What is the true story of the first Thanksgiving? Was it really a massacre?

Answer 1

Unfortunately; Thanksgiving has evolved into a stuff your face and watch football day off from work holiday ( don't get me wrong, I do just that so I don't want to seem hypocritical ). It also triggers the launch of the Christmas shopping season. The day after Thanksgiving is when most retailers say they finally turn a profit. Hence the name Black Friday ( out of the red or negative and into the profit or positive ). This holiday, like others in America has lost it's intended function with the exception that many families still get together on the thanksgiving weekend. We would not need to ask what it is about if we educated kids about our history but that is a lost cause anyways. I went home last year for thanksgiving and many of my nieces and nephews were asking what Thanksgiving was about. It scared me as we were taught about Squanto back in grade school when I was a kid. What are they teaching kids in public schools? I was told that here in Las Vegas, the subject matter is not in the curriculum because there are religious implications surrounding Thanksgiving. I think we need to accept the fact that almost all of the early settlers were religious folks and it plays a part in almost all of our history, you can not avoid it. We should not dismiss topics in American History because the persons involved happened to pray to god. I am not a religious person myself but I appreciate our history and know that many of our founding fathers were very religious, its the primary reason they came here to begin with. We have evolved away from religion but lest we forget our heritage because folks don't want their tax dollars being used to have an educator mutter the word "god". Talk about shooting ourselves in the foot. If the corporations have their way, this will become a holiday for them, "go shopping - early Friday morning door busters ". My neighbor is planning her battle plan for the day after already. I refuse to fight the crowds and appreciate on-line shopping more and more every day.

This sadly is the real truth about the Thanksgiving holiday in the States. Happy Turkey Day Everyone.

Answer 2

where did you get that idea.

what we celebrate is the pilgrims and the east coast natives breaking bread in peace, celebrating their team work and the successful harvest.

However it is generally believed that the Spanish explorers shared a similar feast w/ the southwest natives some years before.

the strife between the Europeans and the natives did not 'explode' until the mid 1700's when we started pushing them westward to make room for more and more settlers

and the 'massacres' were more of a 1800's thing when the displaced eastern tribes, started running into western tribes, and the Settlers kept pushing west, and the natives started pushing back.

now there were native deaths due to settler contact early on due, not to armed conflict or a desire to kill them, but simply because the natives had never been exposed diseases and germs to which the Europeans had immunities too.

side not, the term Indian which I have avoided using, does not derive from Columbus' belief that he was in India (then called Hindustan I believe, so even if Colombus was that stupid, he'd have called them something else), it is a corruption of the phrase "In Dios" or "in god'

Answer 3

No, I don't think it was a massacre. The thing that we learned in school was that the Indians and Pilgrims got together and gave thanks after the Indians showed the Pilgrims how to grow corn and to catch fish.

Answer 4

This is a great page for explaining alot about Thanksgiving in the USA...

http://www.inglewoodcarecentre.com/history/thanksgiving.htm

Answer 5

Of course not, do a little homework on this and you'll see it was a good meeting between the Indians and the Pilgrims.
Always! Do your own research before you believe anything you hear.

Answer 6

Sigh, no, it wasn't really a massacre. Do you people have to ruin everything?

Answer 7

the true story is i once had turkey and didnt like it

Answer 8

Thanksgiving
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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For other uses, see Thanksgiving (disambiguation).

"The First Thanksgiving", painted by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris (1863-1930).Thanksgiving Day
Observed by Canada, United States
Type National
Date Second Monday in October (Canada)
Fourth Thursday in November (US)

2007 date October 8, 2007 (Canada)
November 22, 2007 (US)

2008 date October 13, 2008 (Canada)
November 27, 2008 (US)

Thanksgiving, or Thanksgiving Day, is a traditional North American holiday to give thanks at the conclusion of the harvest season. Thanksgiving is celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November in the United States and on the second Monday of October in Canada.

Contents [hide]
1 United States
1.1 Traditional celebration
1.1.1 The Pilgrims
1.1.2 The National Thanksgiving Proclamations
2 Canada
2.1 Traditional celebration
2.2 History of Thanksgiving in Canada
3 See also
4 References
5 External links



[edit] United States
Main article: Thanksgiving (United States)

[edit] Traditional celebration
In the United States, Thanksgiving is a four day weekend which usually marks a pause in school and college calendars. Thanksgiving meals are traditionally family events where certain kinds of food are served. First and foremost, turkey is the featured item in most Thanksgiving feasts (so much so that Thanksgiving is sometimes called "Turkey Day"). Stuffing, mashed potatoes with gravy, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, corn, turnips, yams and pumpkin pie are commonly associated with Thanksgiving dinner.


