Everett
Our vegetable gardens, along with apples, pears and other fruit, have been harvested and have been stored for the long, cold winter.
For many of us, it is a trip to the grocery store to purchase additional food that will supplement our Thanksgiving feast; however, the first Thanksgiving did not have the convenience of grocery stores that we enjoy today.
The Department of History of the Ohio State University gives us this account of what has been historically taught to United States citizens as the first Thanksgiving.
Pilgrims of the Plymouth Colony in today’s Massachusetts shared a meal with the Wampanoag Native Americans in the autumn of 1621. Documentary evidence of the event comes from the journal of Plymouth Colony’s governor, Edward Winslow, who noted simply that the colonists met with Chief Massasoit and 90 of his men for a feast that lasted four days.
The Pilgrim Governor, William Bradford, proclaimed a day of Thanksgiving to be shared by all colonists and neighboring Native Americans. Two documented journals from Winslow give us a glimpse as to what may have been served at the four-day feast. The meat would have consisted of venison, ducks and geese, fish, mussels, eel and shellfish including lobster. The journals mention wild turkey; however, it is not certain whether turkey was part of their first feast.
Documented journals note they grew flint corn (multicolored corn), that was their staple. They grew beans, which they used from when they were small and green upon corn stalks to support the vines. They also had different sorts of pumpkins or squashes. Some of the other vegetables may have included wild onions, spinach, carrots and peas. Corn, while plentiful, would have been served as a porridge.
The fruits they could have eaten were blueberries, plums, grapes, gooseberries, raspberries and cranberries. Cranberries would have been eaten raw, not in a relish like today. Some accounts say the colonists boiled the berries in sugar; however, historians say by the time of the feast, the sugar that had come over on the Mayflower, had been depleted. Jellied and canned cranberry sauce did not exist in the marketplace until 1941.
It is not likely that the Pilgrims and the Native Americans consumed any bread dressing, mashed potatoes or pumpkin pie; any flour reserves would have been exhausted. In addition, potatoes and sweet potatoes had not made their way to the New World yet. While the pilgrims might have eaten pumpkins and squash, the fledgling colony lacked the butter and wheat flour necessary for making pie crust. Moreover, settlers had not yet constructed an oven for baking.
Was the first Thanksgiving held in the autumn of 1621? Jay Sharp, an independent scholar based in Las Cruces, New Mexico, specializing in southwestern history and archaeology along with the Department of History of the Ohio State University gives earlier accounts of the first Thanksgiving in the new world.
El Paso, Texas, citizens claim that the first Thanksgiving occurred on the Rio Grande on April 30, 1598, four centuries ago, a few miles downstream from their city’s modern location. It was celebrated by Don Juan de Onate’s expedition upon reaching the river in route to colonize northern New Mexico for Spain.
Florida residents point out that an earlier Spanish Thanksgiving occurred near what is now St. Augustine, in September 1565. The event was celebrated by Don Pedro Menendez’s colonists, who had just landed. Menendez invited the local Native Americans to the feast. The Spaniards and Native Americans shared salt pork and sea biscuits. It is thought that these early colonists were Huguenots (French Protestants).
June 20, 1676, colonists on the eastern seaboard issued the “First Thanksgiving Proclamation,” setting “apart the 29th day of this instant June, as a day of Solemn Thanksgiving.”
On Oct. 3, 1789, George Washington issued the first presidential Thanksgiving Proclamation, setting the “26th day of November next” as a day for giving thanks to God for “favorable interpositions of His providence in the course and conclusion of the late (revolutionary) war.”
Finally, on Oct. 3, 1863, Thanksgiving became an annual American holiday when Abraham Lincoln invited “my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November as a day of Thanksgiving.”
Regardless of when the first Thanksgiving was, Americans share their vegetable and fruit harvest with family and friends on this special day. It is a holiday that brings all Americans together. Like our early colonists, that is something worthy of our thanks.
Portions of this article were acquired from the Ohio State University Department of History. More information can be found at:
The First “First Thanksgiving” | Origins (osu.edu)
Now, About that First Thanksgiving Dinner… | Origins (osu.edu)
