American History Hit - Thanksgiving

Episode Date: November 27, 2025

In the fall of 1621, a year after the pilgrim ship the Mayflower landed on the coast of New England, the settlers of the Plymouth Colony celebrated their first successful harvest. Joining them at the three day feast were the Wampanoag people, Native Americans who had to taught the settlers how to grow corn, ensuring the community would survive the coming winter. Richard Pickering tells Don about the difficulties faced by the pilgrims as they made their way from Europe and how the first Thanksgiving forged diplomatic relations with the Wampanoag people. Creating the foundations for the national holiday now celebrated every year in America.Produced and mixed by Benjie Guy. Senior Producer: Charlotte Long.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  You can take part in our listener survey here.All music from Epidemic Sounds.American History Hit is a History Hit podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Want to explore even more history? Sign up to History Hit, where you will discover history from around the world. From the American Revolution to prehistoric Scotland, there is plenty to discover. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com slash subscribe to bring the past alive. Welcome one and all to this year's holiday feast. Would you take a gander at that spread? The candles flickering, the centerpiece all orange and gold. The glittering silver, all the good stuff,

comes out only a few times a year. But the food is special to this day only. The bird all browned and plump. The mashed potatoes, the gravy, Brussels sprouts, mom's own cranberry sauce, and the candied yams. Oh, and the pies. Pumpkin. the can and coconut cream lined up on the sideboard, this is going to be good. We take it for granted, this plentiful bounty, if we're some of the lucky ones. But 400 years ago, facing the torment of a Massachusetts winter, luck wouldn't have been a factor. We needed help. And it came from an unlikely source. Or did it? Well, hello and greetings. Welcome to a special holiday edition of American History Hit. I'm Don Wilden. Happy Thanksgiving all.

I'll say my first thanks to you, our audience. Grateful indeed that you've chosen to join us as you prepare for another glorious day of feasting, wherever you'll be doing yours, on the road or at home. Or maybe you're tuning us in as you're lolling about afterwards on the couch. Turkey having been carved, cranberry sauce doled out a serious dose of triptophan coursing through your system. Wherever and whenever you've done so, Thanksgiving indeed from all of us to you. The notion of giving thanks for bounties, and blessings is as old as the hills in human society. It is the central aspect of most all religions

on a daily basis, never mind the festivals thrown at particular times of the year when the weather warms and the harvests are sown. Here in America, of course, our Thanksgiving is most traditionally associated with the story of those English settlers escaping religious persecution and arriving in a strange and dangerous wilderness full of troubles and torments. But over time, and with the considerable help of native peoples, they carved out a community on the Spartan shores of Cape Cod in a place they called Plymouth, reminiscent of their homeland. I am speaking, of course, of the pilgrims. And we figured what better history to discuss, or should I say digest, as you celebrate your holiday, than the tale of that first Thanksgiving. And here to set the table of that first Thanksgiving

is Richard Pickering, deputy director at the Plymouth Potoxic Museums in Massachusetts. Greetings, Richard, how nice to have you on American History Hit. Greetings, Don, thank you for having me. It's a feel-good story, this account of the first Thanksgiving, or at least we are led to believe when we are children learning of the festivities, European settlers sitting down with Native peoples, breaking bread in peace and fellowship. How much of this oft-told tale is really true? It is true because it is three days that are really a high point within the nation's history,

because they provide us an example of the most sophisticated diplomacy that was getting practiced by Wampanag people and by the English that were here. In many ways, we need to look at that 1621 harvest feast as a continuation of the conversations that started in March when Usamequin came to Plymouth with his men surrounding him and entered into conversation with John Carlin. Harvard, the governor. And that established an alliance that lasted with some troubles, but for the most part, uninterrupted for 55 years. Let's start with the actual Thanksgiving itself. This was a multi-day festival, am I right? Yes. And we believe it happened somewhere in late September, early October of 1621. There is only one written description of the event. And it is a letter

