Thanksgiving: A Native American Perspective
Indians.org
or many of us, thinking about Thanksgiving makes us think of the First Thanksgiving between the Indians and the Pilgrims. There are many versions of this story though, but many of us know the one we are taught in school. In 1621, America would have their very first Thanksgiving Dinner between the two different groups. Today it is celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November.
The very first Thanksgiving was to celebrate a treaty between the pilgrims and the Indians. This was a large feast that had enough food to feed everyone for weeks. On the table was foul such as geese, turkey, swans, duck, etc. There was also lots of meat, vegetables and grains provided by both the Indians and the pilgrims. Everyone had a wonderful celebration, and certainly a wonderful meal. The Native Indians even signed a paper stating that the pilgrims had the right to Plymouth.
Thanksgiving to the Native American Indians may not mean the same thing that it did to the white settlers in American History. To the Indians, Thanksgiving would mean a totally different thing. This was the beginning of their end - a time where they had given up their land in return for gifts that were full of disease - which would kill many of them later down the road.
The White settlers would see this as a friendship being started, knowing that without the help of the Native American Indians, they would never have survived the rough winter. It was a time of celebrating with family and friends and being thankful they were still around to do it. Today, we celebrate it with our own family with turkey, yams and ham.
Thanksgiving will always be remembered as a time when the Native American Indians and Pilgrims sat at a long table and ate together, sharing everything they had with one another.
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Also, there were Europeans roaming the southern and southwestern areas of what became the US a hundred years before the Pilgrims landed.
The Indians culture was lethally undermined the first time an Indian came into possession of a steel knife.
What happened to Indians was not a great deal different than what happened in other parts of the world.
The Britons were driven off their land the Saxons and subsequently subjugated by descendents of the Vikings that had occupied a part of
England for a long time.
In the early 19th century, the Zulu moved out of central Africa and established an empire in what is now Natal. Like the Pilgrims, they had a technological advantage....th e short stabbing spear vs the long throwing spear of their opponents.
In the hundred years before Cortez, the Aztecs moved southward, conquering all tribes in their way, and set up the Aztec
Empire.
The Indians of the US took the lands by force of other Indians. What happened to Indians is a long story.....and an old one.