Debunking Thanksgiving

For Thanksgiving, PBS recently reaired their American Experience episode on The Pilgrims. The history special from 2015 heavily featured Roger Rees as William Bradford of the Plymouth Colony, and in fact the episode is dedicated to him after his death that year. He acts and reads out passages from Bradford's history in full Shakespearean mode like a tragic figure. But lest we glorify Bradford too much, the various historians point out his glaring omissions and mythmaking in his selective history of the colony. The show also includes Wampanoags who discuss the European plague that killed off most of the tribe, leaving the Patuxet area empty for the Plymouth settlers to move in. The Wampanoag chief at the time decided to make an alliance with the Englishmen in exchange for help with hostile tribes in the area.

A Native American perspective is welcome in dispelling the myths about the first Thanksgiving, and then examining the hypocrisy of how the supposedly peaceful Christian men murdered and beheaded other Indians who threatened them. Eventually the Plymouth settlers made enough of a profit from beaver trade that a much bigger colony of Puritans followed after them to take over more of New England. The myth of the Pilgrims as the founders of America grew to the point that 200 years later, Abraham Lincoln made Thanksgiving a holiday, making it part of our American folklore. Good to finally re-examine the past without the old biases.