The First Thanksgiving

By John Green

Time: Eleven months after their arrival in America in September or early October 1621,soon after their first crop of corn, squash, beans, barley and peas had been harvested.

At the time of a host of migrating ducks and geese.

Four men were sent to hunt ducks & geese for the settlement.  They returned with enough to feed the settlement for a week.

William Bradford declared it is time to “rejoice together after a more special manner.”

Thanksgiving: The first Pilgrims did not use the term Thanksgiving.  That came in the 19 century.

Although the devotional aspect was surely present, the gathering was similar to the English Harvest festival,a secular celebration dating to the Middle Ages in which the villagers ate, drank and played games

Captain Standish staged a military review

There was 3 days of games of skill and chance

Attendees:  The 50 surviving Pilgrims. Massasoit, the chieftain of the neighboring Indian tribe the Pokanokets, was to be the special guest.  He arrived with 90 uninvited guest and 5 freshly killed deer. 

Food: “They gorged themselves on venison, roast duck, roost goose, clams and other shellfish, succulent ells, striped bass, bluefish and cod; white bread, corn bread, leeks and watercress and other “slot herbs, with wild plumbs and dried berries for desert.”

There is no mention of turkeys in any record but wild turkey was plentiful in the area.  Cranberries were available from the bogs but the Pilgrims did not know how to prepare them.  There is no mention of pumpkin pie

Drink was wine made from wild grapes, both red and white, which the Pilgrims praised as “very sweet and strong,” and beer made from the barley they harvested.

The Pilgrims had no forks and ate with their fingers and knives.  Forks did not appear in Plymouth until the end of the seventeenth century.

John E. Green III

Sources:

Philbrick, Nathaniel. Mayflower a Story of Courage, Community, and War. Viking Press, New York, 2006.

Willistyon, George F. Saints and Strangers.Reynal& Hitchcock, New York, 1945