American History Tellers - The Mayflower | The Thanksgiving Myth | 5

Episode Date: December 3, 2025

In 1620 the Pilgrims arrived in a land already shaped by centuries of Native history. For the people who lived there, the Wampanoag, it was Patuxet—a place with its own stories, its own politics, and, as the Pilgrims soon learned, a complicated history of encounters with Europeans.In this episode Lindsay is joined by David Silverman, professor of history at George Washington University and author of This Land Is Their Land: The Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving. He helps us imagine the arrival of the Mayflower from the Wampanoag point of view—what they saw, what they feared, and what choices lay before them.Be the first to know about Wondery’s newest podcasts, curated recommendations, and more! Sign up now at https://wondery.fm/wonderynewsletterListen to American History Tellers on the Wondery App or wherever you get your podcasts. Experience all episodes ad-free and be the first to binge the newest season. Unlock exclusive early access by joining Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Start your free trial today by visiting wondery.com/links/american-history-tellers/ now.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, history buffs, if you can't get enough of the captivating stories we uncover on American history tellers, you'll love the exclusive experience of Wondry Plus. Dive even deeper into the past with ad-free episodes, early access to new seasons, and bonus content that brings history to life like never before. Join Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcast and embark on an unparalleled journey through America's most pivotal moments. From Wondery, I'm Lindsay Graham, and this is American History Tellers, Our History, Your Story. In our series on the Mayflower, we traveled with a group of desperate religious dissidents

as they sailed from England to the Netherlands and then to Plymouth in what would eventually become known as New England. But it wasn't called that by the people who lived there at the time, the Wampanogs. They knew the place where the pilgrims settled as Patuxet, and much to the surprise of the newly arrived English colonists, they had prior experience with Europeans. In this episode I speak with David Silverman, a professor of history at George Washington University. He's the author of This Land is Their Land, the Wampanog Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the troubled history of Thanksgiving.

David will take us back to 1620 to imagine what the encounter with the Pilgrims might have been like from the Wampanog perspective. Our conversation is next. Hey, Ontario. Come on down to BetMGM Casino and see what our newest exclusive the Price is Right Fortune Pick has to offer.

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David Silverman, welcome to American History Tellers. Thank you for having me. So before we head to the early 17th century, I'd like to ask you a bigger picture question about why you wanted to write about the Wampanogs and the Pilgrims. What did you think was in their story that hadn't already been told? Back in 2005, I wrote my first book about the Wampanog people of Martha's Vineyard and how they managed to survive colonialism. And in the course of doing that research, I had numerous conversations with modern-day Wampanog people.

And what kept coming up in these conversations was how difficult Thanksgiving was for them, and particularly for the kids. What they say is the mythical Thanksgiving of native people welcoming the English into their country so that they can form the United States makes light of the Wampanog people's own colonization. Their dispossession, right? You know, what's more, they say that in the schools, teachers who are teaching about this mythical first Thanksgiving say repeatedly that the native people who welcome the pilgrims are now all gone. And Wampanog kids have heard these lessons while they're sitting there in the classroom. And so I wanted to write a book that put Wampanog people at the center of this history and that connected that history to their long-term struggles with colonialism up to this very day.

Second reason I wrote this book is that almost every secondary teacher in the country addresses the first Thanksgiving. It's usually the one cameo that Native people make in the secondary school and even primary. school history curriculum. Yet most of the teachers who address this subject don't know much about it. And so I figured if I wrote a book that was accessible to them, I could reach millions and millions of school kids with a much more accurate history. One of the things that happens often when I've been exploring this early colonial history is we are introduced to characters who know the English through some sort of prior interaction before the colony started. This is true in Jamestown and it's true in Plymouth. In our series, we meet Squanto, who had encounters with

the Europeans and the English and spoke English. Can you speak a bit to the Wampanog experience with Europeans prior to the Pilgrims arriving in 1620, including, I guess, what happened to Squanto before then? Sure. You allude to a bigger point, which is that in almost every early colonial founding, what we imagine as a first contact is nothing of the sort. You know, the Wampanogs are in contact with Europeans for a full century before the arrival of the Mayflower. The first documented contact between them and Europeans is 1524. Plymouth is founded in 1620. That's a long time.