by Edward Winslow that he wrote in December of 1621, a private letter that he intended only to serve as advice and information for a friend. But without his permission, the letter was printed in February of 1622 as part of a pamphlet describing the Pilgrim's first year in New England. He was outraged. But for us, it is the only surviving written description of what happened. And in those three days, Winslow's letter says Usomequan, King Massasoit, his 90 men, comma, amongst others, comma. So it is possible that there are even more native people than the written record tells us about. At that point, there are only 52 men, women, and children alive from the Mayflower passengers,

and half of those 52 are under 16 years old. In recent years, one of the unfortunate attempts to reconstruct a narrative of this event has been to make it one not only combative, but one of evil intent in which the English have invited these native people to Plymouth to harm them. And nothing could be further from the truth. That approach to this narrative also does not represent.

recognize that the English were the more fragile of the communities. They were small, they were young, and Usamequin is among his many communities that had he desired these Englishmen to be gone. All he needs to do is to call upon those communities allied with him and take an action against these people. For me, what's astounding is it's three days of feasting, military demonstration, playing of sports, and the offering of gifts, because at one point, Usumiquin sends his men out to hunt, and they return with five bucks of venison that are given as presentational gifts to the most important men of the town. There are so many things going on here in this relationship that are nonverbal, messages that are being

sent that are not part of the sender's vocabulary. For example, Nannapashmet, one of the greatest Wampanag historians, when I was a young man, he said, Richard, the English never could have known that by bringing elderly, children, and women, they were setting themselves apart in the eyes of Wampanog men, who for 100 years had seen European fishermen and traders, coming, but never elderly, women, never families. The nonverbal signal for a native person was you did not take your elders, your women, your children into a situation of potential violence or harm. And so Wampanag men are looking from the shore at these families coming to the beaches and saying, these people are very different. Neither could the Wampanog have known that in giving

flifting venison to key figures in Plymouth. That is the very meat, most esteemed socially in England in this period. It's venison that you want at every feast. When your child is christened, you're hoping to have venison at the feast that will follow or a marriage. They had no idea they were actually showing a degree of gentility they couldn't possibly have known about. This is at the tail end of quite a year. in these settlers' lives, both extreme hardship but also a bountiful harvest. They truly had something to celebrate at this point. Yes, the first winter, to me, is unimaginable in its loss that in February, two and three people

a day are dying. Their houses are unfinished. And unlike English cottages, which are daubed, which is a kind of plaster that then can be painted with a lime wash that hardens it and makes it a kind of faux cement. There was no lime in New England. So houses are daubed. The storms are coming out and washing the walls away. Imagine what it's like to be dying in a brutal New England winter and watching your walls wash out of the house. It is an amazing thing that the Wampanog were willing. to teach the English how to plant a grain they had never seen before. It's possible that Stephen Hopkins,

one of the Mayflower passengers, had seen corn and understood how it was to be planted, how it was to be processed. I don't know whether the practices of Virginia's native people were the same as those here in New England. But Hopkins had been shipwrecked in 1609 on Burmese. He was part of that shipwreck that inspired the first act of the Tempest. He made his way from Bermuda to Virginia. He was at Jamestown in the period Pocahontas and John Smith were there. While he's in Virginia, he learns that his wife is dead. The children he had left behind him are being taken care of by neighbors and he returns

to England. So he would have seen May's under cultivation. It's possible that some of the church members in Leiden would have seen it at the botanical garden at the University of Leiden, but no European, no English person would have understood the complexities of traditional Wampanog ways and how you harvest and then process that grain. The story of the aid and comfort, I suppose, given by Native peoples to these settlers is an extraordinary tale, which I want to get to in a bit. But first, it's hard for the average American today to understand how incredibly difficult.

