On the menu: the original Thanksgiving

By Matt Echelberry

mechelberry@galioninquirer.com

Do you know what was on the menu at the first Thanks­giv­ing? Are you even sure you know when and where the first cel­e­bra­tion occurred?

Few offi­cial records detail­ing an exact account of the “first” Thanks­giv­ing in 1621 have been dis­cov­ered, lead­ing his­to­ri­ans and Thanks­giv­ing enthu­si­asts to spec­u­late on the ori­gins of the hol­i­day, as well as what was on the menu.

Accord­ing to Mayflower His­tory, the Pil­grims landed in Mass­a­chu­setts in the late fall of 1620. Dur­ing their first win­ter in the Amer­i­cas, 46 of 102 of the Pil­grims died. The fol­low­ing year resulted in a plen­ti­ful har­vest, with the help from a local native tribe called the Wampanoags. The pil­grims decided to cel­e­brate with a three-day feast that would include 90 natives who helped the pil­grims sur­vive dur­ing that first winter.

It began at some unknown date between Sept. 21 and Nov. 9, most likely in very early Octo­ber. There are only two con­tem­po­rary accounts. The first comes by way of Edward Winslow in a let­ter dated Dec. 12, 1621:

“Our har­vest being got­ten in, our gov­er­nor sent four men on fowl­ing, that so we might after a spe­cial man­ner rejoice together after we had gath­ered the fruit of our labors. They four in one day killed as much fowl as, with a lit­tle help beside, served the com­pany almost a week. At which time, amongst other recre­ations, we exer­cised our arms, many of the Indi­ans com­ing amongst us, and among the rest their great­est king Mas­sas­oit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we enter­tained and feasted, and they went out and killed five deer, which they brought to the plan­ta­tion and bestowed on our gov­er­nor, and upon the cap­tain and others.”

The sec­ond descrip­tion was writ­ten about twenty years after the fact by William Brad­ford, the first gov­er­nor of Mass­a­chu­setts, in his “His­tory of Ply­mouth Plantation.”

Those pri­mary sources only list a few items that were on the Thanks­giv­ing “menu.” This con­tested list of cui­sine includes: five deer, a large num­ber of turkeys and water­fowl, cod, and bass; plus the har­vest, which con­sisted of wheat, corn, bar­ley, and per­haps a few peas.

“To that list,” Mayflower His­tory con­tin­ues, “we can add a few addi­tional things that are known to have been native to the area and eaten by the Pil­grims: clams, mus­sels, lob­ster, eel, ground nuts, acorns, wal­nuts, chest­nuts, squashes, and beans. Fruits and berries…were avail­able grow­ing wild. Pil­grim house-gardens may have included a num­ber of Eng­lish veg­eta­bles and herbs, per­haps things like onions, leeks, sor­rel, yarrow, let­tuce, car­rots, radishes, cur­rants, liv­er­wort, water­cress, and others. “

How­ever, Amer­i­can His­tory points out that the feast shared with the Wampanoag Indi­ans and the first men­tion of Thanks­giv­ing are really not the same event. “The first actual men­tion of the word thanks­giv­ing in early colo­nial his­tory was not asso­ci­ated with the first feast described above. The first time this term was asso­ci­ated with a a feast or cel­e­bra­tion was in 1623. That year the pil­grims were liv­ing through a ter­ri­ble drought that con­tin­ued from May through July,” the web­site explains.

The pil­grims decided to spend an entire day in July fast­ing and pray­ing for rain. The next day, a light rain occurred. Fur­ther, addi­tional set­tlers and sup­plies arrived from the Nether­lands. At that point, Brad­ford pro­claimed a day of Thanks­giv­ing to offer prayers and thanks to God.

How­ever, this was by no means a yearly occur­rence. It would take over two cen­turies for Thanks­giv­ing to become the national hol­i­day that we know and love today.

Sarah Josepha Hale is an impor­tant fig­ure in accom­plish­ing that task. Hale wrote the novel “North­wood; or Life North and South in 1827.” One of the chap­ters in her book dis­cussed the impor­tance of Thanks­giv­ing as a national holiday.

