The Texan Podcast - Thanksgiving Podcast - November 23, 2023

Episode Date: November 23, 2023

Subscribe to The Texan: https://thetexan.news/subscribe/For our special edition Thanksgiving podcast, The Texan is joined by Justice Ken Wise, the host of the Texas history podcast Wise About Texas.Justice Wise serves on the 14th Court of Appeals in Houston, but also has a passion to preserve and promote the rich history of the Lone Star State.This week, we dive into the claim that the first Thanksgiving was actually celebrated in Texas by a Spanish conquistador near present-day El Paso.Read more about the background of the story here: https://thetexan.news/texas-history/texas-claims-the-first-thanksgiving-celebration-in-america/article_acee2e3e-8587-11ee-a63a-7fc3b26b1ec8.htmlListen to Wise About Texas: https://wiseabouttexas.com/episodes-list/

Howdy folks and happy Thanksgiving. Mackenzie DeLulo here, Senior Editor of The Texan, and I am so excited to introduce you to our guest today. In celebration of the holiday this week, we are getting into the spirit of the season with a special edition of our podcast detailing some Texas Thanksgiving Day history. And I'm joined by none other than Justice Ken Wise, the Texas History Podcast aficionado himself. Justice, thank you so much for joining us today. Well, I'm excited to be with you, Mackenzie. I listen to you first thing every Friday morning. So to get to participate with you is a real pleasure. Oh, well, it's mutual then. We talk about you all the time in the office. I'm going to detail

a little bit of your history here to give folks an idea of who we're talking to if they don't know you already. You serve on the 14th Court of Appeals in Houston, Texas. You proudly trace your history back to the Republic of Texas in 1836. I loved this part of your bio, Justice Wise. You competed on the intercollegiate rodeo team at Texas A&M. Real fast, tell us what that looked like for you. Well, it looked like a very low GPA at the time, but I had a lot of fun. I thought calf roping would be something that would be interesting to try. And so I did it and ended up at A&M on the team for a little while. A very undistinguished record, but it was fun to participate in how it goes. Oh, I love it. And after A& uh, it was fun to participate in, um, you know, how that goes. Oh, I love it. And after the, after A&M, you went to law school at the University of Houston.

You've been a Texas history fan since your youth, and you're now the president of the Texas State Historical Association and the Texas Historical Foundation. And you're also an officer and trustee of the Texas Supreme Court Historical Society. Justice Wise started the aptly named podcast Wise About Texas to preserve and promote Texas history, which like I have mentioned and will mention many times during the course of this podcast, we're big fans of here at the Texan. So we're just grateful to have you join us and talk about some Thanksgiving history. Right off the bat, I want to ask you, what is the importance of studying Texas's history? And what is it about the history of our state that has intrigued you for so long?

Well, the second part first, I think ever since I was a little kid running around on some family land, hearing stories about, you know, things I would find and old bricks from a house that burned down in 1800s, that kind of stuff. You know, we have an innate desire to find out where we came from. And I felt connected to ancestors I knew nothing about and really was too young to understand a lot about from a very young age. And that's thrilling for kids. And, you know, I grew up at a time where you had, you know, the Davy Crockett TV show, all that kind of stuff. But so that's all fun. And ever since then, it's just kind of

matured. And as I've gone through my career, I've realized how useful history really is. Whether you want to or not, you use it every day and it shapes our entire society. And as our society changes and evolves, it's more important than ever to understand where we came from because there's so many lessons, especially in Texas history. We've dealt with so many issues in this very unique place and we can use that history readily when examining the issues that we examine today. Absolutely. So then what led you to starting your podcast, Wise About Texas? How long has this been going on? And did this really just come from a love of the history of the state? I'll tell you exactly where it came from. I was at a trustees meeting of the Supreme Court Historical Society talking to two very well-known historians who I won't name because they may not want me to name them.

But one of them looked at me and said, well, what are you working on? And I realized I wasn't working on anything. I was consuming all this history and I was giving some talks, but I wasn't giving back as I define it. And so I said, I need to find something where I can produce some history and, you know, contribute back to the record, so to speak. And there wasn't really a Texas History podcast. And I thought, well, that's something I can do. And I started for fun in 2015. And over a million and a half downloads later, here we are in hundreds and hundreds of speeches and opportunities to do things like we're doing today.