The choice to leave Europe at this time and come to this wilderness was, and would continue to be for centuries, never mind in the 1600s. The choice to do this was due to extreme circumstances back home. So let's just dive into that history a bit and figure out where these people came from. They were not called pilgrims. This is a term that comes later on. They began in the northern part of England in a place called. called Scrooby. Explain the movement that they are part of. The National Church of England is using the Book of Common Prayer and has used it from the late 1650s forward after Elizabeth

takes the throne and tries to find a middle ground between the Catholic way and the Calvinist way. There are some English Christians who find that constant repetition of a prayer book to be stultifying. So while many find that familiar, beautiful biblical poetry comforting, others say that constant repetition, the spirit begins to die because it's not active. Some English Christians also begin questioning the structure of a national church with bishops, with two archbishops as not imitating the primitive Christian churches of the Bible, which they consider to be separate congregations that are tied in communication, but no church is in higher authority than any other congregation.

In Scrooby, you find people that begin to withdraw from attending the parish church, gathering in secret and following the simple Bible-based forms that they think are going to reveal the actions of the Holy Spirit in their lives. And by doing that, they are risking their lives. They are risking prison. They are risking total penury from fines. There's a difference between Puritanism and separatism. And I want to explain that because it's an important distinction to be made.

Puritanism, which is these people were part of a general movement to purify the Church of England, they found that to be impossible at some point, that they needed to separate from that. So it's an important distinction. Once you become separate from the Church of England, you are committing, literally committing crimes and meeting in secret and becoming victims of persecution. This is the reason they need to leave. I mean, when I say crimes, I mean arrests, fines, certainly, but torture and, and also death. So at this period of time, this group of people, and how many are we talking about here,

Richard? A hundred or so? For those that will eventually be gathered on Mayflower, the number usually given there is 102. We do not know how large the Scrooby congregation was at the time they transferred from England into Amsterdam. We know they were getting over in small groups because they were not able to get out safely at one time. So in drips and drabs, they were getting to Amsterdam, worshipping with an older separated congregation that had been in that city for almost two decades. The last people to arrive are John Robinson, the pastor, and William Brewster, the ruling elder. And when they get to Amsterdam, they're horrified by the disorder of that particular church. and they are fearful of their congregants being drawn into the sexual scandals, the doctrinal

troubles of that church, and they very quickly decide we're leaving Amsterdam and going to Leiden. And they're in Leiden from 1609 until many will leave in 1620. But again, Don, they are driven forward by troubles in Holland. They think they've found a place of refuge, but religious violence began. in Leiden within a year or two before Mayflower sales. I'll be back with more American history after this short break. A great deal of the Protestant Reformation, generally speaking, was about taking a more personal role in worshiping God, stepping away from, as you said, the rote participation

in the rights of the Church of England and before that, the Catholic Church. It was about finding your own personal role with God. And that is going to figure in heavily into this whole story. eventually, interestingly, into the story of America. And that's really a fascinating part of this story that is directly involved with the pilgrim tale. They head back to England and get a hold of two boats. First of all, this becomes as much of a mercantile venture as it is a spiritual one, at least in the arrangement, right?

Edward Winslow has a great expression for what's happening. He says, New England will be a place where religion and prophet jump together. jump meaning see success. And there is an understanding that for the town and the church to have stability, they must have financial stability and profit. They also want to be a place that will draw other like-minded Christians to them. They do not say we're a shining city on a hill, as President Reagan and John Winthrop will say, but they are aware that they are, examples and that people will be looking toward them. To me, one of the most brilliant documents within our nation's literature is a letter that was read aboard Speedwell, aboard Mayflower,

or it was read along the key before the ships were boarded. We do not know exactly how John Robinson's farewell letter to his parishioners who were leaving was delivered. We only know everyone heard it. And in it, he charges them with creating a civil body politic where the officers to be selected would be chosen not by the gaiety of their coat, but by their virtue and their talent. And he gives them that approach to creating a covenanted society where everybody is bound together in some way. And this is one of the most important points of the way the community, the way the company was formed in that some were held together by a church covenant, others that joined the party

there at Southampton, they may have had sympathies with the church. They may have finally been taking the opportunity to join saying, I can't go live. in poverty in Holland, but I will join them in America if there is the chance that we can both worship and prosper. There are some people for whom this is an escape from rising prices in England, declining harvest. The period around the time Mayflower sales is marked by terrible harvest. But Robinson wants them to be pulled together, and I think in many ways it's not just conflict that arises aboard Mayflower, that's the impetus for the Mayflower Compact. It's that desire to bind everyone together in one body. You can't compel people to worship.

