First Thanksgiving Research Paper

America has come a long way since Columbus began his voyage in 1492. In “Beyond 1492: Encounter in Colonial North America,” James Axtell explains that when it comes to the Indian-European encounter, there’s more to the story than what the average person grasps. Most people know of how the Natives were mistreated and killed off by the Europeans with biological warfare and that a couple thousands of years later the Pilgrims and Natives had their first feast together known as “Thanksgiving”. However, in chapter four, Axtell’s essay describes that surprisingly, there was a “variety of ways Indians responded to the Europeans that invaded their lands in the wake of Columbus.” Axtell chronologically recapitulates the history of the Indian reactions to the European encounters up until the 1700’s and categorizes them into 5 strategies.

Then the Pilgrims celebrated the first Thanksgiving with the natives. After almost more than seven months the Pilgrims sailed back to England in April of 1621. However, the Mayflower compact was an agreement signed on November 11th of 1620. The Mayflower compact was an agreement like the U.S constitution and declaration independence. I believe the Mayflower compact was very interesting for many reasons because it was signed on board the Mayflower, signed by all the men onboard the Mayflower, allowed the Pilgrims to settle in America, allowed the Pilgrims to get along and the real Mayflower compact doesn’t exist.

However, these two colonies, while both being founded by religious dissidents, had a plethora of differences and uniqueness between them. Plymouth came from a group of dissidents known as separatists that wanted to separate church from royal control. These people became known as Pilgrims. Seeking religious freedom, they sailed for 65 days on the Mayflower to form a colony in Virginia. Though their initial destination was Jamestown, the Pilgrims landed way off course and decided to set up a colony there, Plymouth. Like those of Jamestown, the Plymouth inhabitants faced many hardships and much of the population perished. However, while Jamestown survived primarily due to powerful leaders, Plymouth was saved by friendly Natives that shared their knowledge for farming and harvest which led up to a feast that became the first Thanksgiving. Though it did not explode with success, Plymouth fared much better than Jamestown and paved the way for a national

The novel Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick has a long list of things to teach us about the New World. The fact that it’s showed us that the very first pilgrims had no idea what they were in for was crucial. They were hit with the realization that the Natives would be wild and ferocious instead of calm and tame. They’d known they would be introduced to new ways of life, and disease, but they didn’t suspect that it’d be the most destructive part to the goodwill of the newly born colony.

Overall, Loewen argues against the “traditional American version” of Thanksgiving for the true history of that era, which is filled with diseases, massacres, and altered history in favor of the god preaching Pilgrims. Loewen, in this chapter, has given many examples of how Thanksgiving has been "heroified. " One way consists of how the Pilgrims were portrayed in books as a group of heroic and thoughtful people who came to America to pursue religious freedoms. How it was given to us as kids was that when the Pilgrims arrived, they sat hand in hand with the natives, being thankful for what they had and being happy to share with the natives. This isn't true because Loewen has stated that the native population was wiped out by these European diseases that were brought to them.

At the start of the film After the Mayflower: We Shall Remain, the English and the Native Americans celebrated the first Thanksgiving together in 1621. Both groups of people seemed trusting of each other and showed personal respect. At this time the Wampanoag Indians had the power and chose to use it to form a treaty with the weak English Pilgrims. The two groups shared everything and traded their assets with each other. As the film continued there was an obvious change in power to the English with more and more Puritan immigrants from Europe arriving. By the end of the movie the English decided to use their power to control all lands instead of keeping the treaty with the native people. The English “thanksgiving” at

H. Puritans versus Indians 1. In the New England area, the Indians were relatively weak, and an epidemic had killed many of them. a) The Wampanoag tribe was in no condition to resist the settlers, so they made a treaty and even celebrated the first Thanksgiving with them.

Plymouth’s climate was cold and hard. It had a rocky soil limited for constructing farms, on the other hand Jamestown had warm climate and the soil was perfect for hefty plantations. Jamestown’s goal in the new land was to expand English trade and English goods, however Plymouth’s goal was to have higher religious freedom by moving to a new land. Jamestown’s people didn’t desire to work and had complications due to the fact they had a lack of survival skills, in the other hand Plymouth’s people were cooperative. Both Jamestown and Plymouth came from the Church of England. Jamestown created peace and a forceful Indian Empire with the Indians of Virginia, whereas Plymouth extruded most Indians and some of the remaining Indians assisted the colonists from Plymouth. Plymouth had a day to give thanks known as thanksgiving today, similarly Jamestown also had a day to give thanks also knows as thanksgiving.

