NATIONAL DAY OF MOURNING
Indigenous groups pushing back against Thanksgiving myths
Save for Wednesday Addams’ revisionist pageant in “Addams Family Values,” not many films tell the story of how Thanksgiving became a holiday. Fewer, still, do so with any degree of accuracy.
For the Indigenous communities who make up some of Connecticut’s first people, Thanksgiving and the emerging National Day of Mourning can be a complicated issue.
“Extraction happened on this land from those first moments of contact. Displacement happened. Wars happened. And they continue to happen,” Jean-Luc Pierite, president of the North American Indian Center of Boston board of directors, said. “It (Day of Mourning) is a central part of our year. It’s part of the spiritual tradition of the local community.”
National Day of Mourning was started by the United American Indians of New England in the 1970s to tell the true story behind Indigenous struggles and address issues still facing those communities.
Pierite said the distortion of history regarding Indigenous communities and the development of America furthered the mistreatment of native populations in the centuries to follow. Shifting the focus from Thanksgiving to National Day of Mourning is not about guilt or solemnity but hope for a better future and acknowledgment of the true, albeit, brutal history of early America, he said.
So why the complication?
Darlene Kascak said a lot of that complication is because the Thanksgiving story we are taught isn’t true.
“We’re teaching them this mystical fantasy isn’t true.” Kascak said. “Thanksgiving really has nothing to do with Native Americans and it has everything to do with the lie of the First People welcoming settlers to bolster a false authority over what it means to be a real American.”
Kascak is the education director at the Institute for American Indian Studies in Washington, Conn. and a member of the Schaghticoke Tribal Nation. Kascak said she often speaks at events around Thanksgiving, but the message isn’t what folks always expect. That’s because she’s researched the oral histories and letters from the early days of settlement — as many historians and others have — to find that the holiday known as Thanksgiving has more to do with “Mary Had a Little Lamb” than a friendly meal between Indigenous people and Pilgrims.
Mary had a little lamb… and a very tall tale
Sarah Josepha Hale was the author of nursery rhyme “Mary Had a Little Lamb” and a prominent literary figure during the years leading up to the Civil War. She used her platform during that time to lobby politicians to create a national holiday, a day of thanks to bind a splintering nation. Her efforts weren’t successful until the middle of the Civil War. Hale worked her way to then Secretary of State William Seward and President Abraham Lincoln. The letter she wrote to Lincoln is available in the Library of Congress. Lincoln then issued a Thanksgiving Proclamation in October of 1863. But there was no mention of Indigenous people, Pilgrims, or a peaceful dinner.
The narrative that Pilgrims invited the Wampanoag tribe for a celebration of thanks was evolved from stories Hale pushed in “Godey’s Lady’s Book,” a magazine of which she was a longtime editor. A letter written by a Plymouth colonist in 1621 that was published in the book “Chronicles of Our Pilgrim Fathers,” published in the 1841, contained an inaccurate footnote conflating the Pilgrims “rejoicing” celebration and an autumn harvest festival, dubbing it the “first Thanksgiving.”
By the time Hale was writing and the 1621 letter published, the Indigenous communities in New England were pushed to the fringes, informing a narrative of American/European superiority over the “savage Indians” who settlers felt needed to be converted to Catholicism and European custom.
Tribes in the western plains were the new “savages” in American eyes and the imagery adopted for Thanksgiving became that of plains tribes instead of the Wampanoag and Pequot. And the Sepratists, as they were originally known, became Pilgrims stylized in religiously appropriate clothing.
“It’s an ongoing struggle of identity,” Wayne Reels, director of cultural resources for the Mashantucket Pequot Tribe, said. “We know who we are. We know all the places, the events that happened before the country was formed.”
The name Connecticut even comes from “Quinnehtukqut,” a word in the Mohegan and Pequot languages that means land along or beside the long tidal river.
