The First Thanksgiving: A Myth That Shaped America's Identity
The story we learned in elementary school about the First Thanksgiving is as American as pumpkin pie—and just as artificially sweetened. Drawing from James W. Loewen's groundbreaking work, let's unravel how this cherished national myth obscures a far more complex historical reality.
The Myth We Were Taught
Picture the scene: grateful Pilgrims, having survived their first harsh winter in the New World, invite their Native American neighbors to share in a bountiful feast. Children across America craft construction paper turkeys and don black construction paper hats, reenacting this supposedly harmonious meeting between two cultures.
But this heartwarming tale, like many of our national origin stories, is a carefully constructed narrative that emerged long after the actual events it claims to depict.
The Historical Reality
The real story begins not with a feast, but with tragedy. When the Pilgrims arrived in 1620, they encountered an already devastated landscape. A plague, likely brought by earlier European explorers, had swept through the region between 1616 and 1619, killing up to 90% of the indigenous population. The Pilgrims' celebrated landing site, Plymouth, was actually a vacant Native American settlement called Patuxet, whose inhabitants had been virtually wiped out by disease.
The surviving Native Americans, led by Wampanoag chief Massasoit, didn't approach the Pilgrims out of pure benevolence. They sought allies in their ongoing conflicts with rival tribes, particularly the Narragansetts. The alliance was strategic, not sentimental.
The Real First Thanksgiving
The event we call the "First Thanksgiving" was neither first nor technically a thanksgiving by Pilgrim standards. Native Americans had been holding harvest celebrations for centuries before Europeans arrived. The Pilgrims themselves had multiple days of thanksgiving, which were solemn religious observances rather than feasts.
The 1621 gathering was actually a three-day harvest celebration—a secular event that bore little resemblance to our modern holiday. While food was shared, the celebration included military exercises and displays of strength. It was as much a political summit as it was a feast.
The Myth's Creation
The modern Thanksgiving story wasn't popularized until the mid-19th century, during a period of intense nationalism and increasing tensions over slavery. Sarah Josepha Hale, editor of Godey's Lady's Book, campaigned for decades to make Thanksgiving a national holiday, promoting an idealized version of the Pilgrim-Indian relationship that conveniently ignored the subsequent centuries of conflict and displacement.
The story served multiple purposes:
It provided a founding myth that emphasized cooperation rather than conquest
It positioned white settlers as the legitimate heirs to the continent
It suggested that Native Americans had willingly welcomed and aided European colonization
The Cost of Comfortable Lies
The sanitized Thanksgiving story does more than just misrepresent history—it actively handicaps our ability to understand the complex relationships between European settlers and Native Americans. By focusing on a single moment of peaceful cooperation, we ignore the systematic displacement and destruction that followed.
The real story of European-Native American relations includes:
The spread of devastating diseases
Broken treaties and forced relocations
Cultural genocide through assimilation programs
Armed conflicts and massacres
The ongoing struggle for sovereignty and recognition
Why This Matters Today
Understanding the true history of Thanksgiving isn't about guilt or shame—it's about honesty and growth. When we recognize that our national myths are constructed narratives rather than historical truths, we can begin to:
Acknowledge the full complexity of American history
Honor the resilience of Native American communities
Have more meaningful conversations about reconciliation and justice
Question other comfortable myths that may be clouding our understanding
A New Tradition of Truth
Perhaps it's time to embrace a new Thanksgiving tradition: one that honors both the aspiration for cross-cultural harmony and the hard truths of our history. We can gather with gratitude while acknowledging that our national story is more complex—and more interesting—than the myths we've been taught.
The next time you sit down to Thanksgiving dinner, consider sharing not just food, but also honest conversation about our shared history. After all, true gratitude requires acknowledging reality in all its complexity.
As James W. Loewen reminds us, the real story of Thanksgiving isn't just about what happened in 1621—it's about how and why we transformed that event into a national myth, and what that transformation says about us as a people.
This article was inspired by the work of James W. Loewen, author of "Lies My Teacher Told Me" and other works challenging conventional narratives in American history.