And these encounters are happening regularly several times a year in some cases. Generally, when the two parties meet, they're interested in trade. The Wampanogs and all coastal native people are deeply interested in acquiring the goods that these Europeans carry. And here I think it's important to note. Native people did not have metal. They didn't have metal tools. They're effectively a stone age people in that respect.

And Wampanogs want metal goods, copper kettles, steel axes, scissors, knives, weaponry, cloth, glass beads, and like. Europeans want furs, Fox, Martin, beaver peltz above all. They fetch a high price in Europe, fresh food and water. So the two parties are drawn together. Problem for the Wampanogs is that the Europeans also want people, and they very often will capture native people, sometimes because they want to bring them back to Europe to train as interpreters and guides. But at other times, they're capturing them with the intent of selling them into slavery back in Europe. So in the case of Squanto, the key interpreter and mediator between Plymouth and the Wampanogs, he's taken captive in 1614 by an English captain named Thomas Hunt. And this is not the first time this has happened.

It had happened multiple times before. And indeed, in 1611, a Wampanog named Ipanow is captured by the English, brought to England. And three years later, he manages to connive his way back by promising to lead the English to gold. on the island Martha's Vineyard. There's no gold on the island Martha's Vineyard. In the case of Squanto, how exactly he came into Thomas Hunt's possession were not sure. What we suspect is that Hunt had lured him on board or to the shoreline under the pretense of trade and then clasped him in irons. And Squanto was just one of more than 20 native people along the coast who Hunt captures during this dragnet. Hunt then sails across the Atlantic and sells his human catch to Caligua, Spain. Squanto alone among these two dozen plus Wampanogs goes free. We don't exactly know how. We suspect a Spanish friar had freed him. Indian slavery was officially illegal in the Spanish Empire, but Spanish routinely broke the law. But in any case, Squanto manages to go free, and somehow, we don't know how, he falls into contact with English merchants in Spain,

manages to get to London, and then falls into the possession of an Englishman named John Slaney, who was involved in colonization efforts in Newfoundland. Over the next several years, Squanto is thoroughly involved in Slaney's enterprises. Twice Squanto travels to Newfoundland and back. He might have even gone to Virginia during this period of time, during the early English colonization of that place. And ultimately, Squanto manages to convince. Vince, a captain named Thomas Dermer, who is a close associate of Slaney's, to bring him back to New England as a means of promoting English colonization schemes in the area. And so Squanto ends up

back in Wampanag territory in 1619, just six months before the arrival in the Mayflower, after years abroad. I'm curious what you think native cultures learned about the English on their travels. They were pressed into service by the English to learn about Native culture. What did the Native cultures learn about European culture? Well, they learn that these people are incredibly numerous, that they're organized on a scale that utterly eclipses the social organization of Native America. When the Wampanogs met as a polity or tribe, the largest Native American polities were at most 30,000 people. Native people who return home routinely comment on the vast inequalities that they witnessed in European society. And, you know, let's keep in mind,

most of these native people are traveling in pretty elite social circles. Squanto is living with John Slaney while he's in London, and he's operating in some of the highest ranks of English society. So he sees the wealth and the grandeur of the English elite. He also, he also, can see that masses of teeming poor outside the gates of the places where he's staying and undoubtedly made an impression on him, just as it made an impression on most native people who traveled to Europe during this period of time. They comment that such inequality would be totally inexcusable in their own society, and they don't understand how the poor of these societies don't set fire to the elite's homes and slit their throats. They simply cannot

