Edited for content. Happy Thanksgiving!


>Southwestern Archaeology, Inc. (SWA)
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>Archaeology, Anthropology, and History of the Greater Southwest!
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>Thursday November 28, 2002
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>THANKSGIVING HOLIDAY
>
>http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/features/20021127-9999_1c27foods.html
>The wild turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) is the only species of poultry to
>originate in the Western Hemisphere, diverging from other pheasant-like
>species roughly 11 million years ago. The turkey of 17th-century America
>was a bird of a different feather. It boasted dark but brilliant plumage,
>strong feet and legs for walking and scratching and short wings adapted
>to brief, rapid flight. Wild turkeys were -- and are -- smart birds: tough,
>resourceful and difficult to hunt.
>
>http://www.plimoth.org/Library/pilgrim.htm
>http://www.plimoth.org/Library/Wampanoag/wamp.htm
>http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/southflorida/sfl-1226thanksgiving,0,3855540.story?coll=sfla-home-headlines
>Michael Gannon is the "the Grinch who stole Thanksgiving" after declaring
>it was the Spanish and not the Pilgrims who first celebrated Thanksgiving
>in the New World. In Texas, some claim that Spanish explorer Don Juan de
>Onate celebrated the first Thanksgiving in America in 1598.
>
>http://www.borderlandnews.com/stories/borderland/20020427-192941.shtml
>A re-enactment of "La Toma," also known as the First Thanksgiving, takes
>place in El Paso in April.
>
>http://www.sltrib.com/11242002/commenta/4558.htm
>Thanksgiving dinner: Never has the history of a meal been so obscured by
>myth. The Pilgrims of the Plymouth Colony did share a meal with the Wampanoag
>Indians in the autumn of 1621, but the details are uncertain. The only
>documentary evidence of the event comes from the journal of Plymouth Colony's
>governor, Edward Winslow, who noted simply that the colonists met with
>Chief Massasoit and 90 of his men for a feast that lasted four days.
>
>http://www.indianz.com/News/show.asp?ID=2002/11/27/pilgrims
>In 1621, the first Thanksgiving was reportedly held. But there are only
>two documented accounts, written by white settlers, of the three-day feast
>among members of the Wampanoag Tribe and the Pilgrims. So the left is rest
>up to the imagination. Wampanoag chief Massasoit attended but there's no
>indication why, said a Wampanoag researcher. There was probably some sort
>of fowl served but not turkey, said a historian. Massasoit is believed
>to have brought five deer, though. Today's vision of Thanksgiving, with
>its cranberries, potatoes and pumpkin pies, is largely the vision of Sarah
>Josepha Hale, a 19th century' predecessor to Martha Stewart who popularized
>those foods in her magazine.
>http://www.uvm.edu/~hag/godey/hale.html
>
>http://nm.essortment.com/thanksgivinghis_rxgy.htm
>When most Americans sit down to Thanksgiving dinner, few think of Sarah
>Josepha Hale. President Lincoln was the first president to declare
>Thanksgiving
>a national holiday at the behest of Sarah Josepha Hale, who had spent 40
>years writing to congressmen, lobbying five presidents, and writing countless
>editorials in her campaign to create an official day of thanks.
>
>http://www.womenwriters.net/domesticgoddess/hale1.html
>Sarah Hale is credited with having a great influence over the reading,
>learning, and even political consciousness of women across America.
>
>From: Jay W. Sharp <[log in to unmask]>
>Brian, I did this little piece for the History New Service several years
>ago, and it seems to turn up in various media just about every year now.
>  I thought that you might enjoy it, given the season. Jay W. Sharp
>
>The First "First Thanksgiving" By Jay W. Sharp
>
>History News Service
>
>Remember the month of November in kindergarten or first grade? You learned
>that, during the fall of 1621, noble Pilgrims invited friendly and helpful
>Indians to a feast to celebrate a rich autumn harvest at a new colony called
>Plymouth, in what is now Massachusetts. They ate stuffed turkeys, baked
>ham, cranberry sauce and baked yams, then finished the whole thing off
>with a big slice of pumpkin pie.
>
>That was our very first Thanksgiving. Right?
>
>Wrong.
>
>Virginia colonists had held a Thanksgiving two years earlier in celebration
>of the safe arrival of new colonists.
>
>So that must have been the first Thanksgiving, right? Wrong again.
