The first of my paternal ancestors stepped
foot on this land three-hundred and ninety-seven years ago. My known maternal
ancestors helped build French-Canada forty-five years later. Without their
lives and their struggles, I would not be here. I would not be me. So for all
of them, even the roads they took that I find unsettling, I am extremely
grateful.
The history of our country is not easy or
pretty. Western man stole all the land they settled, purchasing it for paltry
sums from a people who had a different understanding of ownership. I have done
a lot of research on that period of time and that’s pretty much how I feel. But,
in the beginning, before the influx of colonials from England, there was a
moment of peace, and a moment of hope for tolerance.
That is the day I am thankful for.
In September of 1620, the Mayflower left
England with 102 passengers bound for Virginia in the New World, on a crossing
that took sixty-six days. The majority of the voyagers were Separatists who had
funded the voyage, having permission to settle at the mouth of the Hudson
River. The Separatists were a splinter group of Puritans, who were Protestants
that wanted to let the Bible be the final authority on their religion, and
encouraged them to have an individual relationship with their God. Whereas the
Puritans were taking on trying to convert the Church of England, the
Separatists wanted a place “separate” to practice as they believed.
The Separatists of the Plymouth colony
followed the teachings of their minister, John Robinson, who believed in and
preached religious tolerance, and in this manner were unlike the Puritans who
came after them and settled in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. While none of the
colonies would allow Quakers or Baptists to settle with them, which is
discriminatory but was common practice, the Plymouth Colony did not force its
Anglican members to convert. Off course and low in stores, the ship landed off
of Cape Cod in November.
Seven of my ancestors were on board the
ship. Francis Cooke, a woolcomber, came over with his oldest son John, to
establish a home for the rest of their family, who waited in Leiden. Thomas
Rogers, a camlet merchant- a luxury fabric of camel’s hair or angora mixed with
silk- came over with his son Joseph. The rest of the family waited in Leiden as
well. James, a tailor, and Mrs. Chilton brought their 13 year-old daughter Mary
with them. At 64 years of age, James was the oldest passenger aboard ship. They
were all Separatists.
Mourt’s Relation: A Journal of the
Pilgrims at Plymouth, 1622 was
published in England as a means of encouraging people of like-mind to join them
in the New World, and it details what their first months were like. After
anchoring, the ship sent out parties to find wood, fresh water, and survey the
land for other resources; they collected juniper wood to burn aboard ship.
November 15, they came upon empty Indian homes, harvest fields, and buried
caches of corn. They had dug up a mound, and once they realized it was a
burial, they replaced everything and reburied it; they disturbed no more. The
found corn, they did take for themselves, but the author states their intention
of making amends to the corn’s owner when they encountered them.
They made many searches for the indigenous
peoples but could not find them. In early December, men tracing a path along
the river were fired upon by arrows and they retaliated. The natives soon
disappeared into the woods and they gave chase but found none. Again, they
regularly searched out the natives with no luck. One day, after failing to find
them, the men shot and ate an eagle for dinner (and noted in the journal that
it tasted like mutton).
Only half of the ship’s passengers
survived the brutal first winter. James Chilton died aboard ship December 18
while they were still harbored in Cape Cod Bay. His wife died in early January
in the First Sickness to claim multiple lives. Thomas Rogers died soon after
that. All their bodies were buried in a mass grave with others. The location of
this gravesite is unknown.
The Chiltons left behind an orphaned
daughter, my direct ancestress Mary, an orphan at the age of 13. Based on the
placement of the share of land she was later given in her parents’ names, it is
believed she was taken in by either the Alden or the Standish family. The
Separatists were aware that they had no claim to settle in Plymouth, as their
contract was for Hudson Bay, but after losing half of their people and the rest
being ill, the group made a decision.
On March 16, 1621, Samoset, of the
Mohegan, approached the colonists in their village. He said his people were a
five day walk and one day canoe from where they were, and that he had learned
English from the men who fished and hunted with his people (unverified but these
French trappers are possible ancestors on my maternal line). It was Samoset who
told the Pilgrims that their settlement land was called Patuxet. Four years
prior to their arrival, the Patuxet people had been wiped out by a plague,
after white men had come to their land.
Samoset told them of their neighbors, the
Wampanoag, whom he was living with, and the Nausets- the ones who had fired
upon them in the woods. He explained that when Captain Thomas Hunt came in
1614, he deceived them and took twenty-seven men with him. He sold them into slavery
for 20 pound each. Twenty of the men had been Patuxet and seven had been
Nauset. When the Nauset saw that the white men had returned, they had attacked
before their men were taken again. Samoset helped take the message to the
Wampanoag that these white men did not condone what Captain Hunt had done.