grasp it. What they also grasp, and you know, I told you this anecdote about the Wampanog captive Ipanow who manages to make it home in advance of Squanto doing the same thing. Ipanow has figured out that a lust for gold makes these people mad with ambition. So they've learned some really important things about these people, but they've also learned one other thing, which makes native people covetous. These folks have incredible military technology, which if native people can harness themselves will make them powerful in their own intertribal affairs. And so that's a real appeal of contact with these otherwise ruthless people. So Squanto, after years away, finds Captain Thomas Dermer, who agrees to take him back to the Cape Cod area. And as you mentioned,

this is just before the Pilgrim's land. What did Squanto find when he finally got home? Squanto undoubtedly was anticipating a warm homecoming, a reunion with family and friends. And instead, he wanders into an apocalypse. There's really no better way to express it. Between 1616 and 1619, an unidentified European epidemic disease starts knifing its way through native people in southern New England. from the Sacco River of Maine on the north to the east side of Narragansett Bay in modern-day Rhode Island in the south. And the two groups of people who suffer the most are the Wampanogs of what's now southeastern Massachusetts and the Massachusetts people of Massachusetts Bay right around the modern-day city of Boston.

The identity of the disease, we don't know. I strongly suspect it was smallpox. What we do know is that this disease, eviscerated numerous communities. And when I say eviscerated, I mean, completely wipe them out. And any survivors scattered to neighboring communities and probably communicated the disease in the course of doing so. The entire Taunton River Valley, which was the main artery of the Wampanog people,

it stretches from just west of modern-day Plymouth into Narragansett Bay, where Providence, Rhode Island is located today. by all accounts it had once been full of native villages and later english colonists can tell because the woods were all cleared for cornfields it was empty of people and among the communities that's wiped out is squanto's home community of patuxet now i'm not suggesting everyone from patuxet was dead we know from the records of the mayflower passengers that squanto actually managed to find some of his relatives in nearby communities. But some of his relatives is not all of his relatives.

Unquestionably, most of his family and friends and acquaintances were now dead. So as Guanto is approaching the shoreline for his homecoming, we have to assume he's full hope and anxiety. Hope because he's been away for years, right? He desperately wants to reconnect with loved ones. Anxiety because he probably would have heard that a terrible disease had struck the Coast. Englishman had already commented on that point. So when he finally lands at Patuxet, what does he see? Well, according to English eyewitness accounts, and we have multiple of them, the place was like an

inverted graveyard. The bones, the skeletons, the skulls of the dead were littered all over the landscape. And that tells you something profound. That tells you that the people fled in a panic because native people treated the remains of their dead with great respect. They would never would just leave them standing there. You know, in other words, Squanto knows that just a tragedy of epic proportions has struck his people,

and now he's desperate to find if there are any survivors to hear about what had happened and where his place in the world is going to be. Okay, Carrie, you're ready? Quick, quick, quick. List three gifts you'd never give a cowboy. Uh, uh, Lacey,

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that will last for almost two decades. Follow American Scandal on the Wondria, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of American Scandal, The West Memphis 3, early and ad-free right now on Wondry Plus. So Squanto manages to return to Potoxic just before the Pilgrims landed in 1620. Talk about how the Wampanogs approached the pilgrims initially after their landing. Well, the Wampanogs are conflicted about what to do with these Mayflower passengers. When the Mayflower first lands off of Cape Cod, one of the things that strikes the English is they can't find any native people. Now, part of that has to do with the fact.

