A Thanksgiving Time Line
Earlier this month, I posted “A Thanksgiving Cast of Characters.” Today, I’m sharing what I’ve learned about the events that shaped our annual American holiday.
1524-1614. European explorers visited the Cape Cod area.
1611-1614. 32 native men were captured and kidnapped to be sold as slaves. Among them was Tisquantum (Squanto), who went first to Spain and then to England, where he learned the English language.
1616-1620. European diseases, for which the native people have no immunity, hit the northeast. So many from Squanto’s village of Patuxet died that the village was abandoned.
1618. Squanto came back to his homeland and discovered his village was gone.
September 6, 1620. Just over 100 men, women, and children–including a group of English Separatists–set out on the Mayflower, a wooden cargo ship no more than 150 feet long, intending to sail to the Hudson Bay area. A storm blew them off course during their difficult, unpleasant 66-day journey. They reached land on November 11, 1620.
December 11, 1620. The Mayflower anchored at what is now Plymouth, Massachusetts. The travelers went ashore on December 16. All around them looked like wilderness, but it was Patuxet, the lands of Squanto’s abandoned village.
March 16, 1621. After the harsh winter when half of the colonists died, Samoset visited the colony. Soon after, he brought Squanto, who agreed to live with the colonists and teach them how to survive in his homeland. The Wampanoag chief Massasoit and John Carver, the English governor, formed an alliance.
Early fall, 1621. The colony had a successful harvest. William Bradford, then the governor, called for a feast to celebrate and to acknowledge God’s blessing. The feast might have taken place in October. Some say the colonists invited some Wampanoags to join them; others say they came to investigate the gunfire they were hearing as part of the festivities. However it happened, 90 Wampanoags, including Massasoit, ended up joining the three-day celebration and provided five deer for the meals.
Sadly, although there wouldn’t have been a 1621 harvest without the corn of the Wampanoags for seed, later feasts of thanksgiving celebrated military victories over native peoples as relationships between the colonists and people of the land deteriorated. And although we often call the 1621 feast “the first Thanksgiving,” the native peoples themselves had long celebrated their own harvest gatherings to thank the Creator, as they understood him, for his gifts.
November 1, 1777. The Continental Congress called for the first national day of Thanksgiving on December 18 to commemorate victory over the British at the battle of Saratoga.
1846. Sarah Josepha Hale, editor of Godey’s Lady’s Book, began to campaign for an annual Thanksgiving holiday.
1863. President Abraham Lincoln called for two national days of thanksgiving, one in August after the battle of Gettysburg, and one in November to give thanks for “the blessings of the fruitful field.” A national Thanksgiving Day has been celebrated every year since 1863, usually on the fourth Thursday of the month.
“O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever!” –1 Chronicles 16:24
DIANE
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