On Sept. 28, 1863, Hale wrote a let­ter to Pres­i­dent Abra­ham Lin­coln to have “The day of annual Thanks­giv­ing made a National and fixed Union Fes­ti­val.” Then on Oct. 3, 1863, Lin­coln pro­claimed a nation­wide Thanks­giv­ing Day as the last Thurs­day of November.

Today, our Thanks­giv­ing is the fourth Thurs­day of Novem­ber. This was set by Pres­i­dent Franklin D. Roo­sevelt in 1939 (approved by Con­gress in 1941). Since then, many cher­ished tra­di­tions have been cre­ated, but Thanksgiving’s cen­tral theme of cel­e­brat­ing grat­i­tude with a feast has remained constant.

Some lit­tle known facts:

The famous pil­grim cel­e­bra­tion at Ply­mouth Colony Mass­a­chu­setts in 1621 is tra­di­tion­ally regarded as the first Amer­i­can Thanks­giv­ing. How­ever, there are actu­ally 12 claims to where the “first” Thanks­giv­ing took place: two in Texas, two in Florida, one in Maine, two in Vir­ginia, and five in Massachusetts.

Oddly enough, most devoutly reli­gious pil­grims observed a day of thanks­giv­ing with prayer and fast­ing, not feast­ing. Yet even though this har­vest feast was never called Thanks­giv­ing by the pil­grims of 1621, it has become the model for the tra­di­tional Thanks­giv­ing cel­e­bra­tions in the United States.

Now a Thanks­giv­ing din­ner sta­ple, cran­ber­ries were actu­ally used by Native Amer­i­cans to treat arrow wounds and to dye clothes.

Pres­i­dent Jef­fer­son called a fed­eral Thanks­giv­ing procla­ma­tion “the most ridicu­lous idea ever conceived.”

Held every year on the island of Alca­traz since 1975, “Unthanks­giv­ing Day” com­mem­o­rates the sur­vival of Native Amer­i­cans fol­low­ing the arrival and set­tle­ment of Euro­peans in the Americas.

In the United States, Thanks­giv­ing Day is cel­e­brated on the fourth Thurs­day in Novem­ber. But did you know that seven other nations also cel­e­brate an offi­cial Thanks­giv­ing Day? Those nations are Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Japan, Korea, Liberia, and Switzerland.

Amer­i­cans eat roughly 535 mil­lion pounds of turkey on Thanksgiving.

Thanks­giv­ing foot­ball games began with Yale ver­sus Prince­ton in 1876.

A Thanks­giv­ing timeline:

1541 — Span­ish explorer, Fran­cisco Vasquez de Coro­n­ado, led a thanks­giv­ing Com­mu­nion cel­e­bra­tion at the Palo Duro Canyon, West Texas.

1565 — Pedro Menen­dez de Aviles and 800 set­tlers gath­ered for a meal with the Timu­cuan Indi­ans in the Span­ish colony of St. Augus­tine, Florida.

1621 — Pil­grims and Native Amer­i­cans cel­e­brated a har­vest feast in Ply­mouth, Massachusetts.

1630 — Set­tlers observed the first Thanks­giv­ing of the Mass­a­chu­setts Bay Colony in New Eng­land on July 8, 1630.

1777 — George Wash­ing­ton and his army on the way to Val­ley Forge, stopped in blis­ter­ing weather in open fields to observe the first Thanks­giv­ing of the new United States of America.

1789 — Pres­i­dent Wash­ing­ton declared Novem­ber 26, 1789, as a national day of “thanks­giv­ing and prayer.”

1800s — The annual pres­i­den­tial thanks­giv­ing procla­ma­tions ceased for 45 years in the early 1800s.

1863 — Pres­i­dent Abra­ham Lin­coln resumed the tra­di­tion of Thanks­giv­ing procla­ma­tions in 1863. Since this date, Thanks­giv­ing has been observed annu­ally in the United States.

1941 — Pres­i­dent Roo­sevelt estab­lished the fourth Thurs­day in Novem­ber as Thanks­giv­ing Day.

More Thanks­giv­ing facts:

From mayflowerhistory.com:

The tra­di­tion of the Pil­grims’ first Thanks­giv­ing is steeped in myth and leg­end. Few peo­ple real­ize that the Pil­grims did not cel­e­brate Thanks­giv­ing the next year, or any year there­after, though some of their descen­dants later made a “Forefather’s Day” that usu­ally occurred on Dec. 21 or Dec. 22. Sev­eral Pres­i­dents, includ­ing George Wash­ing­ton, made one-time Thanks­giv­ing holidays.