that in that part of Cape Cod, Wampanags would live out there during the warm months of summer during planting season, but would withdraw inland to the forest during the cold weather for hunting season. But that's not the only factor here. They're wary of these newcomers. They don't know quite yet what to do with them, and so they're biting their time. There are a few furtive encounters during the first couple of weeks that the English are on the scene. The English go exploring, they find a Wampanog summer camp, and they ransack the place. Indeed, they disinter a burial, a couple of burials, in fact, which is a really lousy way to introduce yourself to foreigners by desecrating their graves. They steal some buried seed corn that will become the

basis for the first harvest that the English enjoy, but they can't find any people. The English send out some exploring parties to probe the territory, and they do encounter a couple of Wampenog men walking on the beach with their dogs and try to hail them down and the Wampanogs take off. They're almost certainly afraid that these Englishmen are going to clasp them in chains and ferry them away somewhere. Later on, the Englisher camped on a beach, the exploring party, that is, and they come under attack by a small band of Wampanog warriors. The hostility and trepidation that the English meet from the few Wampanogs that they encounter

on Cape Cod is one of the reasons that they decide to have. find a new place to settle. They choose Plymouth, ultimately, because the native people have been wiped out there, and the land is already cleared for planting. And here it's important to set the intertribal context in the run-up to the Pilgrim's arrival. The Wampanogs might have suffered enormously from the epidemic of 1616 to 1619, but their narrow against it rivals to the West did not contract the disease. And so in the wake of the Wampanog's devastation, the Narragansets begin conquering the Wampanogs and subjugating them to the status of tributaries. In other words, requiring them to pay an annual tribute to Narragansett leaders and contribute warriors to the Narragansett's own military campaigns.

So when the Mayflower passengers arrive off of Cape Cod, the Wampnogs are facing a couple of choices. You know, on the one hand, they know that these English people have a long history of kidnapping and killing Wampanog people. And as such, many Wampanog people are in favor of wiping out these newcomers. I say this is not a danger worth risking. On the other hand, Wampanog people have seen the potency of English weaponry and English soldiers. Squanto has been to England and back and can say, look, this is a lot. is a formidable people. If we can win them to our side, that would be to our advantage. And ultimately, the debate is, should we try to ally with these people against the Narragansansans,

or should we push them back into the sea and accept subjugation to the Narragansansans? Ultimately, allying with these people wins out. That's a position that the Wampanog's leader, Ussamiquin, or Massasoyat, as he's better known, makes. But it is not a decision that all Wampanogs agree with. I'm interested in the politics of the Wampanog. You mentioned that some people didn't agree with the ultimate decision to ally with the English, but talk to us about how these decisions are made, and I guess this gets into an introduction to the sachem, Massasoa. Well, we don't have any eyewitnesses on the scene, but we know enough about how native polities in general work and how the Wampanag polity sometimes worked to make some educated guesses. So Massasoit, or Usses,

Usomequin should be considered first among equals, among other Wampanog leaders. Every village community or sachem ship had a chief or a sachem. When a series of local satem ships banded together in confederacy, usually to meet a foreign emergency, they would defer to the leader of what we might call a paramount sachem or a great chief. that's Usamiquin or Massasoyat. When Usamiquin or Massasoya is making a decision about what to do with the English, what he would do is call the sachems from other communities together in council and the people would talk about it. They would consult their shamans known as Powas. That's where the word powwow comes from and try to divine the best way forward. Decisions weren't made by majority vote. The goal was always to. to achieve consensus. So as a result, there's constant fissures. So when Usamiko and Mastasoyat manages to achieve a rough consensus about what to do with the English, he is always aware that there are dissidents within the ranks who might try to break away. And indeed,

over the next several years, there are constant minor rebellions within the Wampanag polity by local satrums who want to side with the Narragansets and wipe out this young English colony. So one of the advantages that both English and Massasoid had in these early relations is Squanto as translator. But was he a good translator? There was suspicion growing. Was he a good diplomat for his people? My sense is that Squanto's English is very good. The question was always whether he was faithfully translating between the two peoples or whether he was tailoring the message to his own political ends.

