Rense.com
The Dark Historical Roots
Of Our 'Thanksgiving'
Lest We Forget...
From Tristan
11-26-3
The arrival of Europeans on the east cost of North America
occurred not in 1620,
but well before. French and Dutch fishermen and settlers had been
in the area as
early as 1614, and had been responsible for kidnapping Indians,
selling them into
slavery, and maliciously infecting them with smallpox.
In 1620, the pilgrims arrived on the east coast and within two
days they had
received assistance from the local Wampanoag Indian tribe: The
pilgrims stole
their stored crops, dug up graves for dishes and pots, and took many
native people
as prisoners and forced them to teach crop planting and survival
techniques to the
colonists in their new environment.
Luckily, for the colonists, an ex-slave named Squanto had recently
escaped slavery
in England, spoke English fluently and was able to instruct the
pilgrims in crop
planting, fishing, and hunting. Squanto not only escaped from
slavery, he was also
one of the only survivors of his tribe, the rest had been wiped
out from the European
smallpox plagues years before. When it came to helping the rag-tag
team of colonists,
Squanto, not only was able to put aside his personal differences
with the people who
had enslaved him and killed off his entire tribe, but also helped
make the colonists
self-sufficient, and aided in brokering a treaty with the
Wampanoag tribe. In 1621
Massasoit, the chief of the Wampanoags, signed a "treaty of
friendship" giving the
English permission to occupy 12,000 acres of land.
In 1621 the myth of thanksgiving was born. The colonists invited
Massasoit, chief of
the Wampanoags, to their first feast as a follow up to their
recent land deal. Massasoit
in turn invited 90 of his men, much to the chagrin of the
colonists. Two years later the
English invited a number of tribes to a feast "symbolizing
eternal friendship." The
English offered food and drink, and two hundred Indians dropped
dead from unknown
poison.
The first day of thanksgiving took place in 1637 amidst the war
against the Pequots.
700 men, women, and children of the Pequot tribe were gathered for
their annual green
corn dance on what is now Groton, Connecticut. Dutch and English
mercenaries
surrounded the camp and proceeded to shoot, stab, butcher and burn
alive all 700 people.
The next day the Massachusetts Bay Colony held a feast in
celebration and the governor
declared "a day of thanksgiving." In the ensuing madness
of the Indian extermination,
natives were scalped, burned, mutilated and sold into slavery, and
a feast was held in
celebration every time a successful massacre took place. The
killing frenzy got so bad
that even the Churches of announced a day of
"thanksgiving" to celebrate victory over the
"heathen savages," and many celebrated by kicking the
severed heads of Pequot people
through the streets like soccer balls.
The proclamation of 1676 announced the first national day of
thanksgiving with the onset
of the Wampanoag war, the very people who helped the original
colonists survive on their
arrival. Massasoit, the chief invited to eat with the
puritans in 1621, died in 1661. His son
Metacomet, later to be known by the English as King Phillip,
originally honored the treaties
by his father with the colonists, but after years of further
encroachment and destruction of
the, slave trade, and slaughter, Metacomet changed his mind. In
1675 "King Phillip" called
upon all natives to unite to defend their homelands from the
English. For the next year the
bloody conflict went on non-stop, until Metacomet was captured,
murdered, quartered, his
hands were cut off and sent to Boston, his head was impaled on a
pike in the town square
of Plymouth for the next 25 years, and his nine-year-old son was
shipped to the Caribbean
to be a slave for the rest of his life.
On June 20, 1676 Edward Rawson was unanimously voted by the
governing council of
Charlestown, Massachusetts, to proclaim June 29th as the first day
of thanksgiving. The
proclamation reads in part: "The Holy God having by a long
and Continual Series of his
Afflictive dispensations in and by the present War with the
Heathen Natives of this land,
written and brought to pass bitter things against his own Covenant
people in this wilderness,
yet so that we evidently discern that in the midst of his
judgments he hath remembered
mercy The council has thought meet to appoint and set apart the
29th day of this instant
June, as a day of solemn Thanksgiving and praise to God for such
his Goodness and
Favor"
It was not until 1863 that Abe Lincoln, needing a wave of
patriotism to hold the country
together, that Thanksgiving was nationally and officially declared
and set forth to this day.
At the time, two days were announced as days to give thanks, the
first was a celebration of
the victory at Gettysburg on August 6th, and the second one became
the Thursday in
November that we know now.
