Early History.

 

The Thanksgiving that we know about has a long history. The first Thanksgiving in North America that was recorded was done by Sir Martin Frobisher and his crew in Nunavut in 1578. The Spanish and the French did it in the 16th century. Historian Michael Gannon claimed that St. Petersburg, Florida, was founded with a shared thanksgiving meal on September 8, 1565. By the 1600s, the Protestant Reformation was very strong in Europe. The Roman Catholic Church not only made an error in promoting indulgences, but they refused to eliminate many superstitions like Mary being an Ever-Virgin, the Pope being the Vicar of Christ, purgatory, transubstantiation, and the Rosary. Therefore, the Protestant Reformation spread with its strengthens and weaknesses. The Protestants were right to promote separation of church and state, more grassroots church structures, and translating the Bible into diverse languages so people can have access to the Bible. Many Protestants were in errors to maintain many of the false doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church, some promoted the union of church and state, and some persecuted Baptists and Anabaptists centuries ago. In the UK, there were Pilgrims and Puritans. The Pilgrims were Separatists who wanted to end their relationships with the Church of England as being beyond repair. They came into the Netherlands after fleeing England in fear of persecution. They lived in the area for a time and decided to go into America. They traveled on the Mayflower to go into Plymouth County, Massachusetts in 1620. They were smaller in number, working class, less educated, and focused on self-governance via the Mayflower Compact. The Puritans wanted to stay in the Church of England to reform it from Catholic influences. They arrived in America later by 1630 during the Great Migration (when thousands of settlers left the United Kingdom). They founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony around Boston and Salem. The Puritans were larger in number, more educated, and aimed to build a strict model "city on a hill with no religious dissent. 

The Pilgrims came to America in 1620 to seek religious freedom. They had a difficult voyage and landed in Plymouth, Massachusetts, in December 1620. They created many communities in the area with religious views. They came after a devasting epidemic between 1614 and 1620 when many Patuxet Native Americans died form that epidemic. The harsh winter of 1620-1621 killed half of the Plymouth colonists. 

Many of them nearly starved to death until the Native American people taught them how to fish, how to farm, and how to survive in the environment of New England America. In 1621, the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag Native Americans came together to share a harvest feast. It lasted for about three days with food, games, and peace. This was in the Fall. 

 two Native intermediaries, Samoset and Tisquantum (more commonly known by the diminutive variant Squanto, and the last living member of the Patuxet) came in at the request of Massasoit, leader of the Wampanoag, to negotiate a peace treaty and establish trade relations with the colonists, as both men had some knowledge of English from previous interactions with Europeans, through both trade (Samoset) and a period of enslavement (Squanto).

Massasoit had hoped to establish a mutual protection alliance between the Wampanoag, themselves greatly weakened by the same plague that extirpated the Patuxet, and the better-armed English in their long-running rivalry with the Narragansett, who had largely been spared from the epidemic; the Wampanoag reasoned that, given that the Pilgrims had brought women and children, they had not arrived to wage war against them.

Squanto taught the Pilgrims how to catch eel and grow corn and served as an interpreter for them until he too succumbed to disease a year later. The Wampanoag leader Massasoit also gave food to the colonists when supplies brought from England proved insufficient.

Having brought in a good harvest, the Pilgrims celebrated at Plymouth for three days in the autumn of 1621. The exact time is unknown, but James Baker, a former Plimoth Plantation vice president of research, stated in 1996, "The event occurred between Sept. 21 and Nov. 11, 1621, with the most likely time being around Michaelmas (Sept. 29), the traditional time." Seventeenth-century accounts do not identify this as a day of thanksgiving but rather as a harvest celebration.

The Pilgrim feast was cooked by the four adult Pilgrim women who survived their first winter in the New World (Eleanor Billington, Elizabeth Hopkins, Mary Brewster, and Susanna White), along with young daughters and male and female servants.

According to accounts by Wampanoag descendants, the harvest feast was originally set up for the Pilgrims alone (contrary to the common misconception that the Wampanoag were invited for their help in teaching the pilgrims their agricultural techniques). Part of the harvest celebration involved a demonstration of arms by the colonists, and the Wampanoag, having entered into a mutual protection agreement with the colonists and likely mistaking the celebratory gunfire for an attack by a common enemy, arrived fully armed. The Wampanoag were welcomed to join the celebration, as their farming and hunting techniques had produced much of the bounty for the Pilgrims, and contributed their own foods to the meal.

