The Pilgrims also were not all that religiously tolerant, though compared to later New England settlers they seemed so. One of them was the interpreter the Plilgrims would know as Tisquantum, or Squanto. In 1614, an English ship captain took two dozen men from the area near the future Plymouth to sell as enslaved labor in Spain. The English were far from the first Europeans to be seen in those regions explorers, fishermen and traders had been passing through for a hundred years before, some of them kidnapping Native men. In fact, much of what Americans associate with “the Pilgrims” is the product of centuries of mythologizing, beginning with making Native Americans part of the European story rather than the other way around. Yes, Indigenous and English people shared a meal in early New England in the fall of 1621, and yes, they did eat vegetables that the settlers had learned from the Wampanoag how to grow, but it’s not even clear a turkey was on the table. In her new book, The World of Plymouth Plantation, historian Carla Pestana explores Plymouth’s grip on the American historical imagination, including Thanksgiving and other “firsts,” such as the Mayflower Compact that is often lauded as evidence of colonists’ early interest in a democratic form of government. In the nation’s lore, Plymouth has often operated as the de facto beginning of American history, demarcated by groundbreaking moments in religious freedom and democracy. This is not how Plymouth’s history is typically framed, however. When they crossed the bay from their initial landing spot on Cape Cod to what would become Plymouth, the settlers entered the much-longer history of the Native Americans, who were, of course, the “first” to reside there. This fall marks the 400th anniversary of the December 1620 arrival of the Mayflower, the ship that carried 102 English settlers into the lands of the Wampanoag and their neighbors. Though Virginians (among others) have argued for earlier feasts as the first real Thanksgiving, the small settlement of Plymouth, Massachusetts, has an enduring claim to this essentially American holiday. As reliably as summer turns to autumn, when leaves start to fall Americans start to think about a meal with turkey at the center.
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