Usomiko and Massasoyat suspects very quickly that what Squanto is trying to do is set himself up as a great sachem and a rival to Massasoyates. We just don't know. What we do know, because eventually there's more than just Squanto who can speak both languages, is that Squanto has been spreading some whoppers of lies to try to terrify the Wampanog people. and claiming that only he can handle the emergency. So in particular, what he says is playing on Wampanog fears of the previous epidemic, that the English have a disease buried in a box in their storehouse and that they can release this disease whenever they want and that only Squanto himself can influence them to keep it

buried. What he's probably referring to is gunpowder. What the English would do is keep gunpowder buried in the event that there was a fire and they don't want it to ignite. At other points, Squanto spreads false rumors among the English that Massa Soyot had been taken captive by the Narragansets, and he's constantly trying to stoke crises so that he himself can bring them to a resolution, thus raising his reputation among both the Wampanogs and the English.

Eventually, Usamiku and Massassoyid is calling for Squanto's head. He demands the English to. either execute him themselves or to hand him over so that Massasoya can execute him. Before this emergency comes to a head, Squanto dies of a disease, though the possibility exists that Massasoit had him poison. So Squanto is the perhaps unreliable diplomat for the Wampanog, but the English had their own, Edward Winslow. They chose him as a representative to deal with and visit the Wampanogs. What skills did he bring to the job?

Winslow was a printer back in England. and had read a number of narratives by Englishmen and other Europeans about their adventures in America. So he had a knowledge base to prepare him for this kind of sensitive intercultural diplomacy. Other than that, it's just personal characteristics. He's a brave man. There's no other way to put it. He visits Wampanod communities. These are places that are utterly foreign to him and that within his worldview, our

permeated by devil worship, which he deeply, deeply fears. He views Wampanog powwows as minions of Satan, as witches. He's constantly afraid that these folks are going to stick a knife in his back. And yet he develops a quick rapport with Massasoya. They seem to genuinely like and respect one another. Indeed, Massasoya contracts the same disease that eventually kills Squanto. And while he's seemingly on his deathbed, he sends a messenger to Plymouth for Winslow visit him. For me, I think the most illustrative moment of Winslow's abilities, his diplomatic abilities, comes during that bout of disease that Massasoit suffers. So, you know, Winslow shows up in Massasoit's village. And the entire community is in a state of ritual morning, believing that

Massasoit is about to die. And so Winslow enters the Wittu or the Wigwam, where Massasoit is ailing. and immediately begins doctoring him. He tends to Massasoit's bowels, empties his chamber pot. He opens up Massasoit's mouth and scrapes his tongue. He prepares food for Massasoit, a bowl of duck porridge, which Winslow highly recommends against Massiates against throwing it up. Eventually, though, Massesoyate recovers. And when he does, he then recruits Winslow to do.

doctor, everyone else in the community who's sick. And Winslow does it. This is a nauseating exercise, as Winslow himself puts it. And yet he follows through. And in doing this, he demonstrates an enormous amount of goodwill. He shows that he's a friend and can even be considered something of a relative, right? This is how relatives treat one another. So he's an essential man in all this. So let's finally turn to, I guess, what we call the first Thanksgiving, the myth. that's become of this meeting. After that terrible first winter for the pilgrims, there is some sort of harvest feast in the fall of 1621. How did this feast even begin? So it's common for the public to say, oh, you know, the first Thanksgiving involved the Pilgrims of Plymouth inviting the

Wampanox to dinner. That is not what happened. What happened was this. The English bring in their harvest, and they decide for the first time since they had arrived, they're going to take a couple of days in rest and celebrate the fact that they have survived and that they now have food to eat that they race through their own labor rather than through the Wampanogs. And among their recreation is militia practice, target practice. They start firing off guns. Well, the Wampanogs hear the gunfire, and the Wampanogs have a military alliance that they've known. negotiated with the English. The English obligation is to come to the Wampanog's protection if the Narragansett's attack. But the Wampanog's obligation is to come to Plymouth's protection

