child rearing practices, and that bothers
them as well. And it's in that context that they
began to consider looking for a new home, not in Europe,
but in fact across the Atlantic Ocean in North America.
(09:09):
You know, it's very common, I think, for us to
hear someone in referring to the Pilgrims to say that
they came to this country in search of religious freedom.
Now the reality is what they are struggling with really
is the cares of this world. It's kind of daily
challenges that so many of us face, that so many
of us can relate to, because even though they are
(09:32):
motivated by those kinds of economic concerns and family concerns,
all of their motivation in some way connects back to
their deep commitment not just to their families, but to
their church. And so their decision to migrate is not
a decision made by a bunch of individuals who happen
to leave simultaneously. It is a congregational decision. They are
(09:56):
basically deciding as a group that the only they're going
to be able to stay together is if they find
together a new home. The voyage of the Mayflower is
something that William Bradford, who wrote the main history of
the Pilgrims will and Bradford only talks about it in
about a page and a half and he doesn't share
(10:16):
a lot of details, but we do know that it
was an arduous and in many ways a terrifying experience
for them. To begin with, they hadn't been able to
leave England. They went from Holland back to England en
route to North America. They hadn't been able to leave
England nearly as early in the calendar year as they
(10:37):
had hoped. And then when they finally were in position
to leave one of the ships they had hoped to
take two ships, one of the ships immediately begins to
take on water and they have to return for repairs,
and that happens not once but twice before they finally
have to just give up on the idea that the
second ship, called the speed Well would be able to
(10:57):
accompany them. All of wish to say. Then they actually
don't leave England for good until September the sixth, in
the year sixteen twenty, and their voyage will take sixty
five days, And so if you do the math, it
comes out to an average of just at two miles
per hour for sixty five days. Because of the bad weather,
(11:19):
it would have been almost certain that they would have
remained below decks for the entire voyage, or almost for
the entire voyage. It was an area that was not
tall enough to stand up in, and for sixty five
days they're in an area that was about the size
of a good sized city bus, and in that space,
(11:40):
one hundred and two Pilgrim passengers. So as the Pilgrims
were preparing to leave from Leiden, it's probably good for
us just to stop for a moment, and in our
mind's eye, try to imagine that parting. If you're William Bradford,
for example, he's leaving a three year old son behind
just because it's not possibly. He just doesn't think it's
possible for his son to survive. Early on, he hopes
(12:03):
that his son would join him afterward. And those kinds
of goodbyes were being said repeatedly. And the way that
Bradford describes the departure in his history is very touching.
He really tells us that tears were flowing like water.
But and here is the passes that I love so much.
That they comforted themselves with what they believed to be true.
(12:27):
And what they believed to be true, among other things,
was that this world was not their home. As he
put it in his history, they reminded themselves that they
were Pilgrims. You know, that's the label that we use
for this group, that we use so much that it
loses all of its meaning, all of its power. But
in saying they knew that they were Pilgrims, he's almost certainly,
(12:47):
quoting from the thirteenth chapter of the Book of Hebrews
in the Christian New Testament, where the author says that
various heroes of the Christian faith knew that they were pilgrims,
that the world was not their home, and Bradford saying
that they found comfort in reminding themselves of that truth.
They were temporary sojourners in this land. Their ultimate hope
(13:08):
lay elsewhere, so they knew that they were pilgrims. One
of the things about this that really is, I think miraculous,
is that there was only one fatality among the one
hundred and two pilgrim passengers on board the Mayflower. This
was not really at all to be expected. There had
been a voyage of Puritans actually just the year before
(13:30):
to Virginia to resettle there, and a passenger list that
had one hundred and eighty individuals on it. Found that
by the end of that voyage one hundred and thirty
had died, and so surviving the voyage almost without loss
of life was pretty amazing. So they arrived on the
coast of New England in early November, actually the ninth
(13:52):
of November specifically, but they're considerably north of where they
had expected to land. They had entered into an agreement
with a corporation that had been authorized by the King
of England to settle what is today the area of Virginia,
the Carolina's Maryland on up to basically to Hudson River.
