While in elementary school, children are taught to be thankful
around November, because Thanksgiving is coming up.
At the schools, teachers taught students about the “very first Thanksgiving” and how amazingly nice the pilgrims were to the Native Americans.
Some students would put on plays reenacting what they were taught,
and some would go up and tell what they were thankful for, because that
is what Thanksgiving is about, right?
Wrong.
In school, children are taught about the pilgrims. This part is true,
because there were indeed Pilgrims that came to America in 1620 on a
boat called the Mayflower.
The pilgrims were a group of Puritans who came to America so that
they could practice their religion freely.
After that whole explanation, the students are informed that the
pilgrims met up with helpful Native Americans and they had a huge
three-day feast and everyone was happy and extremely nice to each other.
This is true...kind of.
But it didn’t happen exactly like that. According to an article on
Links.org.au, “The deadly impact of European diseases and the good will
of the Wampanoag allowed the settlers to survive their first year.
In celebration of their good fortune, the colony’s governor, William
Bradford, declared a three-day feast of thanksgiving after that first harvest of 1621.”
So basically, the celebration took place a whole year after the pilgrims arrived to celebrate the beginning of their terrorizing of the Native
Americans. The whole idea of celebrating a holiday for the survival of the start
of the huge war of the Native Americans is absurd.
America is a diverse nation with hundreds of different and distinct
races, but if one really took the time to understand, she or he would realize that the beginning of a “free nation” started out as a mass murder of
the people who were in America first.
That’s really not something to celebrate, given the fact that a)
Thanksgiving is a national holiday, and b) if another country were to Americans for farming assistance. About 2,000 settlers from Britain inhabited the land in 1637.
murder a ton of its people, America wouldn’t stand for it.
There was a Thanksgiving in Manhattan County, but it was anything
Up until 1629, there were only about 300 settlers in New
but gleeful--or as nice as the “first Thanksgiving.”
England, but upon hearing of their survival, more Puritans were
In 1641, a Dutch governor of Manhattan, Kieft, offered
inspired to travel to America. For 10 years, a whole wave of setIn the
the first gruesome “scalp bounty” against the Native Ameritlers came onto the land by boat.
cans.
But that wave of Puritans was not as kind to the Native
of the
When a Native American was brought forth to be
Americans.
scalped, the government paid money. Soon, the governor orOn Links.org.au, it claimed that the Puritans and other relidered a scalping massacre of a friendly tribe, the Wappinger.
gious sects were discussing the rights of the land. Some, however,
Kieft, the jerk who ordered the bounty, actually watched
agreed that the land belonged to the Native Americans.
This, unfortunately, caused the individuals to be excommunicated and laughed as a Native American captive suffered and was forced to eat
his own flesh after being skinned alive.
(expelled from the church).
Then, because one massacre wasn’t enough for him, Kieft ordered
The Puritans came up with a ludicrous idea that it belonged to the
“public domain,” or the king, and decided that they had every right to not another massacre near Stanford, Conn. and set a village on fire. Those
who managed to escape the blaze were killed.
tell the Native Americans about their seizing of the land.
Afterwards, a day of Thanksgiving was held at the churches of ManAfter seizing the land as theirs, the Puritans enslaved the Native
OPINION
REGISTER
CARTOON BY IMANI BROWN
Giving thanks for all of the wrong reasons: why Thanksgiving is a scam
hattan. Every time a mass murder occurred, the colonists had a Thanksgiving for it.
A thankful holiday?
Try a holiday that is celebrated to commemorate the land that the
Puritans took over. Instead of politely sharing the land, they had to claim
it as their own.
Not only that, but they celebrated scalping Native Americans with
a Thanksgiving feast!
Why should America celebrate a day of “thanks” when it should
really be a day of apologizing? Americans celebrate this day as the welcoming of the Puritan survivors, but that was just to cover up the real
brutality of it all.
Maybe if Americans read more about the horridness which is
Thanksgiving, it might be celebrated in a different way.
Who wants to celebrate the start of a country when the people who
actually inhabited it first were the sacrifices? Thanksgiving is a holiday
people look forward to--if only they knew its real background.