Most modern imaginings of the celebration promote the idea that every party involved ate solely turkey However, "while the celebrants might well have feasted on wild turkey, the local diet also included fish, eels, shellfish, and a Wampanoag dish called nasaump, which the Pilgrims had adopted: boiled cornmeal mixed with vegetables and meats. There were no potatoes (an indigenous South American food not yet introduced into the global food system) and no pies (because there was no butter, wheat flour, or sugar)." 

On March 22, 1621, the Pilgrims of Plymouth Colony signed a peace treaty with Massasoit of the Wampanoags. Bradford surrendered the patent of Plymouth Colony to the freemen in 1640, minus a small reserve of three tracts of land. He served as governor for 11 consecutive years, and was elected to various other terms before his death in 1657.

By the 1630s to the 1700s, relations between settlers and Native AMericans became more complicated. There were land disputes, disesase and broken agreements that led to ocnflict. Myles Standish was one man who increased the tensions by using aggressive actions against Native Americans in a brutal fashion. Standish wanted to kill Corbitant, because he wanted to threaten the leadership of Massaoit. Standish's men wounded a man and a woman who weren't Massaiot in a raid in 1621. Standish wasn't finished. He wanted to murder Native Americans percieved to be against his Native allies. 

In April 1622, the vanguard of a new colony arrived in Plymouth. They had been sent by merchant Thomas Weston to establish a new settlement somewhere near Plymouth. The men chose a site on the shore of the Fore River in Weymouth, Massachusetts, about 25 miles (40 km) north of Plymouth, and they called their colony Wessagusset. The settlers of the poorly managed colony infuriated the Massachusett tribe through theft and recklessness. By March 1623, Massasoit had learned that a group of influential Massachusett warriors intended to destroy both the Wessagusset and Plymouth colonies. He warned Plymouth to strike first. One of the colonists of Wessagusset named Phineas Pratt verified that his settlement was in danger. He managed to escape to Plymouth and reported that the colonists in Wessagusset had been repeatedly threatened by the Massachusetts, that the settlement was in a state of constant watchfulness, and that men were dying at their posts from starvation.

Bradford called a public meeting at which the Pilgrims decided to send Standish and a small group of eight, including Hobbamock, to Wessagusset to kill the leaders of the plot.[46] The mission had a personal aspect for Standish. One of the warriors threatening Wessagusset was Wituwamat, a Neponset who had earlier insulted and threatened Standish.[47] Standish arrived at Wessagusset and found that many of the colonists had gone to live with the Massachusetts, and he ordered them to be called back to Wessagusset. Pecksuot was a Massachusett warrior and leader of the group threatening Wessagusset; he came to the settlement with Wituwamat and other warriors the day after Standish's arrival. Standish claimed simply to be in Wessagusset on a trading mission, but Pecksuot said to Hobbamock, "Let him begin when he dare; he shall not take us unawares."[48] Later in the day, Pecksuot approached Standish, looking down on him, and said, "You are a great captain, yet you are but a little man. Though I be no sachem, yet I am of great strength and courage."[49]

The next day, Standish arranged to meet with Pecksuot over a meal in one of Wessagusset's one-room houses. Pecksuot brought Wituwamat, Wituwamat's adolescent brother, and several women. Standish had three men of Plymouth and Hobbamock with him in the house. On an arranged signal, they shut the door of the house and Standish attacked Pecksuot, stabbing him repeatedly with the man's own knife.[49] Wituwamat and the third warrior were also killed. Standish ordered two more Massachusett warriors to be put to death, then went outside the walls of Wessagusset in search of Obtakiest, a sachem of the Massachusett tribe. They soon encountered Obtakiest with a group of warriors, and a skirmish ensued during which Obtakiest escaped.

Having accomplished his mission, Standish returned to Plymouth with Wituwamat's head.The leaders of the plot to destroy the settlements had been killed and the threat removed, but the action had unexpected consequences. The settlement of Wessagusset, which Standish had been trying to protect, was all but abandoned after the incident. Most of the settlers departed for an English fishing post on Monhegan Island. The attack also caused widespread panic among Indian tribes throughout the region. Villages were abandoned and the Pilgrims had difficulty reviving trade for some time.

One major conflict was the King Philip's War (1675-1676). It destroyed many Native American communities. 

By Timothy