(14:13):
But they landed considerably north of that, actually off the
coast of Cape Cod. And so their first response is, well,
we have to turn south, we have to go to
the area where we've been authorized to settle, and they
try to do that, but the area there around Cape
Cod is really treacherous for navigation, and the captain, Captain Reynolds,
tells them that this is not going to happen. This
(14:33):
is too dangerous. We're not going to undertake this. And
it's on the twenty third of December, according to their records,
twenty third of December in the year sixteen twenty that
they go ashore on the site of what we know
today is the town of Plymouth, Massachusetts. The area actually
had been the site of a Native American village, a
(14:55):
village inhabited by a tribe called the Patuxent, but the
Puck had been devastated by disease sometime probably not too
long before sixteen twenty, certainly after sixteen fifteen, so fairly
recently the Ptuccent had been literally wiped out. Historians are
(15:17):
not sure what the disease was. It may have been
viral hepatitis. So where the pilgrims land is sort of
like a ghost village in essence, and they're arriving right
at the onset of a bitter New England winter. And
if I could just say this parenthetically, this really surprises them.
They know that they're going to be late in the year,
(15:39):
but they really were not expecting such severe weather. And
you might think why in the world not. If you
look at a map, you'll actually find that, in terms
of latitude, present day Massachusetts is pretty much on the
same line of latitude as Madrid, Spain. So the Pilgrims
(16:00):
actually traveling substantially south, about six hundred miles south of London,
and so they're actually expecting a temperate climate even as
late as sixteen twenty two. A couple of years later,
one pamphlet that's advertising the settlement is saying that it's
going to be sort of like a garden spot. This
is going to be sort of like a place in
the Riviera and what they get, of course, is very,
(16:22):
very different. So the next few months are just awful.
One historian would later call this the starving time, and
that actually is a misunderstanding I think of what was
going on. They actually have enough food to avoid starvation.
What they don't have is shelter, and so they mostly
live on board the Mayflower. But every day when they
(16:44):
want to work trying to build these structures, they have
to find a way to get to shore.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
And you're listening to our Thanksgiving special, and you're listening
to Robert Tracy mackenzie tell the story of the Pilgrims,
and we learn that they were in Leiden and they
had religious freedom there, but the cultural influences of the
big city just didn't match up with the interests of
the Pilgrims and how they wanted to raise their family.
And so the congregation decides to head well, to head
(17:13):
to America. And by the way, what a surprise to
find out. Though they sailed six hundred miles south, the
brutal winters of New England were not to be expected.
When we come back. More of this remarkable story, The
Pilgrim's story, the story of Thanksgiving is a part of
our Thanksgiving special here on our American Stories. And we
(18:08):
continue with our American stories and with Robert Tracy Mackenzie
telling the story of the first Thanksgiving. Let's pick up
where we last left off.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
The Mayflower had come with a long boat. They expected
to use this boat for fishing, but they had had
to disassemble the boat to fit it into the hold,
and it had been damaged en route, so it took
quite a while to repair that boat. So for actually
several weeks, the adults who would go ashore to work
would have to wade through the frigid water in December
(18:41):
and January in Massachusetts, and not just a short space
because the harbor was so shallow. The Mayflower is anchored
probably between three quarters of a mile and a mile
from shore. So the first thing they'll do every day
is to wade through this icy water up to their
chest for three quarters of a mile or more. And
(19:02):
then the last thing they'll do, after having worked all day,
is to repeat the journey in the opposite direction. And
so you can imagine the real theory. I think the
more likely theory is that they will die in droves
from pneumonia, so that by spring. Of the one hundred
and two passengers originally on the Mayflower, fifty two have
(19:23):
died and every family's affected. There were twenty six different
family groups among the passengers, and only four were spared
from at least one death, so twenty two of the
families had at least one family member die. There were
eighteen married couples on the Mayflower and fourteen have one
of the two partners die. And much to I think
(19:46):
our amazement ought to amaze us. When the weather allows
the Mayflower to return to England in the spring of
sixteen twenty one, the survivors are given the opportunity to
return to England and they and now they are needing
to be wholly absorbed in the work of completing their settlement,
planting crops, and hopefully preparing for their survival during the
(20:11):
next winter to come. It's in this context that they
have really their first significant encounter with Native American peoples
in the area. And in the spring of sixteen twenty one,
they actually are visited on two occasions by Native American visitors,
two different individuals who actually are able to speak English,
(20:32):
and they're floored by that. The better known of these
two was a Native American man named Squanto. His full
name was Tisquantum. Squanto story is very fascinating. He had
actually learned English because he had been kidnapped by European
fishermen sometime before the Great Epidemic struck his tribal community.
(20:53):
He had been kidnapped and taken to Spain, where actually
his freedom, after a time, was purchased by some Spanish
monks who facilitated his escape to England. There he worked
for a time as a servant to an English sea captain.
