|
Writers Articles And Opinions |
|
|
|
3 December 2009 By Habib Siddiqui
The killings became more and more frenzied, with
days of thanksgiving feasts being held after each
successful massacre. Susan Bates writes, "George
Washington finally suggested that only one day of
Thanksgiving per year be set aside instead of
celebrating each and every massacre. Later Abraham
Lincoln decreed Thanksgiving Day to be a legal
national holiday during the Civil War -- on the same
day he ordered troops to march against the starving
Sioux in Minnesota."
Thanksgiving Day is the most observed holiday in
the USA, which is celebrated by people of all races,
colors, ethnicities and even religions. It is a day in
which family members gather to eat turkey, cranberry
sauce and pumpkin pie. According to some estimates,
nearly 40 million turkeys are eaten over this long
weekend. Thanksgiving holiday falls on the last
Thursday of November. There is even a White House
event in which the President pardons a turkey on
Wednesday. That lucky turkey gets to live — and fly
first class to Disneyland, where it is grand marshal
in the Thanksgiving Day parade. Unfortunately, another
nameless bird gets slaughtered in his place. Of
course, many would find something wrong with this
concept, which sounds like "A Tale of Two Cities!" The
turkey-pardoning is supposed to be a long-running
national tradition, but it officially only dates back
to George H. W. Bush and 1989.
Like every other major popular celebration in our
world, Thanksgiving has its history, and if I may say,
not a pleasant one – the kind that we often hear which
associates it with the "Pilgrims" that landed in the
New World. According to a single-paragraph account in
the writings of one Pilgrim, a harvest feast did take
place in Plymouth in 1621, probably in mid-October,
but the Indians who attended were not even invited.
Though, it later became known as "Thanksgiving," with
giving thanks to God for the harvests of the land, the
Pilgrims never called it that.
So, what did really happen in Plymouth in 1621? For
that we have to dig deeper into history, away from
popular myths and traditions -- the imagery of a
picnic of interracial harmony -- and come to terms
with some of the most terrifying bloodsheds in New
World history. [In what follows below I summarize some
historical accounts. Interested readers may like to
read the book - "The Hidden history of Massachusetts:
A Guide for Black Folks," by Tingba Apidta and other
books that were written by the descendants of Native
American Indians.]
We are told that on "September 6, 1620 the Pilgrims
had set sail for the New World on a ship called the
Mayflower. They sailed from Plymouth, England and
aboard were 44 Pilgrims, who called themselves the
"Saints", and 66 others, whom the Pilgrims called the
"Strangers." The long trip led to many disagreements
between the "Saints" and the "Strangers". After land
was sighted on November 10, a meeting was held and an
agreement was worked out, called the Mayflower
Compact, which guaranteed equality and unified the two
groups. They joined together and named themselves the
"Pilgrims." Although they had first sighted land off
Cape Cod they did not settle until they arrived at
Plymouth, which had been named by Captain John Smith
in 1614." It is worth noting here that in 1614 when a
band of English explorers sailed home to England with
a ship full of Patuxet Indians bound for slavery, they
left behind smallpox which virtually wiped out those
who had escaped.
When the Pilgrims crossed the Atlantic Ocean in
1620, they landed on the rocky shores of a territory
that was inhabited by the Wampanoag (Wam pa NO ag)
Indians. It was there that the Pilgrims decide to
settle. Plymouth offered an excellent harbor. A large
brook offered a resource for fish. The Pilgrims
biggest concern was attack by the local Native
American Indians. But the latter were a peaceful group
and did not prove to be a threat.
Any visitor to a Wampanoag home was provided with a
share of whatever food the family had, even if the
supply was low. This same courtesy was extended to the
Pilgrims when they met.
We can only guess what the Wampanoags must have
thought when they first saw the strange ships of the
Pilgrims arriving on their shores. But their custom
was to help visitors, and they treated the newcomers
with courtesy. It was mainly because of their kindness
that the Pilgrims survived at all. The wheat the
Pilgrims had brought with them to plant would not grow
in the rocky soil.
On March 16, 1621, what was to become an important
event took place, an Indian brave walked into the
Plymouth settlement. The Pilgrims were frightened
until the Indian called out "Welcome" (in English).