>
>Some El Paso, Texas, citizens claim that the first Thanksgiving occurred
>on the Rio Grande on April 30, 1598, four centuries ago, a few miles
>downstream
>from their city's modern location. It was celebrated by Don Juan de Onate's
>expedition upon reaching the river en route to colonize northern New Mexico
>for Spain.
>
>The El Paso claim notwithstanding, Onate's Thanksgiving was still not the
>first in America.
>
>Florida residents point out that an earlier Spanish Thanksgiving occurred
>near what is now St. Augustine, in September, 1565. The event was celebrated
>by Don Pedro Menendez's colonists, who had just landed. Menendez invited
>the local Indians to the feast. The Spaniards and Indians shared salt pork
>and sea biscuits.
>
>Florida's school children are taught that the true first Thanksgiving took
>place near Jacksonville in 1564, more than half a century before the
>Pilgrim-Indian
>feast and 34 years before Onate's celebration. The Jacksonville Thanksgiving,
>it is thought, was celebrated by Huguenots -- French Protestants -- who
>gave thanks for their new settlement.
>
>Apparently, this was, indeed, the first European Thanksgiving in the United
>States.
>
>But it was still not our very first Thanksgiving. Credit for that event
>belongs to the Native Americans.
>
>Among others, the Indians who greeted the Pilgrims when they stepped onto
>Plymouth Rock had long conducted Thanksgiving festivals six times a year.
>The date for the first Thanksgiving in America is lost somewhere in
>pre-history.
>
>
>In fact, from a worldwide perspective, the concept of giving thanks appears
>to be universal and ancient, an _expression of gratitude to the gods who
>delivered game and harvest to early hunters and foragers. We see evidence
>embedded in the folk stories and ceremonies of people who still depend
>on wild animals and plants for their living. We see it in the figures carved
>from stone and images painted or scribed on cave walls during antiquity.
>
>
>I know of a thanks-giving scene, thousands of years old, painted on the
>wall of a cave in a mountain in the desert of West Texas. It shows a man
>dancing to celebrate his kill of a mountain sheep, which has a spear driven
>through its body. The man can now feed his family.
>
> From contemporaneous records, we know that the Pilgrims and Indians had
>turkey and other game birds as well as sea foods, venison, Indian corn,
>beans, berries and nuts on their menu in that fall of 1621. They drank
>mostly beer, wine and whiskies -- all safer than the local water. Contrary
>to popular notion, they did not have cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie or even,
>unimaginably, football.
>
>The idea of Thanksgiving persisted well beyond the Pilgrims, probably a
>reflection of humanity's enduring need to express gratitude for good fortune.
>
>
>On June 20, 1676, colonists on the eastern seaboard issued the "First
>Thanksgiving
>Proclamation," setting "apart the 29th day of this instant June, as a day
>of Solemn Thanksgiving..."
>
>On October 3, 1789, George Washington issued the first presidential
>Thanksgiving
>Proclamation, setting the "26th day of November next" as a day for giving
>thanks to God for "favorable interpositions of His providence in the course
>and conclusion of the late (revolutionary) war."
>
>Finally, on October 3, 1863, Thanksgiving became an annual American holiday
>when Abraham Lincoln invited "my fellow citizens in every part of the United
>States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign
>lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November as a day
>of Thanksgiving."
>
>For 136 years, Thanksgiving has been a day commemorated across America.
>It gives us a moment to recall the sweet summer just past; to savor the
>last, fading colors of autumn; to inhale the heady aromas of our new
>harvests;
>to relish the coming together, once again, of family and good friends;
>to cherish the blessings of life.
>
>We can also be thankful that we patterned our Thanksgiving after the feast
>enjoyed by the Plymouth Pilgrims and Indians rather than the one experienced
>by the St. Augustine Spaniards and Indians. Turkey tastes a lot better
>than salt pork and sea biscuits.
>
>Jay W. Sharp, 2465 El Dorado Court, Las Cruces, NM 88011. Phone: (505)
>521-2619; fax: (505) 521-0875; e-mail: [log in to unmask]
>
>
>http://cornelldailysun.com/articles/7057/
>Anthropologists know there is really only one difference that matters --
>and that is the great pie divide. When it comes to Turkey Day trimmings
>there exists a stark contrast between many Black and White Americans. For
>centuries, Blacks and Whites in the United States have indulged in different
>cuisine selections. The typical White versus Black household's Thanksgiving
>Day table is a perfect example of the great cuisine divide.
>
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