That would go against the approach of the church to how you worship. God calls you to worship. God calls you to confess faith and enter the church covenant. You cannot compel that. But the Mayflower Compact becomes that all-consuming embrace of every household within a civil covenant where all are responsible for all. In mid-1620, they get a hold of two vessels. One is called, as you say, Speedwell. The other is the Mayflower. These were sort of trading vessels that they had purchased.

One works out on the other dozen. Explain that incident. Well, Speedwell is actually owned by the company. It's purchased in Holland. and takes the body from Leiden, takes them from Delftshaven to Southampton. Mayflower is a chartered vessel. It never is intended to remain with them, only to get them there and potentially return the first merchandise of fur or timber, dried fish,

that could be sold for the profit of the merchants supporting them. Speedwell fails. They twice try to get out of English waters as companion vessels. And again and again, Captain Reynolds is indicating to Christopher Jones of Mayflower that he is leaking to a great degree of danger that they just need to get back into harbor. We do not know why the ship was leaking. There are two versions that the ship was basically unsound. It essentially was like a really good cosmetic job.

on a bad, complexed face. In 1669, Governor Bradford's nephew, Nathaniel Morton, brings out the first full-length history of the colony. And his take on this same incident is very different. We need to remember it's 1669. New York has been seized from the Dutch in 1664. The first English governor of New York was a member of the Pilgrim Church. So in his book, Nathaniel Morton says, this is sure and certain

information that has just come to me, a Dutch-speaking English governor with access to the papers of the New Netherland Company. And what he asserts to Nathaniel Morton is that the Dutch had paid for the failure of Speedwell, the Dutch had also paid for Christopher Jones never to get them to the Hudson because they themselves were already looking at it as a viable port. Though this is a spiritual quest, in order to create the success of this,

they have to sign a contract. They have to make this kind of a commercial venture. And so they go into business with people in England and thus secure two vessels to leave from England and head to America. What is happening in America? Give me some context right now. For a person to leave England and head for the wilderness of America, what would they know of?

What kind of settlements were there at the time? Virginia is established in 1607. So there are men at the Chesapeake 13 years prior to Plymouth. And those who would settle Plymouth are trying to read as much as they can while they're in Leiden, about Native people, about the climate of America and how they'll need to adjust to that. their concern in their selection of a settlement location is that they are close enough to other English people that they will have military support if there is violence, but they do not want to be close enough that they can be compelled to worship in the national church as it was established in Virginia. And so they begin looking at what we would say is the northern

most point of the southern bank of the Hudson River. Because in this period, the Virginia boundary runs from the Hudson to what is now northern Florida. Virginia was huge. So they want to be under the egos of a company sponsored by Virginia's backers, but they don't want to be so close to the James River that their spiritual lives will be endangered. So they leaving, in one ship, the Mayflower, having abandoned the speedwell, for what is a torturous voyage, probably for anybody, but it is particular. So they choose to go the northern route to avoid the troubles in the south, I suppose, where they could run into pirates and so forth. I suppose they ran into all those storms that the North Atlantic is famous for.

Yes, and the other possibility of that northern route is that Jones realized they had left England so late that even though there were dangerous storms, he could get them there more quickly along that route and possibly buy them time for building houses. There's a false narrative that they were lost when actually what Jones was probably doing was navigating toward Cape Cod as a landmark well known to Anglo-European traders and mariners. He only needed to get them 93 nautical miles to the Hudson River. He was not lost in the slightest. He knew where he was. He was planning, if indeed he was honest with them and intended to get them to the Hudson, unlike the assertions that are made by Nathaniel Morton, he had a terrific cover for his conspiracy in Pollock's rip off of what is now Chatham,