Today, our Thanks­giv­ing is the fourth Thurs­day of Novem­ber. This was set by Pres­i­dent Franklin D. Roo­sevelt in 1939 (approved by Con­gress in 1941), who changed it from Abra­ham Lincoln’s des­ig­na­tion as the last Thurs­day in Novem­ber (which could occa­sion­ally end up being the fifth Thurs­day and hence too close to Christ­mas for businesses).

But the Pil­grims’ first Thanks­giv­ing began at some unknown date between Sept. 21 and Nov. 9, most likely in very early Octo­ber. The date of Thanks­giv­ing was prob­a­bly set by Lin­coln to some­what cor­re­late with the anchor­ing of the Mayflower at Cape Cod, which occurred on Nov. 21, 1620.

The pri­mary sources only list a few items that were on the Thanks­giv­ing “menu,” namely five deer, a large num­ber of turkeys and water­fowl, cod, and bass; plus the har­vest, which con­sisted of wheat, corn, bar­ley, and per­haps a few peas. To that list, we can add a few addi­tional things that are known to have been native to the area and eaten by the Pil­grims: clams, mus­sels, lob­ster, eel, ground nuts, acorns, wal­nuts, chest­nuts, squashes, and beans.

Fruits and berries such as straw­ber­ries, rasp­ber­ries, grapes, and goose­ber­ries were avail­able grow­ing wild. Pil­grim house-gardens may have included a num­ber of Eng­lish veg­eta­bles and herbs, per­haps things like onions, leeks, sor­rel, yarrow, let­tuce, car­rots, radishes, cur­rants, liv­er­wort, water­cress, and oth­ers. It is unlikely much in the way of sup­plies brought on the Mayflower sur­vived, such as Hol­land Cheese, olive oil, but­ter, salt pork, sugar, spices, lemons, beer, aqua-vitae, or bacon. It appears the Pil­grims may have had some chick­ens with them, so likely had access to a lim­ited num­ber of eggs. No men­tion of swine is found in any account of the first year.

There are only two con­tem­po­rary accounts of the 1621 Thanks­giv­ing: First is Edward Winslow’s account, which he wrote in a let­ter dated Dec. 12, 1621. The com­plete let­ter was first pub­lished in 1622.

Winslow: “Our corn [i.e. wheat] did prove well, and God be praised, we had a good increase of Indian corn, and our bar­ley indif­fer­ent good, but our peas not worth the gath­er­ing, for we feared they were too late sown. They came up very well, and blos­somed, but the sun parched them in the blos­som. Our har­vest being got­ten in, our gov­er­nor sent four men on fowl­ing, that so we might after a spe­cial man­ner rejoice together after we had gath­ered the fruit of our labors. They four in one day killed as much fowl as, with a lit­tle help beside, served the com­pany almost a week. At which time, amongst other recre­ations, we exer­cised our arms, many of the Indi­ans com­ing amongst us, and among the rest their great­est king Mas­sas­oit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we enter­tained and feasted, and they went out and killed five deer, which they brought to the plan­ta­tion and bestowed on our gov­er­nor, and upon the cap­tain and oth­ers. And although it be not always so plen­ti­ful as it was at this time with us, yet by the good­ness of God, we are so far from want that we often wish you par­tak­ers of our plenty.”

The sec­ond descrip­tion was writ­ten about twenty years after the fact by William Brad­ford in his His­tory Of Ply­mouth Plan­ta­tion. Bradford’s His­tory was redis­cov­ered in 1854 after hav­ing been taken by British loot­ers dur­ing the Rev­o­lu­tion­ary War. Its dis­cov­ery prompted a greater Amer­i­can inter­est in the his­tory of the Pil­grims. It is also in this account that the Thanks­giv­ing turkey tra­di­tion is founded.

