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As we are all preparing to sit down to a gut-stuffing meal this Thanksgiving, it is a time to think about history, heritage and traditions. I remember when I was a child in school, we always put on the Thanksgiving play at school, where half the class dressed as Native Americans and half as Pilgrims. We sat down to cardboard turkeys and husks of dried corn and sang songs about everyone being together. We learned about Squanto and how he kept the pilgrims from starving to death by teaching them how to plant a fish in a hole to fertilize the three sisters, beans, corn and squash.
How accurate is this, though? Thanksgiving was not a holiday until Abraham Lincoln made it a national holiday in 1863. It was his hope that this holiday would bring the North and South together in light of the Civil War. The “first Thanksgiving” between the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag people happened in 1621. Squanto’s actual name was Tisquantum, and he did help the first wave of Pilgrims who had fled to the New World, and immediately were over their head and starving. Tisquantum was a part of the Patuxet Tribe of the Wampanoags, and he spoke English, since he and about two dozen more of his tribe had been kidnapped and brought to a slave market in Spain. There he spent five years in Europe, some in London with a wealthy merchant. With the help of this merchant and Catholic Friars, he was able to escape slavery and make his way back to Patuxet.
He acted as a translator and was able to broker a peace agreement between the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag people. Without his help, these Mayflower settlers may have never survived. The act of a feast of “Thanksgiving” was a normal spiritual practice for this tribe, a celebration of a good harvest and the changing of seasons. The Wampanoag people had experienced a “great dying” prior to this, a plague brought by European settlers had wiped out two-thirds of their population. This left them in a precarious position where they had to worry about fighting between them and other tribes, which was part of how Tisquantum was able to broker a peace agreement between them and the Pilgrims.
This is the first Thanksgiving that we all know, but it is technically not the first Thanksgiving in the United States. Leaning into New Mexico history, a Thanksgiving event held by Juan de Oñate and his expedition of around 500 colonists and missionaries can be considered the first Thanksgiving, having happened about 23 years before the Wampanoag and Pilgrims dined together at Plymouth Rock.
In April of 1598, after a 50-day trek in which Oñate and his entourage had run out of food and water, they at last reached the Rio Grande in San Elizario, Texas. People and animals drank water until they were sick, some horses drinking so much their stomachs burst, or they drowned in a rush to get into the river. Oñate ordered a feast to be held to give thanks for their survival. The Franciscan missionaries held a mass, and they dined on fish taken from the river and probably deer hunted by the Spaniards. There are rumors that the Manso tribe also participated in the feast, but that is not confirmed.
Thanksgiving is not purely an American holiday either. Other countries, including South Korea, Liberia and the Netherlands, also celebrate. Usually, these celebrations are just tied to celebrating the end of the harvest season. Some places, such as Canada, celebrate their Thanksgiving in October.
So whether you are sitting down to a traditional meal with green bean casserole and cranberry sauce, or smothering your mashed potatoes with New Mexico-grown Red Chile sauce, remember to give thanks, and instead of fighting with your family this holiday, perhaps ask your elders about your family history. You may be surprised by what you find out, or at least it makes for better dinner conversation.