And the Pequots of Connecticut have a closer tie to the originally documented Thanksgiving than the Wampanoags of Massachusetts who first encountered Pilgrims.
The Wampanoag Treaty, the Pequot War and the origins of thanks
The Pilgrims’ 1621 landing in Massachusetts was hardly the first encounter Wampanoags had with Europeans. Spanish, French and English explorers had already been around for nearly a century at that point. The Pilgrims settled their Plymouth Colony in an old Patuxet village that had been wiped out by disease brought on by previous explorers.
The nearby Wampanoags and their leader who became known as Massasoit, watched from afar.
“The native people watched the Pilgrims suffer and they wanted to help,” Kascak said. “They saw they didn’t know how to work the land here. They didn’t know what to eat. What was safe and such.”
Squanto was the last Patuxet. His village — now the Plymouth Colony — was wiped out while he was sold into slavery and sent to Europe, eventually making his way back to Turtle Island, or America as it was known to Europeans. Squanto, now living with the Wampanoags and being versed in English custom, helped broker a mutual aid agreement between the well-armed settlers and Massasoit. The treaty of friendship meant Wampanoags would help the Pilgrims learn how to work the land and hunt and the Pilgrims would in turn help the Wampanoags fend off other settlers and rival tribes like the Narraganset.
One of the few truths in the Thanksgiving myth is the human cost the Pilgrims endured that first winter. Only about 50 of the more than 100 travelers on the Mayflower survived the first winter.
“After surviving this horrendous winter, the Pilgrims wanted to have a celebration,” Kascak said. “The men went out and they started hunting and they got a little carried away. They got a little rowdy.”
The “Chronicles of Our Pilgrim Fathers” letter describes a party known as a “rejoicing,” not a thanksgiving celebration, occurring in Plymouth. The Wampanoag weren’t invited either. They were, however, welcomed. Upon hearing gun fire from the English hunting party, Massasoit gathered 90 warriors and headed to Plymouth. He arrived ready for battle, thinking the Pilgrims were being attacked and in need of help.
When the misconception was cleared, the Wampanoag joined the party, heading out to gather enough food for the now expansive group.
But that wasn’t a Thanksgiving
“The first official Thanksgiving celebration happened in 1637,” Kascak said. “After the calm colonists brutally massacre an entire Pequot village burning women, children and elderly.”
Days of thanks were common in Catholic tradition. English and French settlers held days of thanks since arriving in America. They often occurred after major battles or overcoming hardships. And they weren’t celebrations. They were days of prayer and reflection.
In the years following Massasoit’s treaty with the English, relations deteriorated over cultural disputes on how to use land settlers considered “new” and indigenous communities considered sacred. Wars broke out and, in the summer of 1637, a Pequot village in Mystic was massacred, followed by more English victories and the mention of more thanksgivings.
“There was a day of thanksgiving kept in all the churches for the victory obtained against the Pequots, and for other mercies,” John Winthrop, thengovernor of Massachusetts, wrote in his journal. “Another such day was also declared in October for more victories against the Pequots.”
The Pequots were eventually defeated when Massasoit’s son and new Wampanoag leader, Metacomet, was killed in battle in 1676. He was beheaded and quartered. Body parts were given as trophies and his severed head was mounted at the entrance to the Plymouth Colony. It stayed there more than 20 years.
Kascak said to her, the true story of Thanksgiving — and the transition of a peaceful treaty to war — is more akin to current thanksgiving traditions, like the focus on Black Friday sales.
“We’re raised in a society that celebrates this holiday. I was part of that myself,” she said. “Then I learned the truth and it made me wonder what is wrong with our society where you can go from having a treaty of friendship to massacring people. Where you can have a holiday where you’re spending time with your loved ones and family and then you abandon them and throw them aside to go shopping.”
Kascak and Reels said they still celebrate Thanksgiving while also reflecting on the struggles of indigenous communities. Kascak has begun to embrace National Day of Mourning more, she said.