[edit] The Pilgrims
The early settlers of Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts were particularly grateful to Squanto, the Native American who taught them how to catch eel, grow corn and who served as their native interpreter (as Squanto had converted to Christianity and learned English as a slave in Europe). Without Squanto's assistance, the settlers might not have survived in the New World.

The Plymouth settlers (who came to be called "Pilgrims") set apart a holiday immediately after their first harvest in 1621. They held an autumn celebration of food, feasting, and praising God. The Governor of Plymouth invited Grand Sachem Massasoit and the Wampanoag people to join them in the feast. Evidence to support that claim came from diaries of citizens of Plymouth. The settlers fed and entertained the Indians for three days, at which point some of these natives went into the forest, killed 5 deer, and gave it to the Governor as a gift.


[edit] The National Thanksgiving Proclamations
The first official Thanksgiving Proclamation made in America was issued by the Continental Congress in 1777. Six national Proclamations of Thanksgiving were issued in the first thirty years after the founding of the United States of America as an independent federation of States. President George Washington issued two, President John Adams issued two, President Thomas Jefferson made none and President James Madison issued two. In 1789 Washington designated a national thanksgiving holiday for the newly ratified Constitution, specifically so that that the people may thank God for "affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness" and for having "been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national One now lately instituted, for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed..."
After 1815 there were no more Thanksgiving Proclamations until the Presidency of Lincoln, who made two during the Civil War. He declared Thanksgiving a Federal holiday as a "prayerful day of Thanksgiving" on the last Thursday in November. Since then every U.S. President has always made an official Thanksgiving Proclamation on behalf of the nation. President Franklin D. Roosevelt set the date for Thanksgiving to the fourth Thursday of November in 1939 (approved by Congress in 1941).


[edit] Canada
Main article: Thanksgiving (Canada)

[edit] Traditional celebration
In Canada, Thanksgiving is a three day weekend (although some provinces observe a four day weekend, Friday–Monday). Traditional Thanksgiving meals prominently feature turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce and mashed potatoes, though Canada's multicultural heritage has seen some families infuse this traditional meal with elements of their traditional ethnic foods. Many Canadians also consume pumpkin pie after their meal.

As a liturgical festival, the Canadian Thanksgiving corresponds to the European harvest festival, during which churches are adorned with cornucopias, pumpkins, corn, wheat sheaves and other harvest bounty. English and other European harvest hymns are customarily sung on the Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend, along with scriptural lections derived from biblical stories relating to the Jewish harvest festival of Sukkot.


[edit] History of Thanksgiving in Canada
The history of Thanksgiving in Canada goes back to an English explorer, Martin Frobisher, who had been futilely attempting to find a northern passage to the Orient. He did, however, establish a settlement in Canada. In the year 1578, Frobisher held a formal ceremony in what is now the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, to give thanks for surviving the long journey. This event is widely considered to be the first Canadian Thanksgiving, and the first Thanksgiving celebrated by Europeans in North America. More settlers arrived and continued the ceremonial tradition initiated by Frobisher, who was eventually knighted and had an inlet of the Atlantic Ocean in northern Canada named after him — Frobisher Bay. The innermost point of the inlet of Frobisher Bay is the location of the Nunavut capital, formerly itself called Frobisher Bay, and now called Iqaluit.

It should be noted that the 1578 ceremony was not the first Thanksgiving as defined by First Nations tradition. Long before the time of Martin Frobisher, it was traditional in many First Nations cultures to offer an official giving of thanks during autumnal gatherings. In Haudenosaunee culture, Thanksgiving is a prayer recited to honor "The Three Sisters" (i.e., beans, corn, and squash) during the fall harvest.

In 1957, the Canadian Parliament declared Thanksgiving to be "a Day of General Thanksgiving to Almighty God for the bountiful harvest with which Canada has been blessed" and officially decided that the holiday take place on the second Monday in October.


[edit] See also
Thanksgiving dinner
Festival
List of Harvest Festivals

[edit] References
This article or section includes a list of references or a list of external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks in-text citations.
You can improve this article by introducing more precise citations.

Thanksgiving: An American Holiday, An American History, by Diana Karter Appelbaum.

[edit] External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to:
ThanksgivingCanadian Heritage: Thanksgiving and Remembrance Day
Thanksgiving: The Jewish Perspective on Chabad.org
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thanksgiving"
Categories: Articles lacking in-text citations | Thanksgiving | Meals | Festivals | Autumn holidays | Agriculture

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