Thanksgiving Myths
Dean
One of the more pernicious myths I hear spread about Thanksgiving is that the settlers at the first Thanksgiving wound up stealing the territory of the Indians there and eventually slaughtering them. That's a terrible but increasingly common myth. Actually there was a horrible plague that killed off most of the Indians in that area, and the area was practically empty when the settlers got there. The few Indians who were still there welcomed them and, yes, did indeed befriend them, and no, they were not betrayed by those settlers.
There were conflicts between Indians and white people in the area some 75 years later, but that's an entirely different discussion.
For a pretty good history of the holiday of Thanksgiving, which examines some of the other myths (most of them harmless and fun), and a history of how it's evolved over the centuries, see this History Channel video. For a pretty in-depth writeup, Wikipedia has a pretty good entry.
Hope you're all having a good day!
Related Posts (on one page):
- American Indian Genocide?
- Thanksgiving Myths
"Soon after Europeans arrived, European diseases killed 90 percent or more of the hemisphere's original inhabitants - at least 30 million people, and possibly 100 million, according to most recent estimates.
Four years before the Pilgrims' arrival, shipwrecked French sailors accidentally unleashed an epidemic, possibly viral hepatitis, on Cape Cod, which then swept through New England. The Pilgrims moved into an Indian village, Patuxet, that had been emptied by disease; they survived the first winter only after digging up food caches in victims' houses and graves. Some historians have speculated that holding the Thanksgiving meal was, in part, an act of apology."
—Charles C. Mann, NYT, 11/25/04
Unnatural Abundance
But this is an entirely different case from the claim that those people were intentionally slaughtered. Although some terrible slaughters happened centuries later (sometimes committed by both sides), that's different from the question of the intent and friendship of those pilgrims and those Indians they encountered. (And yes, as one with Native American blood I still use the old term "Indian," which actually most "Native Americans" also still use.)
By the way, some snarky Europeans have noted that in exchange for smallpox and hepatitis and alcohol, the Indians gave back tobacco and syphilis. :-)
In any case, note that the Indians in the area of Plymouth Rock genuinely did befriend the pilgrims, were glad to have more people there--and the friendship was mutual.
As usual, real life is never that simplistic and the truth is only a tiny part of that scenario. Unfortunately, some will never be convinced.
The really sad thing is that we don't remember often enough the situations like that friendship between that particular set of colonists and that particular band of Indians. Too bad, because they are a prime example of how two disparate peoples can indeed, not only get along, but learn from each other and become enrichened in the process.
"Soon after Europeans arrived, European diseases killed 90 percent or more of the hemisphere's original inhabitants - at least 30 million people, and possibly 100 million, according to most recent estimates."
How are these estimates calculated? Whose estimates? It would seem that the wholesale deaths of 100 million people would leave quite a few bones to dig up, no?
"The Pilgrims moved into an Indian village, Patuxet, that had been emptied by disease; they survived the first winter only after digging up food caches in victims' houses and graves. Some historians have speculated that holding the Thanksgiving meal was, in part, an act of apology."
What reason do the historians have for speculating? Other than the need to get journal articles published to achieve tenure? Further, how would the pilgrims have known that the deaths were caused by european infections, since they had no way of knowing what the populace was like prior to their arrival?
It seems to me that there's an awful lot of reading our present mindset into the past here. Sort of like that Walt Lipmann bit about wishing Castro a speedy recovery.
Always beware when you hear the phrase "some historians."
The Pilgrims and the furthest Eastern natives almost certainly sat down at the table for harmony and peace. But let's not make it like we didn't effectively commit genocide on them later. Also, I think some of those numbers are off a bit. I'll need to check, but I don't think I've ever seen an estimate that put the Indian population in the continental US at over 200 million. Then again, it's early and I may still be asleep. But to wipe out 100 million via disease, you'd have needed at least a quarter billion to start with.
Genuine slaughters--as in wonton killing--wasn't until some time after that.
Making out the white people to be the always-bad people and the red people to be teh always-pitiful-victims is simply wrong.
Anyway, the whole Leftist paradigm of the Big Bad White Male European Imperialist Zionist, etc., Oppressor vs. the Weak Helpless Pitiful Black (or Red or Yellow) Female (or Homosexual), etc., Victim, is every bit as demeaning of the latter as it is intended to be damning of the former. The Indians were, and prided themselves on being, fierce warriors. Within their cultures, they were very conservative, religious, and hierarchical. They were not Rightists because they had no Left until long after the "white" Americans began importing socialist ideas from Europe.
Cheers.
Some Americans did engage in wonton slaughter of Indians in the next few centuries, although the picture is more complex than we make it out to be these days. If you want to get an in-depth look at the open question about Indian genocide (and yes, it really is an open question), a good starting point is right here.
As someone with Indian blood himself (Miami, my great-grandma was a half-breed), I find the history of the various Indian nations to be fascinating. Yes they were often given the shaft. But, too, sometimes they were terrible to each other and engaged in wonton slaughters of their own, and sometimes wrongly attacked white settlers.
In other words, history is complex. But do read the article, it's good.
This is well within many estimates for the population of the entire New World. I don't know of anyone who claims that just what is the US had that population of natives, but it could have been the population of the Mayan and Incan empires, according to some researchers.
I am not familiar enough with the research to give an opinion on its accuracy or not. I do know that those numbers are controversial.
There is no support for the claim that Europeans intentionally and maliciously slaughtered millions of Indians.
Huge numbers were wiped out by things no one could control or even understand. Some were wiped out on purpose by nasty Europeans, but some of the Indians were also incredibly nasty and committed atrocities of their own.
In other words, as usual, history is complex.
No one can doubt that in many ways many Indians got badly screwed over and suffered unnecessarily. The term "genocide," though, is much harder to apply, unless you use an incredibly loose definition of the term.