A Festival About Origins
And the Origins of the Festival
When and where was the first Thanksgiving? Massachusetts? Virginia? What exactly does the question mean--what would qualify as a 'first Thanksgiving'? These questions have been debated for decades, even centuries. For Thanksgiving's origins are blurry. And the holiday is itself, in many ways, a mythic rather than factual celebration of the origins of what became the United States.
The long-dominant belief gives primacy to the Pilgrims at Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1621. Other contenders include Virginia (particularly the Thanksgiving observance at Berkeley Plantation in 1619); Maine's Popham colony in 1607; St. Augustine, Florida, in 1565; and Texas in 1541. From some perspectives, centuries (or millennia) of Native American harvest feasts long preceding European arrivals make the above debate irrelevant.
Materials (textual, visual, and other) to build an understanding of these issues of origins will be provided in this section of the site.
This Web site is a work in progress. Please revisit often as we continue to build it with new materials. We also welcome your suggestions or contributions of material; to send us an email, click here; or phone 434 924-3296.
The Pilgrims' "First Thanksgiving" in verse
The following poem is one of the historic educational materials presented by the State Historical Society of Iowa's journal, The Palimpsest, in its special Thanksgiving issue of Dec. 1968. As such, it forms part of the "curriculum" of celebration through which, for nearly two centuries now, schoolchildren have been taught the holiday's origins and ways of observance. The poem below, reprinted from The Youth's Companion, appears to date from the late 19th century, and expresses the Thanksgiving origin story that is still dominant in US culture.
Children do you know the story |
And the patient Pilgrim mothers, |
Virginius Dabney, "That Mythical 'First Thanksgiving'"
Under the umbrella title, "Let's Have a Little Less Nonsense About Those Pilgrims," the Saturday Evening Post of Nov. 29, 1958 published two articles advancing alternative hypotheses about the origins of Thankgiving. Historian Dabney's was one of them, and was subtitled "A Virginian presents his evidence that Southerners started Thanksgiving Day at least fourteen years before the idea occurred to New Englanders." Another, by John Gould of Maine, mentions the Popham colony there (also noted by Camille Benson Bird above; see also Rufus King Sewall below).
"The first Thanksgiving held in America" has long been credited to the Pilgrim Fathers. Major histories and encyclopedias unite in declaring that our annual custom of giving thanks began at Plymouth in 1621, when the pious New England settlers decided to express their gratitude to God for a 'fruitful and liberal harvest.' This is interesting, but unfortunately it isn't true.
The first Thanksgiving in this country did not occur in New England. It occurred in Virginia, long before the Mayflower sailed.
Furthermore, contrary to prevailing opinion, the observance held by the Pilgrims in the year following their arrival was largely non-religious. While its purpose was to give thanks, and it included a few prayers, the dour, stern Pilgrim Fathers, astonishingly enough, jumped or fell from the austerity wagon on which they had been traveling. For three autumn days--some say for an entire week--they feasted . . .
On top of everything else, the Pilgrim Thanksgiving of 1621 did not inaugurate a series of annual harvest festivals or services at Plymouth. . . .
It seems only too clear that in this matter of Thanksgiving our new England friends, God bless 'em, have run away with the ball. We owe the early New Englanders a great deal, but the Pilgrims' 'first Thanksgiving in America' is a myth.
At least two thanksgiving services were held in Virginia more than a decade before 1621--not counting one described by Captain Arthur Barlowe (who had been sent out to Virginia by Sir Walter Raleigh) as having been held there by his expedition in 1584. Unlike the first Pilgrim observance, all these services were wholly religious in character. One was in 1607, when the Jamestown colonists, approaching the mainland for the first time, entered Chesapeake Bay in late April, on board their three little ships, the Susan Constant, the Godspeed and the Discovery. They disembarked on the sand-covered point of land which they named Cape Henry, in honor of the then Prince of Wales . . . They erected a cross and, in the words of Dr. G. MacLaren Brydon, in his authoritative work, Virginia's Mother Church, they knelt "to thank God for their safe arrival."
Another well-documented service of thanksgiving was held at Jamestown in those early years. This was in June, 1610, and it was conducted by the emaciated survivors of the 'starving time.' . . .
But the most significant of the early thanksgiving services in Virginia was held in 1619 by the thirty-nine settlers who had just landed at Berkeley Hundred, up the James River from Jamestown. This service was the first in America to be formally designated as "Thanksgiving Day," with specific directions that it repeated annually thereafter.