Ultimately is able to get passage on a ship back
to North America and make his way overland to Protuccent
(21:16):
to what is now Plymouth, where, to his great horror,
he finds that all of his people have now been
victims of the epidemic. He was made a prisoner of
another Native American tribe that was in the area, and
this was the Wampanoag tribe. The Wampanoag had also been
devastated by disease, though not wiped out, and they're the
peoples that will ultimately interact most intimately with the Pilgrims
(21:39):
in the immediate months and years to come. There are
a variety of ways that they helped the Pilgrims, and
some of these details you probably have heard from your childhood.
One of the things that the Wampanoag will do is
to help the Pilgrims master a form of agriculture that's
really appropriate for the terrain and the climate of the area.
(22:00):
And so these kinds of sort of life hacks, we
would say today, are things that the Wampanoag teach to
the Pilgrims that surely were very central to their survival.
And so that leads to a cause for celebration. In
the fall of sixteen twenty one, the sum total of
evidence that we have about the event that we call
(22:22):
the First Thanksgiving comes from a letter that was written
by one of the Pilgrims, a man named Edward Winslow,
and he writes this letter toward the end of sixteen
twenty one, when there's an opportunity to send it back
to England with a ship that is passing by, and
in this letter he describes what has occurred in some
(22:44):
total of four sentences which add up to one hundred
and fifteen words, he basically says that with the harvest
being in their Governor William Bradford basically said, and I'm
paraphrasing here said. Let's say, and so Bradford sends four
men of the community out into the woods to hunt
(23:05):
for fowl, for birds as they were celebrating. According to Winslow,
the Indians, as he says, many of the Indians came
among us, and for three days they entertained them and
feasted together. So this is the sum total of what
we actually know. One hundred and fifteen words and four sentences.
And let's think about it for just a moment. Actually,
(23:28):
it doesn't tell us much about what was on the menu.
There's a reference to fowl, but does it say turkey.
By the way, the Pilgrim records that survived talk about
swans and geese and herons and cranes and ducks, and
so probably the main menu at the gathering would have
been these kinds of delicacies. We also don't have any
(23:50):
reference to candy yams, or to pumpkin pie, or to
any things that we associate with a traditional Thanksgiving dinner.
There's good reason for that. The Pilgrims didn't have. Pretty
much everything that they would have been able to fix
at this time would have been boiled or roasted. They
didn't have sugar, they didn't have flour for pie crusts.
(24:11):
The reality is that they probably are eating lots of
water fowl. They're probably eating what they would have called sauce,
which basically means fixings or trimmings like turnips and parsnips
and cabbage and collared greens. I often joe quite possible
that they had turnips and eels, and in fact, it's
(24:32):
more likely that they had turnips and eels than that
they had turkey and dressing. The one other thing on
the menu that we want to call attention to is
a venison, and this is in that four sentence account
from Edward Winslow. We're told that the Native American people
who came brought with them five deer, which leads us
(24:52):
to think a little bit about the presence of the
Native Americans there. One of the things that's not in
the historical record, that we often assumes in the historical
record is the idea that the Pilgrims actually invited the
Wampanoig to be a part of their celebration. And Winslow
doesn't say that. His language is much more oblique than that.
(25:13):
It says Indians came among us, and so it's at
least possible that they were unexpected guests. And we do
know that the Wampanoa did from time to time come
into the Pilgrim settlement and often did expect to stay
for some period of time, and often did expect to
enjoy some of the Pilgrim's store of food, and so
it wouldn't have been the first time. The fact is,
(25:35):
the Pilgrims and the Wampanoig were able to survive. As
different as they were, they were able to benefit one another.
They avoided war, and these are wonderful kinds of things
to call attention to. The account from Winslow says that
the Pilgrims exercised their arms, that's his wording, which basically
means they got out their guns and they sort of
(25:57):
went through military drill, and we might imagine and sort
of both sides in different ways trying to demonstrate their prowess,
trying to make sure that the other side knew that
they were not to be trifled with.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
And you're listening to Robert Tracy McKenzie tell the story
of the First Thanksgiving and so much more, including the
story of the Pilgrims. My goodness, that passage from the Mayflower,
fifty two passengers died, twenty two of the families lost
at least one family member, and not being prepared for
that brutal winter, my goodness, and then to learn that
(26:31):
they had to walk a mile each way back to
the Mayflower where they had to reside. And if you've
ever been in New England waters I grew up in
New Jersey, you can't know just how bitter cold it
is even in March, but the winter, it's quite remarkable.