Holidays are always celebrated no matter religion, beliefs, or culture. Some are recognized more than others but none two are as highly recognized like the cherished Christmas and Thanksgiving holidays. The pair may seem vastly different, as they are two completely separate occasions, but in actuality they do share very similar attributes. Many of the similarities and differences are about to be explained, so here goes.

The food supply starts to decrease and there are only seven houses that are built within that year on the region. While approaching winter, it is approximately two people who die per day due to hunger, the weather, and sickness.Several conflicts have occurred between the Pilgrims and the Native Americans that could lead to severe attacks. In one location of the New World, more than 175 Pilgrims begin to fight the local Native Americans for their goods and food supply which created excessive violence. According to Mr. Philbrick, there high levels of racism from both group . State officials of Massachusetts began to relocate several Native Americans off the Boston Harbor. The Pilgrims eventually meet some Native Americans in the area and are able to form a trading alliance that would benefit both parties. The pilgrims and native americans formed what is now called Thanksgiving. Massasoit was the most powerful Native American leader in the region. His group had been battling disease and approximately ninety percent of the region 's Native Americans died from what may have been bubonic plague that had also killed some of the mayflower passengers.

He describes that “Eastern Indians had observed autumnal harvest celebrations for centuries” (Loewen 90). This fact makes more sense considering students have always been taught that the Pilgrims feasted as a celebration, but they actually learned these new traditions from the Indians. Loewen informs the reader that the Pilgrims were not even included in the Thanksgiving tradition until the 1890s. He also includes that the Pilgrims were not even called “Pilgrims” until the 1870s.

When the first European colonists arrived in 1620 on land in the New World, a disaster was forming. Arriving in what is known today as Massachusetts on The Mayflower, the settlers didn’t have enough experience surviving cold, harsh winters causing almost half of the settlers to die that had arrived on The Mayflower. This had changed in 1621 with the help of the Native people. The American Indians had started teaching the English people how to do many things including harvesting and growing crops. This help from the Native’s had led to the first Thanksgiving between the two groups. These two societies, however, didn’t remain friends. The English settlers had kicked off the American Indians of their own land and tried to make them convert to Christianity. The English settlers had also brought diseases from Europe causing many Indians to get very sick and even some die.

The food that the pilgrims made were food that had come from the America's not from Europe. Later Benjamin West painted a depiction of Penns Treaty with the Indians where the Indians are depicted as barely clothed primitives and the English fully clothes with hats and coats very civilized. The reasoning behind keeping the image of Indians as primitives and the Settlers as civilized people is to prevent people from questioning if what the Europeans did was okay. In a sense, textbooks want students to completely overlook the barbaric things the conquistadors and settlers did to the natives. If students paid attention and learned about what the conquistadors and settlers did to the natives, then the students would start to believe that the conquistadors and settlers were the savages and not the Natives.

The harvest of 1621 saw the fulfillment of their labors. The Pilgrims had grown barley, corn, pumpkins, and beans. The settlers labored to gather their bounty; and in thanks for

The truth of the matter is, when the Pilgrims arrived, they found an abandoned Wampanoag village and moved right in. In 1618, a massive epidemic of an unknown disease left by English explorers swept across Wampanoag country and decimated many of the villages. This epidemic caused the death of ten to thirty percent of the total population and all but a few of the 2,000 people of the village of Patuxet. When the Pilgrims arrived in 1620, they landed at Patuxet with no idea of what had occurred. At this point, there were only about 2,000 members left in the Wampanoag tribe, down from 12,000 in 1600. Despite the incredible losses to his people, Wampanoag leader Massasoit and 90 of his men sat down for a harvest celebration offered by the white men. For three days the Wampanoag and Pilgrims feasted on deer, wild turkey, fish, beans, squash, corn and other foods native to North America. Although the celebration was good-natured, this event truly signifies the beginning of a drastic decline of native culture and Thanksgiving would be more fittingly observed as a day of mourning rather than a celebration. In the years that followed, skirmishes occurred and more Native Americans were killed. In 1637, English soldiers massacred 700 Pequot men, women and children as an example of the English way of war, yet we still celebrate Thanksgiving as a joyful event. So, as we sit down for our Thanksgiving dinner,