It is a basic opinion that during the 17th century, exactly in the year 1621, the English settlers and the Wampanoag Indians gathered and shared a marvelous autumn harvest feast to celebrate the bounteousness from the plentiful earth. Today this celebration is acknowledged to be one of the first Thanksgiving feast that occured in the early days of the colonies.
While this ancient celebration is supposed to be the first Thanksgiving feast; it is simply one of the many celebrations of the seasonal harvest and human gratefulness for the bounties of Mother nature. Indeed, numerous Native American tribes such as Comanche, Cheyenne, Arapaho, etc. celebrated the end of the seasonal harvest long before the European peoples arrived. These festivities were composed of ceremonial dances, races, games and other celebrations of gratefulness.
Many centuries before the discovery of the American continent and the colonization by the Europeans, Indians, like Apache, Navajo, Huron, Iroquois, Sioux and many others, organized festivals at the end of the seasonal harvest. These celebrations were composed of ceremonial dances, races, games, and many other shows of gratitude.
Perhaps you would like to know the kind of foods laid out on the table at the harvest celebration? While a majority of historians can not be hundred percent sure regarding what was served, it's a pretty safe bet to say the pilgrims weren't baking pumpkin pie or making castles with the mashed potatoes.
However, we can get an idea of the foods available to the settlers at that time; which are venison as well as different types wild fowl like duck, goose or wild turkey. These have been mentioned in several different manuscrips of this period of time. The very best, and most circumstancial, report of the harvest feast of 1621 was written by a man named Edward Winslow. It is from his written account titled "A Journal of the Pilgrims at Plymouth" that historians have gathered much of the information about this first celebration that would be called Thanksgiving:
"...Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a special manner rejoice together after we had gathered the fruit of our labors. They four in one day killed as much fowl as, with a little help beside, served the company almost a week. At which time, among other recreations, we exercised our arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and among the rest their greatest king Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five deer, which they brought to the plantation and bestowed upon our governor, and upon the captain, and others. And although it be not always so plentiful as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want that we often wish you partakers of our plenty..." - Edward Winslow, 1595-1655.If the usual Thanksgiving feast of the 2000's is mainly focused around the turkey, this was not the case during the first celebrations. Vegetables did not enter largely in the menus of the 17th century. This is the reason why settlers ate several different meats. Indeed, during this time period, the types of vegetables were not as numerous than today.
Modernism in term of food conservation was not as evolved as it is in our society and the settlers had vegetables on a seasonal basis. The impossibility to refrigerate their food led the Wampanoag and the settlers to dry aliments such as corn, ham, fish, venison and herbs.
D. Halet is an European history, Holidays and Tarot Cards passionate; she writes articles and creates websites dedicated to these subjects.For more info Thanksgiving, visit
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