Letter From America
Memories of Pilgrims, the Wampanoag tribe – and mounds of turkey
It’s easy to no longer feel British when you’ve left Britain. All I have to do is visit London and see how much it’s changed since I departed 13 years ago.
It’s much harder to feel American. Some traits can be acquired, such as stopping at a four-way (what I used to call ‘a crossroads’) or ending your sentences with a period. Other traits are bred in the bone, such as sporting leisurewear on formal occasions, and not flipping off other drivers in case they shoot you.
But Thanksgiving, which falls on 22nd November this year, is for everyone; even the Indians.
Plymouth, Massachusetts – where it all began in 1621 for the Americans and where it all began to end for the Indians – is one of those New England seaside towns that looks like a big-box version of an Old England seaside town. The shops sell fish and chips, rock candy and saucy postcards.
There’s even a bandstand. But no band has ever stood on it. The bandstand is on the beach, and it covers the Rock that the Pilgrims are alleged to have set foot on after parking the Mayflower in the bay.
It looks like the Mayflower is still parked in the bay. You’re looking at Mayflower II, a replica built in Devon in 1955-56 to commemorate AngloAmerican collaboration in the Second World War. Mayflower II crossed the Atlantic in 1957. Like the original, she never returned. But while the settlers recycled Mayflower I for building materials in the first terrible winter, Mayflower II became a museum.
The ship is so small that you wouldn’t want to cross a boating lake in it. The volunteer ‘crew’ speak cod-devonian and stay in 1620s character while small children dance hornpipes of derision around them and ask where their iphones are. ‘I wouldn’t know about tha-at,’ they drawl, sucking on whalebone pipes that health and safety regulations forbid them from lighting. The next chapter of American history, the PilgrimIndian encounter, is re-enacted down the road, on the wooded shores of Plimoth (sic) Plantation.
There are two villages: a Puritan one staffed by mock Puritans and an Indian one inhabited by real Wampanoag. The Wampanoag longhouse is in a clearing by a corn patch, unless it’s winter, in which case they avail themselves of the amenities of Euro-atlantic colonialism. Their chieftain greeted us in the traditional way as he glided silently out of the trees in an electric wheelchair. Young Wampanoag busy themselves with pounding corn (women) and grilling squirrel (men). The men wear deerskin G-strings and loincloths, and show generous declivities of butt crack as they bend over the grill.
There are no butt cracks at the Puritan village, though there are a few heaving bodices. The Puritan volunteers commute to their promised land. They have the enthusiasm of evangelicals and quote the King James Bible. While the Indians are shucking corn and cracking butts, the Puritans have built woodframed houses and set up a smithy, a fortified barn and a stockade with a watchtower. They have big and providential plans. You can see that this is going to end in slaughter.
Turkey is the loneliest meat except at Thanksgiving, when Americans demonstrate their patriotism and their willingness to cook a family meal at least once a year. Most of our American friends hate Thanksgiving. But that’s because they associate it with being groped by airport security and shafted by the airlines; and all so they can spend a long weekend with the families they escaped and the in-laws they avoid. If the in-laws live within driving distance — about 250 miles in American etiquette — then they have to re-enact the ritual on the day after Thanksgiving.
Reenactment is the reason for the turkey. The Wampanoag bailed out the Pilgrims with a Bernard Matthews care package. Then the Pilgrims turned their religious Thanksgiving into a repetition of an English Sunday lunch: roast, potatoes and two veg, apple pie and custard. The die was cast in the woods at Plymouth: the New World was going to be a replay of the Old, but fully catered.
It’s the only time when I feel more American than the natives. We are pilgrim strangers, grateful for and appalled by this translated, inflated marathon of gluttony, with its orange slurry of mashed sweet potato and bitter lakes of cranberry.
We celebrate it as just us, or with other immigrants. As an Englishman, I do the stuffing and the drinks. My wife pines for Sweden as she adds cardamom and cinnamon to the obligatory pair of pies (apple and pumpkin).
Afterwards, we go for a waddle around the neighbourhood. Families are out, throwing footballs and drinking punch. Snow is in the air. Like the Wampanoag and the Pilgrims down on Plimoth Plantation, America is at peace with itself. We are sated and rooted, even if the country is stuffed.