I just I love it. It keeps me reading and learning Texas history every day. It's an incredible resource, and we certainly recommend it to all of our listeners. So one of your first episodes actually was about this event that we're going to talk about today. So let's zoom in here on some Thanksgiving history. Of course, when most Americans think of Thanksgiving, they remember the pilgrims who came to North America on the Mayflower looking to freely practice and exercise their faith at Plymouth and their three-day-long celebration with the American Indians after their first harvest in 1621. But today, we're going to be talking about how some in the state of Texas have insisted the record be corrected and that the first Thanksgiving celebration was actually held in Texas by a Spanish conquistador years before the Pilgrims.

Tell us about these Spanish explorers and why they ventured into what is now Texas on their expedition. Well, Texas was one of the later places to be explored in North America for several reasons. The Spanish explorers, Cabeza de Vaca landed, we think, maybe on the west end of Galveston Island, maybe across the pass, we don't know for sure, in 1528. And we talk a lot about him being kind of the first guy to walk around Texas. And I mean that literally, he walked hundreds of miles around Texas. But, you know, the Spanish exploration of Mexico began before that. And you had 1517, Cordoba landing in the Yucatan Peninsula. And you had a map of the Gulf Coast in 1519. And then, of course, Cortez in 1521. And so then, so the exploration really came south to north and Coronado in 1540 came through parts of what is now Texas. And that's what you're referring to, I think. Yeah, absolutely. And there are,

in your podcast detailing a lot of this there are kind of two portions you talk about um but i kind of want to go to um and zoom in on um on yate a little bit and what led him and his men uh to feasting in texas and is it true that the first thanksgiving feast in texas was a barbecue absolutely. What else could it possibly be? We, you know, Coronado came through Palo Duro Canyon and had some sort of celebration. And so you could maybe talk about that. But we definitely know Oñate in 1597 came to El Paso. Now he had quite the journey. He had a guy blazing a trail across the Chihuahuan desert to El Paso. And I remember saying in my podcast on it that if you're the, if you're blazing a trail for a bunch of explorers,

you are really blazing a trail, but he, he managed to do it. And Oñate took about 500 people across that desert in 1598, and they barely made it to the Rio Grande, because obviously if you've been to the Big Bend area, you've seen the northern end of the Chihuahuan Desert, that would be a hard place to walk across with very little support. So they had run out of food and, course were, were, uh, extremely thirsty. And so they finally made it to the Rio Grande and it saved everybody from dying of thirst.

And so they sat there for about 10 days and Onyate ordered a day of Thanksgiving, what he called a day of Thanksgiving to celebrate their survival. And they had a mass and they had a big meal. And one of the accounts, uh, records that big meal as roasting meat and fish over a great bonfire. And so there you have it, the barbecue. I love it. So when you look at these two events, let's zoom out a little bit here as well. Coronado and Añate, what's the difference in these celebrations?

Which tends to be most commonly referred to as the first Thanksgiving in Texas? You talk about both. I think in our research, a lot of folks talk about Iñates and not as much about Coronados. What would be your perspective on the difference between these two celebrations? Well, I think from a historian standpoint, you know, if you have more records, you're going to give more credibility to that story because it's easier to repeat. You can go look that up even more easily. You sort of devolve into more oral history if you don't have a lot of records,

and maybe it was that way, and maybe it wasn't, and did it really count, and all those kind of arguments that historians sit around the table and have. But there was a plaque erected in Palo Duro Canyon. It's no longer there in the 50s for Coronado's feast. Now, it could have been something in the records I recall talked about the Feast of the Ascension. So perhaps it occurred at a certain day. Maybe it wasn't a special feast, but I put that in the category of who cares. I mean, it's a good story. And if you want to say the first one was at Palo Duro Canyon, like my friends in Amarillo probably would like to say, then go for it. On Yate, we have a lot more records because it was a lot more organized situation. And so in fact, on Yate, when he, on that trip, he read the document from the king that declared all the lands drained by the Rio Grande to belong to the king of Spain.

And so that would have been extremely well documented. Contextualize for our listeners a little bit about why these Spanish explorers were venturing into what is now Texas in the first place. What were they looking for? What was going on at the time that was motivating them? Well, resources, which, you know, they wanted to claim territory, number one, and they wanted to claim all the resources within that territory, number two. And of course, in Mexico, that was Aztec gold, Inca gold. Texas, they didn't know a lot about. Coronado, of course, thought there had to have been gold for years and years. Well, we still talk about it, gold and silver in Texas.