And anytime you're complaining about cold water or about your life,
think about the story of the pilgrims and what they
(26:52):
endured for the love of their God and for the
love of their church and their families. When we come
back more of this remarkable American story the First Thanksgiving
here on our American Stories, and we continue here with
(27:38):
our American stories and with Robert Tracy mackenzie, who's a
professor of history at Wheaton College. He's also the author
of The First Thanksgiving. Let's pick up where we last
left off.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
The account from Winslow says that King massis Wit, who
is the leader of the Wampanoag tribe, brought with him
about ninety men. Let's think about the pilgrims themselves. Fifty survivors,
overwhelmingly male. Because females have died in greater proportions than males.
There are about five males for every female among the
(28:14):
pilgrims at the first Thanksgiving. Our estimate is that by
the end of all those deaths in the winter, there
was maybe only one pilgrim over forty years old. The
governor of the colony, William Bradford, is thirty. Just one
of the thought as you see them in your mind's eye.
Evidence from the time suggests that they had not yet
(28:35):
built much in the way of furniture. They certainly would
not have had lots of long tables. You always see
the pictures of the long tables set up outside. They
didn't have forks at all. Forks were a relatively recent
innovation in England, and it was often thought very pretentious.
To use a fork was a sign that you were
a fop, and so they would have had knives and spoons.
(28:57):
They would almost certainly been sitting on the ground. Not
only young, they're colorful, you know. The standard stereotype, which
actually dates to the late eighteen hundreds, shows Pilgrims not
wearing all black, really tall hats. They have buckles on
every sort of part of their clothing, but the records
from the Colony of the Property of People when they
(29:19):
die suggests that their clothes were bright colors. The governor,
William Bradford has a red cape and a purple vest.
The Pilgrims actually thought of Thanksgiving as a very solemn
holy day, So we use the word holiday, which really
(29:41):
is an illusion of holy day, and it's very unlikely
that what we remember is the first Thanksgiving is actually
something that they would have called a Thanksgiving. They believe
that the Bible authorized God's people to declare these special
kinds of holy celebrations in response to some extraordinary circumstance.
(30:04):
But when that happened, they anticipated gatherings that would have
been solemn, that would have been centered on link the preaching,
prayer and singing, not on feasting, certainly, not on games,
not on military drill. And so what they're doing at
this gathering in the fall of sixteen twenty one is
(30:26):
they're having just a kind of harvest celebration that they
would have known from their youth in rural England. A
good question that comes to mind is just why is
it that we attach such significance to the Pilgrim celebration
of sixteen twenty one. And I think there's probably a
variety of answers, but I have a theory that I'd
like to share with you has to do with when
(30:48):
Americans actually discovered this event. And that may strike you
as odd even to put it that way, but the
reality is the American people didn't remember this gathering for
a very long time, for more than two centuries after
it occurred. The main description of it, as I've mentioned,
was in a letter that was written and taken back
(31:08):
to England, was actually published in England as part of
the pamphlet, but then it gradually sort of went out
of circulation and there was just no historical record of
this event. But a copy of the pamphlet is not
actually discovered in North America until the eighteen twenties, until
two centuries after the First Thanksgiving is discovered by a
(31:32):
sort of amateur historian who's a minister in New England,
and he actually includes it in a history that he
is writing about the origins of New England, and in
a book that was published in the year eighteen forty one,
two hundred and twenty years after the event. And in
this book he tells his readers when he repeats the
description by Edward Winslow, and here is the first Thanksgiving
(31:56):
that ever occurred in New England. By the eighteen forties,
New England had come to celebrate Thanksgiving every fall. It
had become a really sort of treasured tradition. Thanksgiving actually
wasn't celebrated in the South, It wasn't celebrated in much
of the Western United States. It was a New England holiday,
but it was a cherished New England holiday. And then
this minister in eighteen forty one tells New Englanders and
(32:18):
here's where it all started. This was the origin of
the celebration. And so all of a sudden individuals have discovered,
they believe the source of their tradition, and pretty quickly
they begin to emphasize it as one of those sort
of seminal moments in the early history of the country.
As late then as the eighteen forties, Thanksgiving is still
pretty much a regional holiday. It does get a boost
(32:41):
about twenty years later during the American Civil War. Abraham Lincoln,
president of the United States. During this period, of course,
is being lobbied by a female writer named Sarah Josepha Hale,
who is an editor of a prominent ladies magazine, and
she's contacting Lincoln every fall and saying, you need to
declare this as a national holiday. And the way that
(33:02):
Hale makes her case is to say that all of
the holidays at that point that were recognized nationally, they
were for men. And there were really just two holidays
national holidays at the time. One was the fourth of July.