His name was Samoset and he was an Abnaki
Indian. He had learned English from the captains of
fishing boats that had sailed off the coast. After
staying the night Samoset left the next day. He soon
returned with another Indian named Squanto (SKWAN
toe) who spoke better English than Samoset. Squanto
told the Pilgrims of his voyages across the ocean and
his visits to England and Spain. It was in England
where he had learned English. Squanto's importance to
the Pilgrims was enormous and it can be said that they
would not have survived without his help.
The Pilgrims needed to learn new ways for a new
world. They were not in good condition. They were
living in dirt-covered shelters, there was a shortage
of food, and nearly half of them had died during the
winter. They obviously needed help. Squanto brought
them deer meat and beaver skins. He taught them how to
cultivate corn and other new vegetables and how to
build Indian-style houses. He pointed out poisonous
plants and showed how other plants could be used as
medicine. He explained how to dig and cook clams, how
to get sap from the maple trees, use fish for
fertilizer, and dozens of other skills needed for
their survival. By the time fall arrived things were
going much better for the Pilgrims, thanks to the help
they had received. The Pilgrims decided to have a
thanksgiving feast to celebrate their good fortune.
They had observed thanksgiving feasts in November as
religious obligations in England for many years before
coming to the New World.
Captain Miles Standish, the leader of the Pilgrims,
invited Squanto, Samoset, Massasoit (the leader of the
Wampanoags), and their immediate families to join them
for a celebration, but they had no idea how big Indian
families could be. As the Thanksgiving feast began,
the Pilgrims were overwhelmed at the large turnout of
ninety relatives that Squanto and Samoset brought with
them. The Pilgrims were not prepared to feed a
gathering of people that large for three days. Seeing
this, Massasoit gave orders to his men within the
first hour of his arrival to go home and get more
food. Thus it happened that the Indians supplied the
majority of the food.
For three days the Wampanoags feasted with the
Pilgrims. It was a special time of friendship between
two very different groups of people. A peace and
friendship agreement was made between Massasoit and
Miles Standish giving the Pilgrims the clearing in the
forest where the old Patuxet village once stood to
build their new town of Plymouth.
Contrary to the fabricated lore of storyteller
generations no Pilgrims prayed at the meal. What's
more, they consumed a good deal of home brew. In fact,
each Pilgrim drank at least a half gallon of beer a
day, which they preferred even to water. This daily
inebriation led their governor, William Bradford, to
comment on his people's "notorious sin," which
included their "drunkenness and uncleanliness" and
rampant "sodomy".
Later as the pilgrims grew in number they started
showing intolerance to the Indians and their religion.
The relationship deteriorated. Any Indian who came
within the vicinity of the Pilgrim settlement was
subject to robbery, enslavement, or even murder. The
Pilgrims further advertised their evil intentions when
they mounted five cannons on a hill around their
settlement, constructed a platform for artillery, and
then organized their soldiers into four companies -
all in preparation for the military destruction of the
Native American Indians.
Pilgrim Miles Standish went to the Indians,
pretended to be a trader, and then beheaded an Indian
man named Wituwamet. He brought the head to Plymouth,
where it was displayed on a wooden spike for many
years, according to Gary B. Nash, "as a symbol of
white power." Standish had the Indian man's young
brother hanged from the rafters for good measure. From
that time on, the whites were known to the Indians of
Massachusetts by the name "Wotowquenange," which in
their tongue meant cutthroats and stabbers. A monument
in Weymouth, rededicated in 1923 to commemorate the
300th anniversary of settlement, still bears testimony
to the encounter between the natives and the white
settlers under Miles Standish that killed Indian
chiefs Pecksuot and Wituwamet in March, 1623.
By the mid 1630s, a new group of 700 even holier
Europeans, calling themselves Puritans, had arrived on
11 ships and settled in Boston, which only served to
accelerate the brutality against the Indians.
In one incident in 1637, a force of whites trapped
some seven hundred Pequot Indians, mostly women,
children, and the elderly, who had gathered for their
annual Green Corn Festival near the mouth of the
Mystic River, near present day Groton, Connecticut.