Massachusetts on Cape Cod, one of the great ship graveyards of our nation, that as he reaches Cape Cod waters and attempts to go south, he is caught in such roaring breakers that the ship is about to break apart. And he says, I cannot get you there. And can you imagine that culmination to a. a voyage that has involved so many storms that at one point, during one storm, a main beam breaks potentially driving the main mast through the body of the ship. But they are able to repair that broken beam. They talk. They decide to go on. And during another Atlantic storm,

one of the passengers is swept overboard. We do not know why John Howland is a above the grating and on the decks during an Atlantic storm, but we do know that he survives. Christopher Jones' solution to being in high winds and high waters was to make certain that there was not a bit of sail on that ship causing any strain. So those are all wound up, and the ropes are dragging in the water. period, if you go overboard, it is sure and certain death because a ship, the size of Mayflower, would take 90 minutes to turn around and get you. And by that time, you are gone. But John Howland is able to grab a rope, a top sail haliard that is dragging in the water. And he is something like

30 feet below the ship at that point. And they are able to pull him in. They get a hook into his breeches and are able to pull him out that way more dead than alive, but he survives. And Don, you and I, as we talk, there are two and a half million Howland descendants alive. And the course of American history would have radically changed had he died, or his wife Elizabeth Tilly is the only survivor of her household, the first winter. There are lines of the Roosevelt family that would be gone, the Bush family, would be gone. Casablanca never would have been made because Humphrey Bogart was a Howland descendant. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints would not be here. The Smiths were Howland descendants.

So oftentimes when we have LDS visitors to the museum, they want to meet the historical performers playing the Howlands who they consider key people in the founding of the church. That's a Thanksgiving I want to go to, the Howland Thanksgiving. I'll be back with more American history after this short break. So Christopher Jones is the captain of the Mayflower, a hired hand. I mean, this is a professional crew who they've hired to get them there. Why did they end up in Cape Cod? Well, if he was doing the more northern route and heading toward Cape Cod and then going down

along the Rhode Island and Connecticut coast to the Hudson River, he's exactly where he intended to be. But when Mayflower almost breaks up off of Chatham, he says, I can't get you south. We've got to stay here. And so he takes them around the outer bank of Cape Cod and takes them into the harbor of what is now Provincetown, Massachusetts, and they anchor there. And they will spend the next four weeks and three voyages of discovery. trying to find a place to plant.

The tip of Cape Cod to them, the soil is not good. There is violence between the English and the natives for depredations of native graves. And so in the third voyage, that's when they find the site that would be Plymouth. That's when they come to Patuxet. For me, one of the heartbreaking elements of that story is on that third voyage, you had 14 of the leading men in a shallop, which is a 33-foot workboat.

They are crossing Cape Cod Bay, and another ice storm whips up, and they are almost drowned in the storm. The mast of the shallop breaks, the rudder of the shallop breaks. And the professional mariners say, do what we tell you, we will live. And they take the oars and they turn the oars into rudders and they're able to get to Clark's Island. One of the young men in that party is William Bradford. So imagine what it's like to be a young man. Your wife is back aboard Mayflower. You are in the midst of an ice storm. You almost drown from the circumstances that you're in and the water washing into that shallop. He knows what it is like to be in freezing water.

They arrive at Clark's Island. The next day is Sunday. They worship on the island. The next day, they go to the mainland and they find a site that is going to be the one. They cross back to Mayflower. What is it like to be this young man climbing up the side of Mayflower from the shallop

thinking, we have wonderful news. We know where we're going. only to get up over that deck and to be told, your wife is dead. Because in the very same ice storm, she went overboard from Mayflower. And what often gets forgotten in the conspiracy theory that this young woman committed suicide is that there had been days of ice storms. The deck was glassy. She was probably in leather-sold or wooden-sold shoes.

and if she's putting a bucket over the side and loses balance, she's gone. And there is no one to save her. People do not swim. And she would have been sucked down by the weight of her clothing. But what is it like to be this young man and to get that kind of news? I just want to get a broad overview here. They have left England 16th of September and 1620. They arrive and cite land on the 9th of November.