if the Narragansets or, say, the French or the Spanish attack. So that, you know, they hear the gunfire and then the Wampanogs show up in force. 90 of them show up, armed men, led by Massasoit himself. This is almost twice the number of colonists who were left in Plymouth. So many of them have died. In almost any other colonial setting, that many native people showing up at the edge of a colony where the colonists are armed would have resulted in a bloodbath. But that's not what happened here. Enough goodwill had been cultivated between the two people that nobody misfires. And moreover, the English, and they really have no choice in the matter, let's be clear, or their guests in Wampanog country,

they say to the Wampanags, why don't you stay? And so the Wampanags contribute to the feast and the two parties sup together for the next couple of days. That's the entirety of the event. And here I think it's important to note. We have mythologized this event over the past few hundred years

into this seminal moment in Wampanag English relations. None of the parties ever mentioned it again. It doesn't seem to have been very important to either one of them, and the English barely right about it. You mentioned that this was a moment in which any other settlement would have been wiped out by the arrival of an overwhelming armed native force. But can you explain a bit more on why the Wampanogs and the English were able to avoid bloodshed, at least for a while? There's a couple of factors that allow this uneasy piece between the two people to last for decades. First and foremost, as I've been emphasizing, it's a Wampanog's own desperation. They see the English is useful in their struggle for independence from the Narragansids,

and it works. That's really what's critical here. It does work. At least twice, the English send military men to assist Massasoit and fending off Narragansett attacks. What's more, Massasoit does become the point man in English trade with other native people. Archaeological excavations have been done on. on the site of Massa Soyot's home village, and the place is littered with the remains of English goods. Yet another factor is that Plymouth Colony is really small and insignificant for quite a long time.

And there's no lucrative crop that's grown in Plymouth Colony. You know, in Virginia, within a handful of years of the founding of Jamestown, the English discover the profitability of tobacco. whereupon migrants begin streaming into the colony, and they begin overrunning the Powhatan Indian people's land, thus prompting war. That doesn't happen in Plymouth. Plymouth is a nothing place. Its population remains low. Its territorial boundaries do not expand dramatically in the first couple of decades of Plymouth's existence. And then finally, the men who cultivated this alliance.

Massasoya, and in the case of Plymouth, William Bradford, Edward Winslow, ends up going back to England. But, you know, William Bradford rules Plymouth colony for decades. And so there's stability at the top. And that matters enormously to keeping the peace, because eventually the English do start expanded at Wampanaga expense. In the fall of 1620, a battered merchant ship called the Mavonautry expense. flower set sail across the Atlantic. It carried 102 men, women, and children, risking it all to start again in the new world. Hi, I'm Lindsay Graham, the host of American history tellers. Every week, we take you through the moments that shaped America, and in our latest season,

we explore the untold story of the Pilgrims, one that goes far beyond the familiar tale of the first Thanksgiving. After landing at Cape Cod, the Pilgrims forged an unlikely alliance with the Wapinog people who helped the pilgrims survive the most brutal winter they'd ever known, laying the foundation for a powerful national myth. But behind that story lies another, one of conflict, betrayal, and brutal violence against the very people who help the Pilgrim survive. Follow American History Tellers on the Wonderry app

or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of American History Tellers The Mayflower early and ad-free right now on Wondery Plus. Hey, basketball fans, Steve Nash here. Ready to elevate your basketball IQ? I'm teaming up with Bron James to bring you the late season of Mind the Game, and we're about to take you deeper into basketball than you've ever gone before. We're breaking down the real game, the X's and O's that actually matter. In every

episode, we'll share elite-level strategy, dive into career-defining moments, and explain the why behind plays that changed a game, a team, or a championship. The Bron and I have lived this game at the highest level for decades. We've been in those pressure moments and made those game-changing decisions and learned from the greatest basketball minds in history. Now we're pulling back the curtain and sharing that knowledge with you. Time to go beyond the highlights and get into the real heart of basketball. Watch Mind the Game Now on YouTube, Prime Video, or listen wherever you get your podcasts. You mentioned the stability at the top, Massachusetts,