Under the leadership of Englishman John Mason, in the
predawn hours the sleeping Indians were surrounded by
English and Dutch mercenaries who ordered them to come
outside. Those who came out were shot or clubbed to
death while the terrified women and children who
huddled inside the longhouse were burned alive. Only a
handful escaped and few prisoners were taken-to the
apparent delight of the Europeans: To see them frying
in the fire, and the streams of their blood quenching
the same, and the stench was horrible; but the victory
seemed a sweet sacrifice. The next day the governor of
the Massachusetts Bay Colony declared "A Day of
Thanksgiving" because 700 unarmed men, women and
children had been murdered. This event marked the
first actual Thanksgiving.
According to Susan Bates (who writes on Native
American issues), "Cheered by their "victory", the
brave colonists and their Indian allies attacked
village after village. Women and children over 14 were
sold into slavery while the rest were murdered. Boats
loaded with a many as 500 slaves regularly left the
ports of New England. Bounties were paid for Indian
scalps to encourage as many deaths as
possible. Following an especially successful raid
against the Pequot in what is now Stamford,
Connecticut, the churches announced a second day of
"thanksgiving" to celebrate victory over the heathen
savages. During the feasting, the hacked off heads of
Natives were kicked through the streets like soccer
balls. Even the friendly Wampanoag did not escape the
madness. Their chief was beheaded, and his head
impaled on a pole in Plymouth, Massachusetts -- where
it remained on display for 24 years."[1]
In just 10 years, 12,000 whites had invaded New
England, and as their numbers grew they pressed for
all-out extermination of the Indian. Euro-diseases had
reduced the population of the Massachusetts nation
from over 24,000 to less than 750; meanwhile, the
number of European settlers in Massachusetts rose to
more than 20,000 by 1646.
By 1675, the Massachusetts Englishmen were in a
full-scale war with the great Indian chief of the
Wampanoags, Metacomet. Renamed "King Philip" by the
white man, Metacomet watched the steady erosion of the
lifestyle and culture of his people as
European-imposed laws and values engulfed them.
In 1671, the white men had ordered Metacomet to
come to Plymouth to enforce upon him a new treaty,
which included the humiliating rule that he could no
longer sell his own land without prior approval from
whites. They also demanded that he turn in his
community's firearms. Marked for extermination by the
merciless power of a distant king and his ruthless
subjects, Metacomet retaliated in 1675 with raids on
several isolated frontier towns. Eventually, the
Indians attacked 52 of the 90 New England towns,
destroying 13 of them. The Englishmen ultimately
regrouped, and after much bloodletting defeated the
great Indian nation, just half a century after their
arrival on Massachusetts soil. Historian Douglas
Edward Leach describes the bitter end: "The ruthless
executions, the cruel sentences...were all aimed at
the same goal-unchallengeable white supremacy in
southern New England. That the program succeeded is
convincingly demonstrated by the almost complete
docility of the local native ever since."
When Captain Benjamin Church tracked down and
murdered Metacomet in 1676, his body was quartered and
parts were "left for the wolves." The great Indian
chief's hands were cut off and sent to Boston and his
head went to Plymouth, where it was set upon a pole on
the real first "day of public Thanksgiving for the
beginning of revenge upon the enemy."
As the Native American Holocaust continued, several
official Thanksgiving Days were proclaimed. Governor
Joseph Dudley declared in 1704 a "General
Thanksgiving"- not in celebration of the brotherhood
of man - but for [God's] infinite Goodness to extend
His Favors...In defeating and disappointing... the
Expeditions of the Enemy [Indians] against us, And the
good Success given us against them, by delivering so
many of them into our hands.
Just two years later one could reap a £50 reward in
Massachusetts for the scalp of an Indian-demonstrating
that the practice of scalping was a European
tradition. According to one scholar, "Hunting redskins
became...a popular sport in New England, especially
since prisoners were worth good money…" [The Hidden
History of Massachusetts: A Guide for Black Folks
©Dr. Tingba Apidta; ISBN 0-9714462-0-2]
At the end of that conflict most of the New England
Indians were either exterminated or made refugees
among the French in Canada, or they were sold into
slavery in the Carolinas by the Puritans. So
successful was these early trade in Indian slaves that
several Puritan ship owners in Boston began the
practice of raiding the Ivory Coast of Africa for
black slaves to sell to the proprietary colonies of
the South, thus founding the American-based slave
trade.