The most interesting part of thanksgiving is the propaganda that
has been put out
surrounding it. During the 19th century thanksgiving traditions
consisted of turkey and
family reunions. Whenever popular art contained both pilgrims and
Indians, the scene
was usually characterized by violent confrontations between the
two groups, not a
multi-cultural/multi-racial dinner. In 1914 artist Jennie
Brownscombe created the vision of
thanksgiving that we see today: community, religion, racial
harmony and tolerance, after
her notorious painting reached wide circulation in Life magazine.
Adamant protests to the celebration of thanksgiving have taken
place over the years.
As early as 1863 Pequot Indian Minister William Apess urged
"every man of color" to mourn
the day of the landing, and bury Plymouth Rock in protest. In 1970
Apess got his way. 1970
was the "350th" anniversary of thanksgiving, and became
the first proclaimed national day
of mourning for American Indians.
State officials of Massachusetts asked Frank B. James, President
of the federated Eastern
Indian League, to speak at the thanksgiving celebration. The
speech he submitted read:
"Today is a time of celebrating for you but it is not a time
of celebrating for me. It is with
heavy heart that I look back upon what happened to my people The
pilgrims had hardly
explored the shores of Cape Cod before they had robbed the graves
of my ancestors,
and stolen their corn, wheat, and beans Massasoit, the great
leader of the Wampanoag,
knew these facts; yet he and his people welcomed and befriended
the settlers, little knowing
that before 50 years were to pass, the Wampanoags and other
Indians living near the
settlers would be killed by their guns or dead from diseases that
we caught from them Although
our way of life is almost gone and our language is almost extinct,
we the Wampanoags still walk
the lands of Massachusetts. What has happened cannot be changed,
but today we work toward
a better America, a more Indian America where people and nature
once again are important."
James was subsequently barred from speaking.
As a result, hundreds of people from around the country came to
support him by gathering around
the statue of Massasoit that had been erected in town. The
protesters buried Plymouth Rock twice
that day. For the next 24 years, American Indians staged protest
every thanksgiving, in 1996 the
United American Indians of New England put a stop to the annual
pilgrim parade and forced the
marchers to turn around and head back toward the seaside
(symbolism?). In 1997 the peaceful
protestors were assaulted by members of the Plymouth police, the
county sheriffs department,
and state troopers on horseback in full riot gear. Men, women,
children, and elders were beaten,
pepper sprayed and gassed. Twenty-Five people were arrested;
blacks, whites, latinos, Indians,
and even a 67-year-old Penobscot elder were taken to jail.
Videotape was later produced to confirm
the assault and ensuing police brutality. Plymouth is known as
"Americas Hometown."
Finally in 1999 plaques were approved and dedicated to commemorate
"genocide" and other crimes against indigenous peoples of the
Americas. The plaque at Coles Hill, where the statue of Massasoit
is reads: "Native Americans do not celebrate the arrival of
the pilgrims and other European settlers
To them, thanksgiving day is a reminder of the genocide of
millions of their people, the theft of their
lands, and the relentless assault on their culture." The
second plaque in the towns post office square honors "King Phillip",
Massasoits son.
~~~~~~~~~~
Please email: Tristan_Ahtone@hotmail.com
for a copy of sources used to compile this information.
And please feel free to use this piece at your thanksgiving
dinners, give it to your friends, or send it
with your kids to school. He who has no inclination to learn more
will be very apt to think he knows enough.
NOTE
Things
are changing.
The
TRUTH'S are coming out now.
There is
more to come.
Prepare
yourself.
I do
believe that our ancestors who
came
here, have left us with blood
on
"our hands", for "their wicked, deceitful"
actions
and cruelties.
We must
atone for the past in order to
have a
clean slate for the future.
Next
Thanksgiving & every Thanksgiving
should be
a tribute to
the
Native American Indians.
~~~
This
country we call
United
States
aka/ U.S.
Incorporated
continues
adding pain, destruction and
millions
of murders world wide on a daily basis.
Since
they are not our country, not our leaders,
not our
government, THEY will be fully responsible
for all
debt and all death and destruction, not us.
We do,
however, need to remove them from
this
country immediately, so that we can live the
kind of
lives we were meant to live.
Other
countries have already removed them.
Stand up
America - let your voices be heard !
Do it
before it's too late !!
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