Yes. And thus begins a series of, voyages using a smaller boat to go and make these exploratory ventures all along the coast of Cape Cod, the northern shore there. Finally, in December of 1620, the middle of winter in Cape Cod, I know it well, it's a hard time there. These guys finally find a spot. Why there? The shape of the native town of Patuxa was perfect for agricultural reasons, for reasons of access to water, and for military reasons. Patuxet had a number of high hills.

So from a military vantage point, you could see anyone coming toward the town from the sea or from the surrounding territory. It was a brilliant choice. Epidemic diseases had swept through Native New England between 1616 and 1618, and one of the communities devastated and almost wiped from the face of the earth was Patuxet.

That meant all of those agricultural fields that had been planted just a few years before were now available to the English. And one of the names for Patuxet means, place of little falls or place of many springs, there was water all around them. So it was an ideal site. Before they land, an incredibly important and, fundamental event in American history takes place. It needs to be discussed among the crew or among

the settlers. How life is going to proceed? And this is in response to almost a mutinous feeling, right? I'm talking, of course, of the Mayflower Compact. One of the amazing things about the Mayflower Compact is they themselves do not recognize how important it was until years later. So if you look at Governor Bradford's history of the colony, which he wrote in two volumes. The first volume, William Bradford gets them all the way to Plymouth in volume one without ever mentioning the Mayflower Compact. He puts down the book for a couple of years, and when he goes back to the manuscript, he said, I need to back up and tell you about something that happened. And he talks about the mutinous carriages as they were getting closer and closer

to land and how some were saying, we need not stay together. and how the Mayflower Compact was used to create that civil body politic, to create that all-embracing civil covenant that was going to hold that community together. It becomes their justifying constitutional document, empowering them to create laws, institutions, legislative, and judicial practices. It's an astounding little 199 words. document that serves them for seven decades. The Mayflower Compact is the document that many people attribute to being the beginning of

an Americanism, a way of, certainly a Euro-Americanism, a way of establishing a rule of law, a document that all people can abide to. In many ways, the predecessor to the U.S. Constitution, there's a direct line drawn from the Mayflower Compact to that U.S. Constitution. It's easy to see why. you have individual settlers taking responsibility for themselves. The only way for a society to exist in any kind of egalitarian and fair way is if everybody agrees to the same rules. No tyrant is going to see over this.

It's going to be from within the community and from within the nation. That's America. That's the idea of it. And it all pretty much starts with the Mayflower Compact. And Bradford says in describing that social structure, he says it was more sure and certain because it was by covenant. It was not forced upon them. There were some people who were being compelled to it. They were being taught orderliness. But think of what it's like aboard Mayflower in these little rabbit warrants of dark cabins. There is no place where everybody can easily assemble.

You are tween decks in the dark with the leading men talking in individually two men who are signing either voluntarily or they are being compelled to sign, knowing no one's getting off that ship until every household agrees. I need to dispose of one thing here. The famous Plymouth Rock. Tell me where that came from and was it true. In 1741, as the town of Plymouth is growing and growing, and new wharves are about to be built on the waterfront, the elder of the church, John Fonce, who is at that point 90 years old or more, he says to the young men of the congregation, please take me down to see where they landed. And they put this elderly man in a sedan chair and they take him down to the waterfront before the wharf construction begins.

And he taps the rock and he says, this is where they landed. And so in response to that identification of this rock as the landing place, the wharf that's built over it actually has a hole where you can go and look down at the rock below the wharf. That's the first time the story is reported. Fonse was part of Mayflower families. He knew the first generation. Samuel Elliott-Morrison, the great historian and naval historian, said, It is most likely that it was not the landing place, but it was the mark for the pilot. So that if you are trying to get into a channeled harbor, the pilot is being told you're heading toward that large rock. A symbol like so much of this story is. We've told the story so far from the European perspective, but of course the other side of the story is equally important.

The Wampanoa people are the indigenous group that lives in this area. What was their perception of these new settlers and how did they accommodate their arrival? It will all depend on the individual community. So when Tisquantam returns as a translator for Captain Dermer in 16, 18, 16, 19, when they're at what is now Martha's Vineyard, they are attacked by Epanow and his people because Epanow had been stolen, taken to Lepenow. London and been put on display, and he had been able to make his escape and get back to his homeland at what is now Aquina. And we all learned his name as Squanto in fifth grade.