The killings became more and more frenzied, with
days of thanksgiving feasts being held after each
successful massacre. Susan Bates writes, "George
Washington finally suggested that only one day of
Thanksgiving per year be set aside instead of
celebrating each and every massacre. Later Abraham
Lincoln decreed Thanksgiving Day to be a legal
national holiday during the Civil War -- on the same
day he ordered troops to march against the starving
Sioux in Minnesota."
Mary Shaw writes in the Philadelphia Freedom Blog:
"In 1830, as the "settlers" pushed westward, the 23rd
Congress of the United States passed the "Indian
Removal Act", legitimizing the land greed of the white
"settlers" and resulting in the death or displacement
of countless Native Americans. This legislation was
signed into law by none other than all-American action
hero President Andrew Jackson himself…The Native
Americans who survived were herded onto reservations,
where they faced their own set of challenges. This
form of apartheid separated Native Americans
physically, socially, and economically from the world
outside the reservation. Traditionally, nomadic hunter
societies were forced to learn to farm for their
subsistence. Disenfranchised and disillusioned, the
Native American population came to face the highest
rates of poverty, suicide, alcoholism, and teen
pregnancy amongst ethnic groups in the U.S. -- a trend
that continues to this day. All because of the
selfish, imperialistic dreams of the white man." [2]
Before I close this sad saga of thanksgiving, we
need to understand the "Pilgrims." So who were these
European Pilgrims? We are told that the "Pilgrims"
were a sub sect, or splinter group, of the Puritan
movement. They came to America to achieve on this
continent what their Puritan brethren continued to
strive for in England; and when the Puritans were
forced from England, they came to New England and soon
absorbed the original "Pilgrims."
According to Chuck Larsen (who is a teacher and a
Native American), "The Puritans were not just simple
religious conservatives persecuted by the King and the
Church of England for their unorthodox beliefs. They
were political revolutionaries who not only intended
to overthrow the government of England, but who
actually did so in 1649.
"The Puritan "Pilgrims" who came to New England
were not simply refugees who decided to "put their
fate in God's hands" in the "empty wilderness" of
North America. Mainstream Englishmen considered the
Pilgrims to be deliberate religious dropouts who
intended to found a new nation completely independent
from non-Puritan England. In 1643 the Puritan/Pilgrims
declared themselves an independent confederacy, one
hundred and forty-three years before the American
Revolution. They believed in the imminent occurrence
of Armageddon in Europe and hoped to establish here in
the new world the "Kingdom of God" foretold in the
book of Revelation. They diverged from their Puritan
brethren who remained in England only in that they
held little real hope of ever being able to
successfully overthrow the King and Parliament and,
thereby, impose their "Rule of Saints" (strict Puritan
orthodoxy) on the rest of the British people. So they
came to America not just in one ship (the Mayflower)
but in a hundred others as well, with every intention
of taking the land away from its native people to
build their prophesied "Holy Kingdom." [See Blitzer,
Charles, "Age of Kings," Great Ages of Man
series, references to Puritanism, pp. 141, 144 &
145-46. Also see Jennings, Francis, "The Invasion
of America," references to Puritan human motives,
pp. 4-6, 43- 44 and 53.]
"The Pilgrims were not just innocent refugees from
religious persecution. They were victims of bigotry in
England, but some of them were themselves religious
bigots by our modern standards. The Puritans and the
Pilgrims saw themselves as the "Chosen Elect"
mentioned in the book of Revelation. They strove to
"purify" first themselves and then everyone else of
everything they did not accept in their own
interpretation of scripture. Later New England
Puritans used any means, including deceptions,
treachery, torture, war, and genocide to achieve that
end. They saw themselves as fighting a holy war
against Satan, and everyone who disagreed with them
was the enemy. This rigid fundamentalism was
transmitted to America by the Plymouth colonists, and
it sheds a very different light on the "Pilgrim" image
we have of them. This is best illustrated in the
written text of the Thanksgiving sermon delivered at
Plymouth in 1623 by "Mather the Elder." In it, Mather
the Elder gave special thanks to God for the
devastating plague of smallpox which wiped out the
majority of the Wampanoag Indians who had been their
benefactors. He praised God for destroying "chiefly
young men and children, the very seeds of increase,
thus clearing the forests to make way for a better
growth", i.e., the Pilgrims."[3]
Thus, we know that the Pilgrims were no saints; far
from being God-fearing individuals they were savages
bent on colonizing America for the "good" white soul
at the exclusion of their hosts – the Native Americans
-- who had settled in the New World hundreds of years
ago! So how and why this contemporary mix of myth and
history about the "First" Thanksgiving at Plymouth
developed? According to Chuck Larsen, it developed "in
the 1890s and early 1900s. Our country was desperately
trying to pull together its many diverse peoples into
a common national identity. This was the era of the
"melting pot" theory of social progress, and public
education was a major tool for social unity. It was
with this in mind that the federal government declared
the last Thursday in November as the legal holiday of
Thanksgiving in 1898."
