While we will soon be gathering with family and friends to celebrate Thanksgiving, we can’t help but think of that first Thanksgiving held so long ago back in 1621. Many of us believe that our celebration is somehow carrying on a tradition that started 400 years ago. In some ways that is true, but in many ways our Thanksgiving is far removed from that long ago harvest feast.
Here are some interesting facts about that long ago Thanksgiving.
The harvest feast held by the Plymouth pilgrims that we think of as the first Thanksgiving was not in fact the first Thanksgiving feast in this country at all. In fact, many tribes of Native Americans held harvest festivals long before the white man ever landed on the shores of this country.
The Plymouth pilgrims were not even the first settlers to hold a Thanksgiving harvest, as there are accounts of giving thanks that predates this festival.
The first Thanksgiving feast was a three day affair that was probably held somewhere between the 21st of September to November 11th.
While there were 90 Wampanoag Indians who attended the feast; there were only 52 colonists.
There are only two written accounts of this celebration that can be found. The first is a brief mention in a letter written by Edward Winslow and the second is in a book written by William Bradford 20 years after the event took place.
There are only two foods mentioned as being part of the feast: Venison and wildfowl. Most of the wildfowl was supplied by the pilgrims and the Wampanoag supplied the venison. There were no potatoes served at the first Thanksgiving, as neither regular potatoes nor sweet potatoes were yet available to the Pilgrims. There was no pumpkin pie as there was neither the supplies to make crust nor were their ovens to bake pies in.
While there may have been some vegetables such as wild squash and pumpkin, beans, onions, lettuce, radishes, and carrots, most of the food was meat and was far fattier than we eat now a days.
There may have been no Turkey present at this first Thanksgiving. Most of the fowl would have been duck and geese which were plentiful as well as crane, swan, partridge and eagle.
Seal was probably served as well as lobster, cod, clams, and eel.
The pilgrims ate with rough spoons, knives, and their hands; there were no forks at this first Thanksgiving.
The three-day feast was not all eating, there were games and competitions as well.
For the Pilgrims this was indeed a day of Thanksgiving as they had just endured a year of hardship settling the land, trying to grow crops, and fighting off illness and disease. It was a time of celebration, but mostly it was a time of giving thanks for simply surviving.
references: www.history.com/content/thanksgiving