Yes. But there's also the opposite approach to these people being within the Wampanog homeland in the way that Usamekwin was looking at them as, I have lost so many people that now I am subjugated to the Narragansett people on the other side of the river, I am paying tribute. By going to those people along the shore, if I'm the first to get to them, I have their technology, I have their allied fighting strength. So we cannot say that there's a monolithic response among Wampanag communities about the English that are in their presence. It will all depend on whether they can advance the needs of that particular community. And that's where the first Thanksgiving becomes this diplomatic event of two communities

who are practicing the most sophisticated realpolitik. What can I get from you? What can I give from you? How can we support one another? So it isn't an innocent or pastoral. Association. These are communities that see what they can get from the other one. Not only is the harvest wonderful, and there is that English tradition of the harvest home and celebrating good harvest, but it is also a diplomatic event. The harvest is bountiful, the help that they have given them

in understanding the agriculture, the new land that they're in, and how to grow maize, corn. All of this pays off and a certain stability has set in by that autumn. Certainly, times changed a great deal later on between this society and also the Native Americans. A whole war develops King Phillips' war, which is years away. But it's a rocky road ahead. Let's talk about how Thanksgiving was transformed into what we know it today. This is a separate story entirely from the pilgrims, really. I mean, it uses the story as sort of a myth upon which to build a whole idea of Thanksgiving as far into the 19th century as the Civil War. Yes, and we find that the source of the holiday. So yes, I know there are ceremonies in Florida, in Texas, in Virginia, in New Mexico. There are ancient native practices of giving thanks and gratitude as well. But if you look at the

the trajectory of the national holiday. It really is something that's based in New England, and New England practices being taken to the rest of the nation. The pamphlet that we talked about where Edward Winslow's letter was printed, that was lost for decades and was found by an antiquarian congregationalist minister named Alexander Young. And it was reprinted for the first time in 1841. So you already have an established New England holiday of families gathering in the fall after harvest was in because families had spread out across New England. And this was the time that they could travel and be together without any danger of their agricultural success. Harvest, was in. Alexander Young, as a Yankee, he knew his Thanksgiving. So when he read Winslow's letter

that talked about sports, feasting, military demonstrations, he puts an asterisk that says, and this is the first Thanksgiving. And it is after 1841 that the holiday begins to grow attached to the pilgrims and the Wampanog. Three years later, you have a governor out in the Western territories, declaring his territory's Thanksgiving proclamation and what day Thanksgiving will be. And he says in the grand old pilgrim tradition. So the holiday had not been associated with them until the 1840s, but ever after they became almost indissoluble from it. Well, I know in my family it's the favorite holiday. That's because of the food. It's because of the football, but it's also because of the fellowship.

It's a day of real gathering and love across the entire span of American society. And I think we get few of those moments every year. Thanksgiving rises above the rest. It's primarily because it maintains its identity as a day of peace and solidarity and gathering. Thank you so much, Richard, for this overview. The history is so fascinating.

It has suffered, unfortunately, the telephone game of history for all of us because we learned it so, early in our lives, that when you return back to it, you find such relevant history and pertinent to matters really current, as a matter of fact, which I find really refreshing. Thank you so much. Everyone should visit. Tell us where the museum is and if it's open all year round. Plymouth-Petuxet Museums is located in Plymouth, Massachusetts.

Our website is p-l-I-M-O-T-H.org. Mayflower 2, a full-scale reproduction of the ship that brought the Pilgrimps. is on Plymouth's waterfront. There is a 1636 gristmill nearby that represents some of the earliest industry in New England. And then our main campus features Wampanog Historic Site and the 17th century English Village, which is a recreation of Plymouth seven years after Mayflower landed. I can't wait to come. Thank you so much. And happy Thanksgiving. Happy Thanksgiving. Thank you so much. Thanks for listening to this episode of American History Hit. I hope you enjoy.

it. Please don't forget to like, review, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. I'll see you next time.