Today, the town of Plymouth Rock has a Thanksgiving
ceremony each year in remembrance of the first
Thanksgiving. There are still Wampanoag people living
in Massachusetts. In 1970, they asked one of them to
speak at the ceremony to mark the 350th anniversary of
the Pilgrim's arrival. Frank B. James, president of
the Federated Eastern Indian League, prepared a
speech. But he was not allowed to deliver it; the
Massachusetts officials told him to write another.
James declined to speak, and on that Thanksgiving Day
hundreds of Indians from around the country came to
protest. It was the first National Day of Mourning for
them.
Here is part of what James wrote: "Today is a time
of celebrating for you -- a time of looking back to
the first days of white people in America. But it is
not a time of celebrating for me. It is with a heavy
heart that I look back upon what happened to my
People. When the Pilgrims arrived, we, the Wampanoags,
welcomed them with open arms, little knowing that it
was the beginning of the end. That before 50 years
were to pass, the Wampanoag would no longer be a
tribe. That we and other Indians living near the
settlers would be killed by their guns or dead from
diseases that we caught from them. Let us always
remember, the Indian is and was just as human as the
white people. Although our way of life is almost gone,
we, the Wampanoags, still walk the lands of
Massachusetts. What has happened cannot be changed.
But today we work toward a better America, a more
Indian America where people and nature once again are
important."
We are told that President Obama did not seem all
that thrilled about the Turkey event. He said, "There
are certain days that remind me of why I ran for this
office. And then there are moments like this, where I
pardon the turkey and send it to Disneyland." I don’t
know whether President Obama ate Turkey this
Thanksgiving Day. But if he did, can you blame him for
upholding a tradition in the White House that says you
can pardon your turkey and eat it, too? Or, may be
that he ate Turkey for the right reason – to renew
our commitment to building a more peaceful and
prosperous future that every American family can enjoy,
echoing the passionate call by Frank James some 39
years ago!
Notes:
[1]. http://tinyurl.com/ykqmpge
[2]. Shaw, Mary, “What’s Thanksgiving all about?”
Philadelphia Freedom Blog, November 22, 2009, http://tinyurl.com/yfkdwrw
[3]. http://tinyurl.com/5eoqg6
Some other good references (External):
(1) Berkhofer, Jr., R.F., "The White Man's Indian."
(2) Jennings, Francis, "The Invasion of America."
(3) Blitzer, Charles, "Age of Kings," Great Ages of
Man series.
(4) See "Chronicles of American Indian Protest,"
pp. 6-10. Also see Armstrong, Virginia I., "I Have
Spoken."
(5) See Larsen, Charles M., "The Real
Thanksgiving," pp. 3-4. Also see Graff, Steward and
Polly Ann, "Squanto, Indian Adventurer." Also see
"Handbook of North American Indians," Vol. 15, the
reference to Squanto on p. 82.
(6) See Benton-Banai, Edward, "The Mishomis Book,"
as a reference on general "Anishinabe" (the Algonkin
speaking people’s) religious beliefs and practices.
(7) See Graff, Stewart and Polly Ann, "Squanto,
Indian Adventurer." Also see Bradford, Sir William,
"Of Plymouth Plantation," and "Mourt's Relation."
(8) See "Handbook of North American Indians," Vol.
15.
(9) Manataka American Indian Council, (see Bates,
Susan, “The Real Story of Thanksgiving,” Larsen,
Chuck, “Introduction for Teachers,” and “The Plymouth
Thanksgiving Story,” http://tinyurl.com/yle9wkr
(10) Paul, Daniel N., “First Nations History: We
Were Not the Savages,” 3rd Ed., Fernwood Publishing,
September (2006); www.danielpaul.com
EsinIslam.Com
|
Save
Add Comments To This Story