And, you know, they were a bit disappointed with Texas's production in that department. But we, of course, later discovered an arguably more valuable resource under our ground. But that's what they were doing. And the way to own land then was to claim it. Now, of course, there's another half to that story, and that is you got to keep it, which is what we spend a lot of time studying in Texas history. Absolutely. That's a big part of the landscape. So when you're looking at these two celebrations

and you're looking at the time, you fast forward, and this is where I think this can get lost on us who have such short-term memories nowadays. But this is a nearly 300-year difference. 250 might be more accurate between this and when Texas became an independent country, right? When Sam Houston was at the helm. Talk to us a little bit about what happened between that Thanksgiving dinner and then when Sam Houston came forward and famously or infamously called himself for a day of Thanksgiving in 1842. Yeah, 1842, Sam Houston was president for the second time of the Republic. And so he declared

a day of Thanksgiving for March 2nd. And of course, March 2nd is Texas Independence Day, the day we signed the Declaration of Independence in 1836 and continued the Texas Revolution. March 2nd is also Sam Houston's birthday. So he declared a day of Thanksgiving for that day, and he asked Texans to be thankful for, and I have a quote here from him, to be thankful to, quote, render evidence of national blessings and a profound belief in Almighty God, close quote. So that was a pretty interesting declaration. Absolutely. So then you look forward and you see, OK, Texas has its own thing going on, which is so Texas of Texas to have its own Thanksgiving tradition going on. But nationally, you also see the dominoes to start to fall in establishing some

sort of tradition around Thanksgiving. Can you give us an idea of the parallels and the differences between how Texas observed Thanksgiving and how the United States did? Well, Texas had several, a couple of the other governors of Texas after we were a state declared days of Thanksgiving in the 1840s and the 1850s. And Governor Peter Bell declared a Texas Thanksgiving on the first Thursday in March, which as far as I'm concerned is still a Texas Thanksgiving. But Lincoln is the one you're referring to. Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation in 1863 declaring a day of Thanksgiving for the last Thursday in November. And of course, that would have not applied to the Confederate states of which Texas was one. But that was later moved by FDR to the fourth Thursday. Texas did celebrate that Thanksgiving after the Civil War.

FDR moved it to the fourth Thursday, and there's some story out there about Macy's department store convincing him that an extra week of shopping would be important. So he did that. But when FDR did that was 1939, when FDR did that, the opposing some of the politicians from the opposing party declared that change an insult. And so they started calling it Roosevelt's Thanksgiving, not Thanksgiving. And in Texas in 1939, we celebrated two Thanksgivings. We celebrated the last Thursday and Congress finally enshrined the fourth Thursday and Texas still celebrated the last Thursday. So, you know, that's Texas being Texas. And the legislature finally in 1957, not that long ago, declared the fourth Thursday of November as Texas Thanksgiving. But I'm going to stand on that March date too. So we can have two Thanksgivings as far as I'm concerned. I love it.

I was going to ask when that was, when Texas did observe two Thanksgivings, do you have any idea how Texans viewed those two dates? And if there was any acceptance to celebrating on the fourth Thursday of November, or were they kind of sticking with their tradition? I really don't. And I wish I did. You know, I'm sure you had a faction that refused to celebrate anything in November. And I'm sure you had to go along to get along group. And that's how Texas seems to do all of it.

Yeah, it sounds familiar for a lot of things at large here in Texas. Yeah, we're going to do it different in some way. Oh my gosh, absolutely. So when you look at, you know, historians and different fans of Texas history coming forward and saying, yes, the first Thanksgiving did in fact happen in Texas. Forget what happened in Massachusetts. What kind of validity do you give that argument of, yes, the first Thanksgiving happened here in Texas?

Well, we know it happened. We know Oñate gave thanks. We know he did it in El Paso. There wasn't exactly a Texas at the time, but I think that's extremely valid. Now, you know, we're going to give the Pilgrims a little bit of credit because they were on territory that would originally become the United States. But, you know, we became our own country. Then we became part of the U.S. Then we became part of the Confederacy. Then we got back to the U.S. And so we don't have to give up our stuff. Yeah. As far as i'm concerned i love it and i think that's what is so fun about learning about these different traditions and being you know in texan and

learning about this is okay how can we incorporate some of these things that we're learning that happened in our state into our traditions because you know i think american thanksgivings are pretty cut and dry we celebrate with pumpkin pie and this and that and turkey. And we remember the pilgrims. And it's very sobering and important also to remember and look back at other traditions and find out how to incorporate those that are important to our state's history and to our own celebrations as well. Well, and, you know, I hate to get too terribly serious, but, I mean, you think about the pilgrims that sailed across the North Atlantic to come here to a land that they had no idea, you know, what they were going to face. And same with Oñate and those explorers. And they are trying to come, you know, discover and then exist. And Texas is one of the hardest places to live when you're, you know, in those days.