Edward Winslow, Bradford, as keys to keeping the uneasy piece between the Wampanog and the English at Plymouth. But eventually, the top changes. And in fact, it's Massasoit's son and Edward Winslow's son that takes over. Tell us what happens to this alliance. Well, what happens to this alliance is the same thing that happens to colonial Native American relations, wherever colonists settle in large numbers. Once colonists no longer need native people in order to have a viable economy, when they no longer need military alliance with native people,

for protection against other native people, they start throwing their weight around, aggressive missionizing. And when the English evangelize native people is not just for the purpose of saving their souls, as the English understand it, the English intent, and native people perceive this quite clearly, is to have Christian native people switch their allegiance from their sachems to the English colonies, so that follow English laws, which means that satrums like Massasoit's sons, Wamsutta, his eldest son, dies in 1662, and then Pometacom or King Philip, is the English column, they start losing tribute payers to these evangelical campaigns. You know, what's more, the English start engaging in really underhanded expansion.

They take land that was previously shared, as is the Native American understand, Right? When native people sell land, almost always, they say, you know, okay, well, we'll continue to hunt and plant here. And you can use it too. That's not the English understanding of these transactions. They will deliberately get native people drunk and get them to sign land deeds. So, you know, transfers of land. That native people later say, I have no memory of signing this document. Native people say, therefore, it shouldn't stand. Well, the English say, well, you know, you shouldn't have got drunk and that's the way it goes. The English livestock wander the landscape. These animals trespass on native cornfields and native clam banks and drive native people out of the area, which is the exact intent. When native people kill these animals, the English brings suits. They say, you've killed my private property. And Jewish native people say, well, keep your private property on your private property. And these disputes go on on. Eventually, we get to the point where the English are trying to arrest native property. people for crimes between native people in native territory. And the ultimate flashpoint is a case of murder. You know, native people will tolerate all kinds of encroachment by colonists up to the point of colonists trying to capitally execute people for murder. No native group is going to stand for that. And that's ultimately what happens in 1675. In the run-up to that moment, Usomiquin's eldest son, Hometacom, or King Philip, had been trying to put together a multi-tribal

anti-colonial coalition. He negotiates with the Narragansets and native people hither and yon. And what he says to them is, look, we all face a common enemy here. And if we don't band together, they're going to continue playing a game of divide and conquer until we're all conquered, which is precisely what happens. And this is what leads to, in 1675, full-fledged. war, what's known as King Phillips War. What was this war like? The main impetus to this war is that the English seized, try, and execute three high-ranking Wampanogs for the supposed murder of a

native interpreter named John Sassaman. John Sassman was a Wampanog. He'd gone to Harvard College. He used to translate land deeds for Pometicom. He would serve as an interpreter in diplomatic settings for him. In the winter of 1674, 74, 75, John Sassman goes to Plymouth and warns Josiah Winslow, son of Edward Winslow, the governor, that Pometicom is getting ready for war. Winslow brushes off Sassaman, and Sassman says to him, you're probably never going to see me alive again. Turns out to be true. Sassman disappears. Later, they find his body under the ice of frozen asswamps at Pond, west of Plymouth, and a couple of Christian Indians come forward and say, saw three of Pometacom's men kill this guy and stuff him under the eyes. So the English

try the accused and execute them. At that point, there's no restraining the Wampanox young men anymore. Pometacom's warriors start attacking neighboring towns. And the war spirals outward. And when native people would attack English towns, usually what they would do is station small numbers of warriors in hidden spots around the community during the evening. And then as the sun was going up and English farmers began emerging from their homes, they would attack suddenly and try to kill or capture as many of the colonists as they could before those colonists fled to these fortified blockhouses where everybody would defend themselves. Once colonists made it to those fortified blockhouses, native people would put