The service at Berkeley Hundred took place on the riverbank, December 4 (December 14, new style), 1619, in accordance with the first of ten directives contained in the charter's "Instructions" given Capt. John Woodleaf, leader of the expedition . . .
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Michael Gannon, "The REAL First Thanksgiving Meal"
Among the many contenders for 'first Thanksgiving,' the earliest in the Americas date back to the 16th century and involve Native Americans and Spaniards, rather than Englishfolk. The author of the piece excerpted below is a historian and emeritus professor of the University of Florida. The full essay appeared in the Fall 2006 issue of Forum, the magazine of the Florida Humanities Council.
The popular story promoted by Anglo-American historians holds that the first thanksgiving ceremony in what is now the United States took place as a harvest festival in 1621 at the English "Pilgrim Fathers" settlement of Plymouth in Massachusetts. . . .
But . . . [f]ifty-six years earlier, Europeans and Natives shared a thanksgiving service and communal meal in St. Augustine, Florida. These stand as the first documented thanksgiving events in a permanent settlement anywhere in North America north of Mexico.
On September 8, 1565, Spanish Admiral Pedro Menéndez de Avilés landed in St. Augustine amidst aborigines of the Seloy tribe. Accompanying him were 500 soldiers, 200 sailors, and 100 civilian farmers and craftsmen, some with wives and children.
Following the admiral's claim of La Florida on behalf of his monarch Philip II, the fleet chaplain, Father Francisco López de Mendoza Grajales, celebrated a Mass of thanksgiving for the expedition's safe arrival. Menéndez's brother-in-law Gonzalo Solís de Merás recorded that, following the Mass, "the Admiral had the Indians fed and dined himself."
I have long conjectured in print that the meal laid out on that September 8 was cocido, a stew made from salted pork and garbanzo beans, laced with garlic seasoning, and accompanied by hard sea biscuits and red wine. This is based on information supplied by historian Eugene Lyon on what constituted the food stores of Spanish ships at the time.
. . . Perhaps the Seloy people contributed food of their own, either fresh or smoked. If so, they may have limited their palates to dishes with which they were familiar. We know from archaeological remains that their diet included deer, gopher tortoise, shark, drum, mullet, and sea catfish. In the plant foods column we can list maize, beans, and squash, along with nuts, fruits, and miscellaneous greens. . . .
It is very difficult to get the powdered-wig states to the north of Florida to recognize St. Augustine's priority among American cities. . . .
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Rufus King Sewall on "the first Christian formal Thanksgiving"
In this excerpted passage from his Ancient voyages to the western continent: Three phases of history on the coast of Maine, historian Sewall gives a cautious primacy to the thanksgiving service of August 9, 1607 as "the first Christian formal thanksgiving, at least in New England . . . "
Monday, the 1st of June, A.D. 1607, a colony of one hundred and twenty persons, having a chaplain and a surgeon, under command of Captain George Popham, embarked in two ships, the Gift of God and her tender of the west of England, and the Mary and John of London. Friday, the 7th of August, 1607, both ships rode at anchor side by side in a cove of twelve fathoms of water, under an island. This island was the now well-known Monhegan . . .
The Popham Colonial Expedition, with its civil organization, assigned to be the nucleus of a great State, was and epitome of the Christian civilization of the old world, of the best type, and now harboring under Monhegan, prepared to land on the soil of Maine, and plant New England.
The Record is :
'Sunday, the 9th of August, in the morning, the most part of our whole company of both our ships landed on this island, . . . where the cross standeth, and there we heard a sermon delivered by our preacher, giving God thanks for our happy meeting and safe arrival in the country.' It was to this scene Smythe alluded, who, on the day of mourning, at Bowdoin's memorial services, for her venerable and historic Packard, so eloquently said : 'And as the dawn of authentic history rises, what dim yet stirring visions break upon us from Monhegan and Sagadahoc!'It was the advent of the Christian civilization of Europe, to the shores of Maine, to plant New England.
. . . Shall we paint the scene? The rays of the morning sun, of this memorable August 9, 1607, had started to spread beams of light on the tall grown thickets of oak, beach, and fir, when, led by the aged and godly chief in command, Captain Geo. Popham, the colonists embarked, to land a worshipping congregation on shore, with no doubt all the usual incidents of a public Sunday service of the English Church, from shipboard on shore, and with all the solemn and reverential formularies, of the worship of that Church. The scene must have been grand and imposing.
It was the first Christian formal thanksgiving, at least in New England, and celebrated in Maine, the 'Eastern Parts' of early New England history. . . .
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