Thanksgiving ain’t no holiday for whimps

11/27/2008 - staff

One of the most enduring images of Thanksgiving: those little Pilgrim salt and pepper shakers. They are plump, rosy-cheeked, and smiling with the boy Pilgrim clean-faced in his black and white suit with hat, while the girl Pilgrim looks shy in her clean white bonnet and dress. But read Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War by Nathan Philbrick, and you’ll be convinced the salt shaker image of Pilgrim peace and plenty is maybe as believable as myths the first Thanksgiving turkey came wrapped in plastic stamped “Butterball”. What Mayflower makes plain is how unorganized, unprepared and unlucky those first settlers in the New World could be. The men and women who survived to form the Plymouth Colony did so through a mixture of determination, faith, toughness and the knowledge they had no ship to haul them back to Europe. Today, Thanksgiving is seen as a feast of abundance. It might be more useful to celebrate it as a feast to honor those who have something to show despite poor planning and hostile conditions. We are often handed a portrayal of the Pilgrims hopping off the boat to start to work hunting, planting and building homes. But as the author notes, “They were weavers, wool carders, tailors, shoemakers, and printers with almost no relevant experience when it came to carving a settlement out of the American wilderness.” They had been living in industrial Holland and probably knew less about life in the woods than someone growing up in rural Pickens County––scary. They knew even less about organizing expeditions. In 1620 they planned to embark from Europe in spring to have summer weather for sailing and settlement starting. But through an incredible series of mistakes (falling for scams, making impractical decisions, a lack of leadership) they didn’t leave Holland until July in the Speedwell. That ship was to join the Mayflower in England for a two-ship expedition across the Atlantic. But, to put it simply, the Pilgrims bought a lemon with the Speedwell, a leaky tub they finally abandoned, piling all the provisions and bodies they could into the Mayflower and departing September 6 to sail more than two months in freezing temperatures. One wonders why, on arriving near Cape Cod in November, Mayflower passengers didn’t just demand the captain sail on to Key West. But they did in fact get off the boat at Plymouth and began a settlement. (There was a rock there, but apparently not a particularly impressive one.) Things didn’t improve much ashore, where the Pilgrims prepared their first fresh-food American meal from shellfish and then developed a literal boatload of food poisoning, according to existing records and journals. Their next attempt at finding local food avoided food poisoning but did involve theft of buried Indian supplies. Given the food shortage and a New England winter (more than uncomfortable), half those who landed at Plymouth were dead within four months. Only 52 of the original 102 were still alive in the spring. They died during that first quarter of the year at a rate of two or three a day. Their bodies were buried secretly, so that watching native Americans would not realize how few healthy Englishmen remained. But the other half did survive the first winter. In spring, they planted crops with Indian help and hung tough clear through to harvest when fall rolled the first Thanksgiving around. The exact date of the celebration is not recorded. Turns out the story we often get has that Indian crop assistance over-simplified. We usually think of the situation as one where all the local Indians decided to help out their pitifully ignorant new neighbors. The truth is there was more local politics conducted among the various tribes than at a modern Middle East peace summit. While standard American history may make them appear cleaner and happier than they were, the underlying facts on the Pilgrims are still correct. And they still serve as poignant inspiration for the overcoming of hardships, an American ideal that extends from our beginning. Pilgrim leader, Governor William Bradford, wrote about his first morning in America: “But here I cannot stay and make a pause and stand half amazed at this poor people’s present condition. They had now no friends to welcome them, nor inns to entertain or refresh their weatherbeaten bodies; no houses or much less towns to repair to, to seek for succor. What could now sustain them but the spirit of God and His Grace? May not and ought not the children of these fathers rightly say: ‘Our fathers were Englishmen which came over this great ocean, and were ready to perish in this wilderness; but they cried unto the Lord, and He heard their voice and looked on their adversity.’”