THANKSGIVING PILGRIM “FACT” IS PROBABLY FICTION
Everyone knows that the first Thanksgiving between Europeans and American Indians was in Plymouth, Mass., in 1621. Or was it?
You probably know that a lot of the American history we were taught in elementary school was bunk. Christopher Columbus didn’t actually discover America. George Washington didn’t actually cut down a cherry tree.
But if you still imagine the first Thanksgiving as Europeans and American Indians sharing a prayer of thanks and feasting, great news. That actually happened. But the first time wasn’t in Plymouth, Mass., in 1621. It was in Maine in 1607. Or Texas in 1598. Or Florida in 1565.
The best-documented account of the “real first Thanksgiving” is in historian Michael Gannon’s book “The Cross in the Sand.”
For most of the 16th century, the indigenous peoples of what is now Florida repelled at least six wellplanned attempts at Spanish settlement on the peninsula. There was the conquistador Juan Ponce de León, whom, in 1521, the Calusa people dispatched from their land — and from this Earth — by use of a poisoned arrow. There was Hernando de Soto, who landed in Florida in 1539 but soon left upon learning the hostile territory held no gold. After wandering the Southeast for years, fighting constantly with American Indians, de Soto died of disease, likely in what is now Arkansas. And there was poor Father Luis Càncer de Barbastro, who, in 1549, became convinced he could peacefully settle the area, and was beaten to death by locals within a month.
By 1561, Spain’s King Phillip II vowed that his minions were not going to waste any more money or lives trying to colonize Florida, although he continued to claim it.
That decision lasted all of three years, until French Huguenots landed in a different area of Florida, near what is now Jacksonville, and received a very different welcome. The Timucuan people actually helped the French build a fort, according to the National Park Service, which now maintains the site.
Phillip commissioned an experienced naval officer, Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, to settle the area and root out the French.
According to Gannon, when Menéndez left Spain in June 1565, he had 19 ships and 1,500 men. Severe storms dogged the voyage, and by the time they arrived in Florida in late August, more than two-thirds of the force had disappeared.
After hugging the coastline for a time and detouring briefly to fire on the French, Menéndez finally came ashore Sept. 8, 1565, and established St. Augustine, which still exists.
A Catholic Mass was held immediately, and songs of praise were sung. Another priest recounted that Menéndez “had the Indians fed and then dined himself.”
Since 1965, Gannon, who died this year, had claimed this was the first community act of religion and thanksgiving in the first permanent European settlement in the land. Massachusetts residents have called him “the Grinch who stole Thanksgiving.”
But there may, in fact, be more grinches. As public radio station KUT in Austin has reported, in Texas there is not one but two “first Thanksgiving” claims. One story has a Spanish explorer sharing a meal with the Mansos people in what is now El Paso in 1598. And a sign outside Canyon, Texas, claims that the Spanish explorer Coronado had a feast of Thanksgiving there in 1541.
Perhaps you’re thinking: None of these count. The first English observance of Thanksgiving is what matters, since our government was formed by descendants of the English colonists, not the Spanish ones.
Gannon might have agreed with you. In 2007, he told USA Today: “The English wrote the history and established the traditions. That’s life. Get over it.”
Bad news: Even in that, Plymouth probably still was not first. An English settlement in Maine known as the Popham Colony held a “harvest feast and prayer meeting” with Abenaki people in 1607, according to the Library of Congress.
And then there’s Jamestown — that ignominious Chesapeake colony some would rather forget. During the harsh winter of 1609, the settlers dwindled from 490 to just 60 people, and may have resorted to eating the dead. The next spring, in 1610, a ship filled with rations was met with a “thanksgiving prayer service” and celebration, the Library of Congress says.