• By LEILA PITCHFORD-ENGLISH
• Advocate News Features staff
• Published: Nov 14, 2009

• Print
• Email
• Save
• Reprints
• Twitter
• Share

• Del.icio.us
• Digg
• Facebook
• Reddit
• 

Most children in the United States act out or draw the first Thanksgiving at Plymouth Colony. They dress as Pilgrims and as Native Americans and create pictures of tables filled with turkey and other food.

That image comes directly from the residents of Plymouth.

The Mayflower Quarterly, the journal of the General Society of Mayflower Descendants, gives examples in its September 2008 issue.

In a Dec. 11, 1621, letter to a friend, Pilgrim Edward Winslow wrote:

“Our harvest being gotten in, our Governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a more special manner rejoice together, after we had gathered the fruit of our labours. 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 amongst the rest their greatest king, Massasoit with some 90 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 governor mentioned is William Bradford, head of the colony. In his journal, he also recorded the events of that first harvest and celebration.

He described the colonists harvesting their crops and preparing their houses for winter. He said that other people fished, catching especially cod and bass, which was distributed among the families. He described the abundance of waterfowl that was available as summer ended.

He wrote, “And besides waterfowl there was great store of wild turkeys, of which they took many, besides venison, etc. Besides they had about a peck a 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.”

Religious ties

The December 2001 Mayflower Quarterly ran an article tracing the first religious Thanksgiving. The author, Peggy M. Baker, says the 1621 celebration was a secular harvest festival. The first religious celebration was in 1623.

The colony had been in drought, when Gov. Bradford suggested a day of prayer. That evening the rain started. The colony set aside a time for “day of thanksgiving.”

The custom of Thanksgiving grew in the New England colonies. Each governor would proclaim a day of thanks, usually after that colony’s harvest ended. The day would start with a church service and end with a meal.

Idea courtesy of the Rev. Nina Russell.