everything else to the torch or the knife. When the English attack, the natives is an entire different kind of scenario. They're not attacking from ambush. They have armies that are on the march. And what they're doing is attacking native civilian towns, camps, and everyone is a target. So, you know, effectively, on both sides, what they're doing is they're waging wars of terror. These are not wars just between male combatants. They're total wars that involve everybody. And they're wars of attrition. Another aspect of the way the English wage this war is often forgotten in our accounts of it. The English are enslaving their native enemies. They keep some of them to work in New England, but a disproportionate number of them, they sell to the Caribbean

and other places abroad. And this is not a purely colonial Indian war. There are almost no purely colonial Indian wars in colonial America. There's almost always native people who side with the colonists against other native people. Christian Wampanogs on Martha's Vineyard in Cape Cod, grudgingly, but nevertheless, they side with the English in this war against their own tribes people. The Mohicans and Pequots of Southeastern Connecticut side with the English. The eastern Niantics try to remain neutral, but then ultimately side with the English in this war. And then finally, in what might be the most decisive development in this war, the Mohawk people of what's now upstate New York just outside of Albany side with the English in this war.

And that combination of native allies allows the English to endure terrible losses during the first six months of this war and ultimately defeat the natives in resistance. There's an exceptionally symbolic moment at the end of King Phillips War. The English managed to track down Pometicom and the last Wampanog holdouts in this war. A Christian Indian, allied with the English, shoots Pometacom dead. And then the English desecrate his body. They decapitate him. They sever his four limbs. They send the head back to Plymouth to be piked outside the walls of the community

to rot for the next 20 years. And then Plymouth Colony and Massachusetts Colony hold a day of Thanksgiving to celebrate God's blessing that allowed them to achieve a victory over their savage enemies. So finally, as we think about Thanksgiving, George Washington had a proclamation in 1789 for a Thanksgiving. Abraham Lincoln made it a national holiday. And the mythology surrounding the first Thanksgiving is with us all. But what should we really take away from this first Thanksgiving and the intent behind our myth? What's something worth considering? I'm often asked the question of what we do with Thanksgiving in light of this history. And let me be

clear about a couple of points in our overheated political environment. I'm not declaring war on Thanksgiving. I am not calling for a cancellation of Thanksgiving, nor for that matter am I calling for us to replace Thanksgiving with a day of mourning, which is a ritual that Wampanog people have been holding some Wampanog people since 1970 to call attention to the disjunction between their own historical experience and the whitewash Thanksgiving. Here's what I am saying. The Thanksgiving myth is not true. It's a sanitized, whitewashed history that's designed, quite frankly, to make white people feel

better about colonization. The history of Plymouth and the Wampanogs, the history between native people and colonists, is incredibly violent. It is incredibly exploitative, and it resulted in native people losing almost everything. Native people are our countrymen and countrywomen these days, and if their history is going to be invoked during a national holiday, they have the right to see that history portrayed accurately. David Silverman, thank you so much for speaking with me today on American History Tellers. I appreciate you having me. Thanks. That was my conversation with David Silverman, Professor of History at George Washington University, and author of This Land is Their Land, the Wampanog Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the troubled history of Thanksgiving.

You may also want to check out another of his books, Thundersticks, Firearms, and the Violent Transformation of Native America. In the next season of American History Tellers, we'll explore the story of Frederick Tudor, the so-called Ice King of Boston, who pioneered the business of exporting ice from New England to the hottest corners of the globe. But keeping his customers cool was one thing. Managing to stay afloat and the ice business was another thing entirely. If you like American History Tellers, you can binge all episodes early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. And before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at Wondry.com slash survey.

From Wondry, this is the fifth and final episode of our series on the Mayflower for American History Tellers. American History Tellers is hosted, edited and engaged. Executive produced by me, Lindsay Graham for Airship. Sound design by Molly Bach. Music by Thrum. This episode was produced by Polly Stryker, managing producer Desi Blaylock. Senior producers are Alita Rosansky and Andy Beckerman. Executive producers are Jenny Lauer Beckman and Marshall Louis for Wondery.

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