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Welcome to Stuff you missed in History

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Class from how Stuff Works dot com.

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Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Katie

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Lambert and I'm Sarah Dowdy. And if

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you're in the United States, you're getting

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ready to celebrate Thanksgiving. I'm

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really excited about all the eating, I'm not going to lie

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and the two days off work. Right. Um,

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But when you were in elementary school, you probably

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learned a pretty picturesque story

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about the first Thanksgiving. You might

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have even dressed up as a pilgrim or

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a Native American, put some buckles

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on your shoes or a feather in your

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cap, and celebrated

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a big feast with your class. Actually,

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I've got to go off on a brief family tangent

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there. My eight year old brother Stephen,

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learned about Thanksgiving last year, you know, in his

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class, and he came home with a

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very graphic place match that

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he made for my mother. Lucky Mom.

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That's these Pilgram's violently,

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you know, shooting all these turkeys and there's a

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lot of blood. Stephen,

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you know how you feel about Thanksgiving,

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And he gave us the whole story, and after that day

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he's never eaten turkeys. So when

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we give him his dinner at Thanksgiving,

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we just tell him it's chicken, and so far

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he hasn't caught onto the fact that it comes from the

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same plate as the turkey. So, Stephen,

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if you hear this podcast in a few years, I'm really

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start Well. One thing Stephen

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can be happy about is

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that the turkey, which was the

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focal point of his drawing, apparently is

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a vital part of this myth. It's not

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something that's made up, so at least

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that much of this idealized

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Thanksgiving story is true, even

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though plenty of it is not. So

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let's start with some of the real

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stories. Background. In sixteen

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o seven, British Protestants break

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from the Church of England and they sail to Holland,

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where they're a little more religiously tall

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aren't because Spain and the Spanish

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Catholics have been harassing them for so long.

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And they stay there for twelve years until

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they run out of money, and then they get

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a nice offer from English merchants

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who will give them money to sail

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to the New World and uh

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settled down start a little

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town, which they do. Of course. They

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sail on the Mayflower, a cargo ship

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used in the wine trade, and they were

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either a hundred and one or a hundred and two

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of them. We keep finding different numbers. We thought

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there was a baby born. Yeah, we're wondering if

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Mayflower history. But they're

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aiming for near Virginia, but they

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end up in Cape Cod because

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of winds. And we were saying,

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what a sad, sad

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course change that would be if you were arriving

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the winter in New England and

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half of them die in this New England

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winters. So again not a fortuitous

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change, of course, but the settlers

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who make it through the winter set up a pretty

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comfortable place in the Plymouth

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Colony, which is in Massachusetts.

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And they're actually not

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Pilgrims. That's our first

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point of deep. Yeah, I'm going to debunk

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that they're not Pilgrims because the term

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pilgrim lumps together separatists

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and non separatists. Um, so

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we're just going to call them settlers if that's

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okay with everybody, and um

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we can even go further. And they call themselves

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first comers, which is a little

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misleading to that kind of makes

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it sound like they're the first people, uh,

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first European people settling

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in what will be the United

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States, and of course they're not. First

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we had the Rowanote colony, and then

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second we had the Jamestown Colony, which

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Sarah and I discussed in our Pocahontat podcast.

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Yeah, so the first Comers is

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really just marking the beginning

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of a wave of subsequent settlers

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arriving through the sixteen twenties, and

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Pleteth is in Okay place to

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live if you're one of the people who makes it

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through the winter, better than very early

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Jamestown's a lot better than Jamestown.

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They have seven houses, there's a meetinghouse,

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and there are some structures for food and storage,

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but there's still kind of desperate

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for supplies and they pilfer

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from uh the nearby

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Native Americans, the Wampanoags, who

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have been in the region for twelve thousand years.

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So the Wampanoags are not particularly

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impressed with the settlers

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initially at least, but a Wampanoagg

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named Squanto, who you've probably heard

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of, and an Abenaki named Samoset

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are very friendly and they show the settlers

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had a harvest corn and fertilized

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crops with fish, which are valuable

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skills to have in the new world, and this starts

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the beginning of pretty friendly

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relation between the Wampanoag and

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the settlers. They make an alliance

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by March of sixty

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one UM, offering each other protection

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from other tribes in the area. The Wampanoagg's

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teaching the settlers fishing, hunting,

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and farming um tailored to

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the seasons. That was an important thing for

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them to learn to roll with how

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the the year progressed.

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And this is a nice thing that's in

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line with the myth, the idea that

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the settlers and the Native

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Americans could be friends. Yeah, it's

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it's in line with the elementary school

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story. And then it's weirdly out

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of line with what you're

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more likely to learn in high school or something

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where the you sort

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of imagine the settlers and the Native Americans

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clashing right from the

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start until until

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the end. Basically, but for this first

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generation at least, and we should say this just this

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piece between them does not last long,

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but for a generation it's there.