It was a very hard place to settle as the Spanish would soon find out after Añate's first Thanksgiving. And so we got to at least pay respect to them. But also, I think there is never, ever a bad day to give thanks that you're from Texas. Absolutely. Oh, I love that. So how many, after the Spanish, you know, the Spanish were kind of at the forefront of a lot of this exploration in Texas for context. How soon after did we see explorers from other nations stepping foot into what would now become Texas? Well, Texas was, you know, the natural progression. We're coming from different sides. Well, first of all, you've got these European powers, England, France, Spain, later the United States on the territory, and they're all moving the same direction. And so over those couple hundred years, you had France poking around with French Louisiana in the middle of the continent.

You had Spain next door. You had England that was very interested in Texas during the Texas Revolution time, which is pretty interesting. And one of the first places to engage the Republic with diplomatic relations. We had an embassy in Texas, in London, famously, and a lot of that had to do with cotton. And so, you know, you had a lot of powers competing and then that's, you have to put that all in the context of the indigenous population of Texas, which had a lot to say about these explorers and, you know, essentially drove Spain out of Texas for a period of time. So it was it was land that was competed over violently and hotly for a long time. Absolutely. Well, Justice Wise, I certainly want to give you the floor again to talk a little bit

about your podcast. Tell us anything that, you know, is coming down the pipeline, how often you record, if there are any exciting things listeners can tune into coming up, and just where folks can tune into your podcast. Well, it's called Wise About Texas, and it's on all the podcast platforms. You can listen on the website, wiseabouttexas.com, or on any podcast platform of your choice. It comes out rather erratically because my goal with this podcast is to do the best research I can do, but tell a story as if we're on the back porch, and that takes a lot of time.

And so they don't come out as often as I'd like, but I did commit to the end of this year to try to get some things recorded and get a little more regular distribution. The last episode that came out a couple weeks ago was about a very interesting lady named Sally Skull. And before that, I had a couple of two-part interview with the first Hispanic chief of the Texas Rangers. I've got some more interviews coming up, and I've got listeners that send

topics constantly, and so I'm going to look at my list, which is probably 500 or so, and pick a good story for y'all sometime hopefully in the next few days. That'll be exciting. We'll certainly be on the lookout for that. If someone listening to this is a new listener to WISE About Texas, where would you suggest they start? I mean, you have episodes, like you said, you started in 2015, just dozens of episodes there. It's like a library of Texas history. So would you suggest folks start at the beginning,

or are there notable episodes you'd tell folks to start at if they're new to Texas history at large? Oh, gosh. Well, early on in the podcast, like the first series, the first probably 20 episodes, I was I was using trying to organize some sort of chronology just because I started it in November. And that's in as the that's the Texas Revolutionary period. And so there's a lot of that. But I also tried to put a twist on it, like instead of doing a straight Battle of the Alamo, I did the survivors of the Alamo, stuff like that.

Instead of doing the Battle of San Jacinto, I did what happened after with all the stuff they found in the Mexican camp after San Jacinto. So I try to tell stories that maybe you don't hear all the time, angles of famous events that you may not think about. That also leaves me room to revisit those events. And then I'll try to do something that's a little funny and something that is very obscure and people, which is what really makes history interesting. And so I'd say you could start anywhere. You don't have to start at the first one, but there's about 125 of them or so to listen to. So it doesn't matter where you start. Just give it a listen and let me know what you think. I love it. Well, Justice Wise, happy Thanksgiving. Thank you so much for joining us today. I so appreciate your time. And I know

all of our listeners will absolutely enjoy this as well. So thank you so much. Well, thanks for having me, Mackenzie. It's a pleasure and happy Thanksgiving to you and yours. Happy Thanksgiving. Thank you to everyone for listening. If you enjoy our show, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you want more of our stories, subscribe to The Texan at thetexan.news. Follow us on social media for the latest in Texas politics and send any questions for our team to our mailbag by DMing us on Twitter

or shooting an email to editor at thetexan.news. We are funded entirely by readers and listeners like you, so thank you again for your support. Tune in next week for another episode of our weekly roundup. God bless you and God bless Texas.