Story behind Thanksgiving
                     STORY BEHIND THANKSGIVING
 Thanksgiving is a time for celebration, good food, and giving 
thanks. So as we gather with family, crush unworldly amounts of 
stuffing, and enjoy a football game in the crisp autumn air, let's 
also acknowledge the real history of the holiday and practice 
gratitude by giving back.
INTRODUCTION
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 In Thanksgiving pageants held at schools across the United States, 
children don headdresses colored with craft-store feathers and share 
tables with classmates wearing black construction paper hats. 
 It’s a tradition that pulls on a history passed down through the 
generations of what happened in Plymouth: local Native Americans 
welcomed the courageous, pioneering pilgrims to a celebratory 
feast. 
TRADITION
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 As kids, many of us probably learned a sanitized version of the 
first Thanksgiving story but it wasn't all peace, love and pass the 
gravy. 
 While it's true that the settlers at Plymouth and their allies from 
the Wampanoag tribe gathered in 1621 for an epic, three-day 
feast to celebrate the settlers' first successful harvest, that's far 
from the end of the tale.
THANKSGIVING 
STORY
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 In kindergarten and beyond, we learn that English religious exiles 
began establishing civilization in the new world, winning over the 
local tribes with overtures of friendship, who then taught them 
how to grow crops to sustain their burgeoning society from that 
day forward. 
 The real story is a lot more complicated, and a lot less kid-friendly.
ESTABLISHING 
CIVILIZATION
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 Fact is, the peace that brought the Wampanoag and the settlers 
together at the table wasn't as solid as we'd like to believe. A lot 
of bloodshed took place both before and after that first feast. 
THE FACT
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 Today, many Native Americans and others mark Thanksgiving as a 
solemn day of remembrance instead of celebration. Here's the 
rest of the details on what went down after the plates were 
cleared in Plymouth, Mass.
SOLEMN DAY
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 The myth is that friendly Indians, unidentified by tribe, welcome 
the Pilgrims to America, teach them how to live in this new place, 
sit down to dinner with them and then disappear. 
THANKSGIVING 
MYTH
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 One is that history doesn’t begin for Native people until Europeans 
arrive. People had been in the Americas for least 12,000 years 
and according to some Native traditions, since the beginning of 
time. And having history start with the English is a way of 
dismissing all that. 
POIGNANT 
INACCURACIES
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 The second is that the arrival of the Mayflower is some kind of 
first-contact episode. It’s not. Wampanoags had a century of 
contact with Europeans–it was bloody and it involved slave raiding 
by Europeans. 
 At least two and maybe more Wampanoags, when the Pilgrims 
arrived, spoke English, had already been to Europe and back and 
knew the very organizers of the Pilgrims’ venture.
POIGNANT 
INACCURACIES 
CONT.
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 For quite a long time, English people had been celebrating Thanksgivings 
that didn’t involve feasting—they involved fasting and prayer and 
supplication to God. 
 In 1769, a group of pilgrim descendants who lived in Plymouth felt like their 
cultural authority was slipping away as New England became less relevant 
within the colonies and the early republic, and wanted to boost tourism. 
 So, they started to plant the seeds of this idea that the pilgrims were the 
fathers of America.
FOCAL POINT OF 
MODERN 
THANKSGIVING
Source: www.smithsonianmag.com