She thought of that as a male holiday. The other
was George Washington's birthday, and that would also have been
a time predominantly when men gathered together, where there were
(33:25):
speeches and so forth. And she thought that Thanksgiving is
the perfect woman's holiday. It was a domestic holiday. It
centered around entertainment within the home, centered around a fine meal,
and so forth. And so she keeps lobbying Lincoln, and
in eighteen sixty three, Lincoln finally relents, and he issues
a proclamation in the fall of that year calling for
(33:46):
Thanksgiving toward the end of November of eighteen sixty three.
He actually repeats that in subsequent proclamation in the fall
of eighteen sixty four, and then, of course he is
assassinated in early eighteen sixty five. But what Lincoln has
done is to establish a precedent, and from that point
on presidents would issue a national proclamation declaring a day
(34:07):
of Thanksgiving, usually on the fourth or the final Thursday
of the month. One other question we might want to
think about before we concluded, what happens to the Plymouth
Colony after all this is over. Bradford lives into the
sixteen fifties and for most of his time in New
England he is the governor of the Plymouth Colony, and
(34:28):
he writes at length about what is occurring, and what
he is describing is a time of fragmentation of the
Pilgrim community. And the reason why this is so is prosperity.
And that's not what we expect to hear. I suppose
the Pilgrims had struggled for years to keep body and
soult together, and then toward the end of the sixteen
(34:50):
twenty something had happened that really changed their economic fortunes,
and that was the establishment of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
So the Massachusetts Bay Colony is a far larger colony,
beginning with what's sometimes called the Great Puritan Migration. That
leads to the migration of thousands, not just of a
couple of hundred, but thousands of Puritan migrants over a
(35:11):
period of years to New England, and the center of
that Massachusetts colony will be only about thirty thirty five
miles to the north at Boston. But the individuals who
are coming need supplies just like the Pilgrims had needed them.
And the Pilgrims had a ten year head start on
Massachusetts Bay, and they had slowly begun to build flocks
(35:31):
of sheep and herds of cattle. And so they find
in the migrants to Massachusetts Bay a ready market. And
the bottom line is, at least as when Bradford tells
the story, is that many of the Pilgrims consciously decided
to move away from Plymouth, to move away from the
church there, because they saw more economic opportunity somewhere else.
(35:53):
So it's actually a story that in some sense is bittersweet.
It was a story of great sacrifice to keep the
church together under adverse conditions, followed by a gradual weakening
of the church in a time of prosperity, So much
so that when Bradford actually ends his history of Plymouth
Plantation by suggesting that the small group of survivors that
(36:16):
still lived in Plymouth were much like, as he put it,
a mother that had been abandoned by her children. And
that's a sorrowful, mournful kind of note that Bradford ends
with the significance of this though, I think is also
great for us as we remember the story, because we
think of the challenges that we face often in terms
(36:39):
of adversity, and so we look to the Pilgrim story
and we see an example of perseverance, courage, ultimately victory
in adversity. But I think the Pilgrim story tells us
that adversity comes in a variety of forms. You remember
the parable of Jesus about the cares of this world
being a kind of thorn that can choke out the
fruitfulness of the plant. As it turns out, the cares
(37:02):
of this world sort of traveled with the Pilgrims. There's
no getting away from them, and in the end, the
temptation to have a desire for other things was there.
So it's a complicated story, but as we dig into
its complexity, it becomes richer and it challenges us in
New Ways takes on a relevance that it would lack otherwise.
Speaker 1 (37:23):
And a great job is always by Greg Angler on
the production and the storytelling. And a special thanks again
to Robert Tracy McKenzie his book The First Thanksgiving. Go
to Amazon or the usual suspects to pick it up,
and he's so right. It is rich, it is complicated,
and surviving success can be as hard, or possibly harder
(37:45):
than adversity. And what I was most struck by in
the stories, they're a profound belief that they were pilgrims
and what that word meant to them, because the heroes
of the Christian faith, they said, were indeed pilgrims. Two
centuries oh bye, before we even discover the story. It
is a regional thing at best. The Thanksgiving celebration Lincoln,
(38:07):
Abraham Lincoln, changed that the story of Thanksgiving.
Speaker 2 (38:12):
Here on our American story
Host
Lee Habeeb
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