Brad­ford: “They began now to gather in the small har­vest they had, and to fit up their houses and dwellings against win­ter, being all well recov­ered in health and strength and had all things in good plenty. For as some were thus employed in affairs abroad, oth­ers were exer­cis­ing in fish­ing, about cod and bass and other fish, of which they took good store, of which every fam­ily had their por­tion. All the sum­mer there was no want; and now began to come in store of fowl, as win­ter approached, of which this place did abound when they came first (but after­ward decreased by degrees). And besides water­fowl there was great store of wild turkeys, of which they took many, besides veni­son, etc. Besides they had about a peck of meal a week to a per­son, or now since har­vest, Indian corn to that pro­por­tion. Which made many after­wards write so largely of their plenty here to their friends in Eng­land, which were not feigned but true reports.”

From Amer­i­can History:

The first inter­est­ing thing to point out is that the feast shared with the Wampanoag Indi­ans and the first men­tion of Thanks­giv­ing are really not the same event. Dur­ing the first win­ter in 1621, 46 of the 102 pil­grims died. Thank­fully, the fol­low­ing year resulted in a plen­ti­ful har­vest. The pil­grims decided to cel­e­brate with a feast that would include 90 natives who helped the pil­grims sur­vive dur­ing that first win­ter. One of the most cel­e­brated of those natives was a Wampanoag who the set­tlers called Squanto. He taught the pil­grims where to fish and hunt and where to plant New World crops like corn and squash. He also helped nego­ti­ate a treaty between the pil­grims and chief Massasoit.

The first actual men­tion of the word thanks­giv­ing in early colo­nial his­tory was not asso­ci­ated with the first feast described above. The first time this term was asso­ci­ated with a a feast or cel­e­bra­tion was in 1623. That year the pil­grims were liv­ing through a ter­ri­ble drought that con­tin­ued from May through July. The pil­grims decided to spend an entire day in July fast­ing and pray­ing for rain. The next day, a light rain occurred. Fur­ther, addi­tional set­tlers and sup­plies arrived from the Nether­lands. At that point, Gov­er­nor Brad­ford pro­claimed a day of Thanks­giv­ing to offer prayers and thanks to God. How­ever, this was by no means a yearly occurrence.

The next recorded day of Thanks­giv­ing occurred in 1631 when a ship full of sup­plies that was feared to be lost at sea actu­ally pulled into Boston Har­bor. Gov­er­nor Brad­ford again ordered a day of Thanks­giv­ing and prayer.

George Wash­ing­ton issued the first Thanks­giv­ing Procla­ma­tion by a Pres­i­dent of the United States on Nov. 26, 1789. Inter­est­ingly, some of the future pres­i­dents such as Thomas Jef­fer­son and Andrew Jack­son would not agree to res­o­lu­tions for a national day of Thanks­giv­ing because they felt it was not within their con­sti­tu­tional power. Over these years, Thanks­giv­ing was still being cel­e­brated in many states, but often on dif­fer­ent dates. Most states, how­ever, cel­e­brated it some­time in November.

Sarah Josepha Hale is an impor­tant fig­ure in gain­ing a national hol­i­day for Thanks­giv­ing. Hale wrote the novel North­wood; or Life North and South in 1827 which argued for the virtue of the North against the evil slave own­ers of the South. One of the chap­ters in her book dis­cussed the impor­tance of Thanks­giv­ing as a national holiday.

On Sept. 28, 1863 dur­ing the Civil War, Hale wrote a let­ter to Pres­i­dent Abra­ham Lin­coln “as Editress(sic) of the ‘Lady’s Book’ to have the day of annual Thanks­giv­ing made a National and fixed Union Fes­ti­val.” Then on Octo­ber 3, 1863, Lin­coln, in a procla­ma­tion writ­ten by Sec­re­tary of State William Seward, pro­claimed a nation­wide Thanks­giv­ing Day as the last Thurs­day of November.

From about.com:

In the United States, Thanks­giv­ing Day is cel­e­brated on the fourth Thurs­day in Novem­ber. But did you know that seven other nations also cel­e­brate an offi­cial Thanks­giv­ing Day? Those nations are Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Japan, Korea, Liberia, and Switzerland.

Oddly enough, most devoutly reli­gious pil­grims observed a day of thanks­giv­ing with prayer and fast­ing, not feast­ing. Yet even though this har­vest feast was never called Thanks­giv­ing by the pil­grims of 1621, it has become the model for the tra­di­tional Thanks­giv­ing cel­e­bra­tions in the United States.