A few days later, Samoset returned with
Tisquantum, commonly remembered as Squanto, who also spoke fluent English. He
was a native Patuxet who had been taken into slavery. He lived first with
Spanish monks, second in England with a merchant named John Slaney, and third
as a guide for Ferdinando Gorges, coming home on an expedition ship in 1619.
Tisquantum acted as an interpreter between the English colony and the local
Wampanoag tribe. He helped teach the Separatist farmers to cultivate corn,
extract maple sap, catch fish and eels, and how to avoid the local poisonous
plants. Their first harvest was a successful one.
Feasting
Without Edward Winslow’s written account
of the first feast, from December 12th, or William Bradford’s reflections on it
twenty years later, we would not even know such an event had occurred. What we
call Thanksgiving would not become an annual holiday for a couple centuries
yet. [Edward Winslow is my 11x Great-Uncle. His brother John Winslow arrived in
Plymouth in November 1621; he was not present for this harvest feast. Two years
later, John would wed young Mary Chilton. The younger, orphaned girl was
present for the feast.]
Their crops of wheat and barley did well,
though the native corn fared far better. Twenty years later, William Bradford
wrote about how, that harvest, the colonists were all in good health. There was
plenty of cod and bass in store for every family and they were busy storing
fowl, wild turkey, and venison. They had a good enough harvest that they had a
“peck of meal a week to a person.” He says the reports of their plenty were not
untrue.
Their harvest in, Governor William
Bradford “sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a special manner
rejoice together.” The men killed as much fowl as would feed the entire colony for
a week. Bradford invited the Wampanoag sachem Massasoit and his people to join
them. There were 53 colonists and 90 Wampanoag at the first Feast, which lasted
for three days. The Wampanoag brought five deer to add to the gathering. Edward
Winslow closes his letter with “although it be not always so plentiful as it
was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want
that we often wish you partakers of our plenty.”
This is the moment
I remind you that history is written by the victors. But for this post, I defer
to what the accessible history tells me. But I leave a door open to a different
truth. This initial feast was not called Thanksgiving. In fact, the first holiday referred to as Thanksgiving- decades before it became an annual holiday- was celebrated in 1637 after a massacre of Indians. For the Eastern tribes, our holiday is their Day of Mourning.
Feasting Today
For me, Thanksgiving Day is not about the
Separatists who came to this country to make a settlement in their own image.
And it’s not about the Wampanoag people whose population would soon be
decimated by war with the colonists and disease. For those three days in
Plymouth, however guarded, a friendship was known between two peoples of
different culture and belief, and there was hope and promise of peace between
them.
That time in history was so turbulent. I
have ancestors who fought against and killed natives at Esopus, an ancestor who
lost a wife to native blades at Esopus, ancestors who fought the northern
natives in the name of France, an ancestor who lived among the Lenape and was a
friend to them, an ancestor who was raised by the Lenape and taken as a son by
the sachem, and who started life in native tribes before white men ever walked
the soil. I embrace them all and learn from their stories.
This is the message I remember: Compassion
for others. Tolerance for differences. Gratitude for blessings.
Every year, in memory of all that has come before, I
make a list for what I am grateful for as it unravels through the day, and I
will include all those who have come before me whose stories have been my
shaper. Wherever you are, remember the things that bring your world joy and
fill you with blessing, for those are the things that will light your path on
darker days.
Looking Ahead
I would be remiss
if I did not compare the horrific slaughter of the native people that came later with current
events. A year ago, Native Nations were camped at Standing Rock to protest the Dakota
Access pipeline, as a means to protect our precious drinking water. They were gassed,
attacked by dogs, jailed, and beaten for protesting.
This year they are
cleaning up a 210,000 gallon oil spill in South Dakota from the Keystone
Pipeline. I am a firm believer that if the technology is not sound, we need to
wait. Not scrap it, but perfect it. And if the men-in-charge would say their
technology is sound then, given the amount of spills that occur, I would say
their equipment is cheap.
We found this
country a pristine wilderness and the first thing we did was begin to ravage it
for profit, increasingly at the expense of our health. How long until we listen
to those who still live in symbiosis with the earth beneath us?
She created us. We are of her. She gave
birth to us. We return to her.
Will we listen to her?
"There is much that we
can still learn from my Wampanoag ancestors, the first Americans, who welcomed
the Pilgrims to these
shores with an open hand of friendship and taught them how to survive and farm
this rugged land. The very first Thanksgiving was a feast joined by the
Wampanoag tribe and the Pilgrims to celebrate a successful fall harvest. That
feast provided us with an enduring lesson of what can be accomplished by people
of different backgrounds and cultures by simply working together. It's time for
us all as Americans to get back to that basic principle. We must understand and
remind our fellow Americans and the rest of the world that the only path to
peace and prosperity is one that includes all people."
[Updated from a post
originally published November 21, 2012]