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So after a successful spring

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and summer of trying out these

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new farming techniques that they've learned, the

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settlers decide to have a harvest

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celebration in the fall of sixty

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one and they're going to go out and hunt

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wild game and make a big feast

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for everyone. But the Wampanoag leader,

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Massive Slot, thinks that

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the gunfire means war and

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takes ninety men to the

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settlers to get an explanation. What

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were you doing shooting in the woods the other day?

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And when you have ninety people behind you, there

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had better be a good explanation. And

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so they say, you know, we're hunting

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for a feast. And then once

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once they get that explanation, the uh

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Native Americans are like, okay, well we'll

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hunt for a feast two and we'll all have one together.

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So this Thanksgiving meal is

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a bit different from

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what you and I would have. For one thing, it started,

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it went from about what three days to

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a week? Yeah, different accounts put

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it between a week and three days. And there were

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ninety Wampanoags and fifty three

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settlers, which even with my huge Catholic

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family, we don't quite measure up. And

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the food they have is also a little

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different. They had turkey, Indian worn

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pumpkin, which makes sense, does sound

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pretty standard, chestnuts, eels

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feels. My family does not have

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eel for Thanksgiving. Most years.

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Mine also doesn't have swans, seals,

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cranes, eagles, or corn, porridge,

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goose duck. Those those

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sound okay. Venison, onions,

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radishes, plums, parsnips,

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leaks, dried currants. It kind of gets good

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again towards the end of that list. There's just an

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odd interli maybe between eel

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and eagle. But

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the settlers would have seasoned their meat

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with cinnamon and ginger and nutmeg,

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sauces and pepper and

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dried fruit, so it sounds kind

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of tasty. It sounds for the most part.

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And they didn't have forks, so this is not

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quite medieval times because they did have spoons

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and knives and big napkins that they used

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to grab the hot food and they

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ate whatever was in front of them, which there was no passing.

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Mother wouldn't be proud of that. And

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the highest people, and people were highest in the hierarchy,

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got the best food. So maybe if you really

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liked somebody and you were kind of high

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up, you could send a dish down to them,

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maybe some eel past

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the eel, please. And there was entertainment

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as well. It wasn't all just gluttony. They

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played blind Man's Bluff and

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a pin game for the kids. There was target

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shooting for the adults, dancing and

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singing, so altogether it really sounds like

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a lovely time. And the Native Americans probably

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would have had to establish their own

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lodging too, because they lived

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a ways outside of the settlement. So

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everyone's just hanging out for days,

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eating and having fun. And

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some of the illustrious people who would

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have been there were Massa Squat

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Squanto, Governor William

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Bradford, Captain Miles Standish,

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and William Brewster, who was the religious leader.

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So there there'd be the guys who would get the really

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good dishes set in front of them. And Sarah

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said this to me earlier, and she's like, oh, you know, it's like having

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a celebrity at dinner, like school into and she points

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and I didn't even think about it and just turned around into

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the other department. I was pointing it, and

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I have to live with that. Most of

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our information about this feast

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in sixteen twenty one comes from Edward

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Winslow's A Journal of the Pilgrims at

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Plymouth, And again we're not using the term

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pilgrim, but he can if he wants to. But

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well, this was certainly a monumental

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feast, and this is what we're essentially

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celebrating when we celebrate Thanksgiving.

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Wasn't really the first religious

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Thanksgiving? That happened in Plymouth

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two years later in sixteen twenty three,

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following a two month drought. And

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where this all got kind of mixed up was

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with the writer editor Sarah

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Josepha Hale, who edited

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the Goadies Ladies book and also

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authored Mary had a Little Lamb. Interestingly

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a woman of many literary talents, but she

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thought that the sixty one feast

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was Thanksgiving. But it's understandable

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why she mixed things up a little bit, because what

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we celebrate today is a combination

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of two distinct celebrations,

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this religious Thanksgiving and also

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a harvest ritual where you you know, celebrate

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abundance. Yeah, and

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we also have another Thanksgiving

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um, the religious Thanksgiving

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on record that's earlier than both

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of these, and that's sixteen nineteen

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when the British settlers under Captain

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John Woodley celebrated their Safe

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Passing Um in the Berkeley

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Plantation in Virginia near the Charles

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River. So that's to further muddy

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what the water is a little we just have a lot

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of early celebrations to

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go along and balance the starving

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time and all

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those other wonderful religio settlement.

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Settlement, it was Abraham

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Lincoln who gave us, and

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by us, I mean the United States our national

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holiday for the last Thursday of every November.

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So happy Thanksgiving gob

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will go will y'all. And if you'd like to

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and all sorts of interesting facts about

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