Each Thanks­giv­ing Day since 1947, the Pres­i­dent of the United States has been pre­sented with three turkeys by the National Turkey Fed­er­a­tion. One live turkey is par­doned and gets to live the rest of its life on a quiet farm; the other two are dressed for the Thanks­giv­ing meal.

Time­line

1541 — Span­ish explorer, Fran­cisco Vasquez de Coro­n­ado, led a thanks­giv­ing Com­mu­nion cel­e­bra­tion at the Palo Duro Canyon, West Texas.

1565 — Pedro Menen­dez de Aviles and 800 set­tlers gath­ered for a meal with the Timu­cuan Indi­ans in the Span­ish colony of St. Augus­tine, Florida.

1621 — Pil­grims and Native Amer­i­cans cel­e­brated a har­vest feast in Ply­mouth, Massachusetts.

1630 — Set­tlers observed the first Thanks­giv­ing of the Mass­a­chu­setts Bay Colony in New Eng­land on July 8, 1630.

1777 — George Wash­ing­ton and his army on the way to Val­ley Forge, stopped in blis­ter­ing weather in open fields to observe the first Thanks­giv­ing of the new United States of America.

1789 — Pres­i­dent Wash­ing­ton declared Novem­ber 26, 1789, as a national day of “thanks­giv­ing and prayer.”

1800s — The annual pres­i­den­tial thanks­giv­ing procla­ma­tions ceased for 45 years in the early 1800s.

1863 — Pres­i­dent Abra­ham Lin­coln resumed the tra­di­tion of Thanks­giv­ing procla­ma­tions in 1863. Since this date, Thanks­giv­ing has been observed annu­ally in the United States.

1941 — Pres­i­dent Roo­sevelt estab­lished the fourth Thurs­day in Novem­ber as Thanks­giv­ing Day.

From randomhistory.com:

The famous pil­grim cel­e­bra­tion at Ply­mouth Colony Mass­a­chu­setts in 1621 is tra­di­tion­ally regarded as the first Amer­i­can Thanks­giv­ing. How­ever, there are actu­ally 12 claims to where the “first” Thanks­giv­ing took place: two in Texas, two in Florida, one in Maine, two in Vir­ginia, and five in Massachusetts.

Pres­i­dent Jef­fer­son called a fed­eral Thanks­giv­ing procla­ma­tion “The most ridicu­lous idea ever conceived.”

Held every year on the island of Alca­traz since 1975, “Unthanks­giv­ing Day” com­mem­o­rates the sur­vival of Native Amer­i­cans fol­low­ing the arrival and set­tle­ment of Euro­peans in the Americas.

The famous “Pil­grim and Indian” story fea­tured in mod­ern Thanks­giv­ing nar­ra­tives was not ini­tially part of early Thanks­giv­ing sto­ries, largely due to ten­sions between Indi­ans and colonists.

The first Thanks­giv­ing in Amer­ica actu­ally occurred in 1541, when Fran­cisco Vasquez de Coro­n­ado and his expe­di­tion held a thanks­giv­ing cel­e­bra­tion in Palo Duro Canyon in the Texas panhandle.

Amer­i­cans eat roughly 535 mil­lion pounds of turkey on Thanksgiving.

Now a Thanks­giv­ing din­ner sta­ple, cran­ber­ries were actu­ally used by Native Amer­i­cans to treat arrow wounds and to dye clothes.

Sarah Josepha Hale (1788–1879), who tire­lessly worked to estab­lish Thanks­giv­ing as a national hol­i­day, also was the first per­son to advo­cate women as teach­ers in pub­lic schools, the first to advo­cate day nurs­eries to assist work­ing moth­ers, and the first to pro­pose pub­lic play­grounds. She was also the author of two dozen books and hun­dreds of poems, includ­ing “Mary Had a Lit­tle Lamb.”

Thanks­giv­ing foot­ball games began with Yale ver­sus Prince­ton in 1876.

Matt Echel­berry is a Galion Inquirer reporter, 129 Hard­ing Way East, Galion. He can be reached at (419) 468‑1117.

Posted by Rob Treynor on Nov 3 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.