Another Thanksgiving Story

 

From the archives of Native American News, vol. 3, issue 45, November
11, 1995:
It is two weeks before Thanksgiving is celebrated. Throughout the United
States schools perpetuate a lie about the origins of this holiday,
telling of a happy gathering between grateful Europeans and their
"Indian" benefactors. Many of you will even be asked to appear before
civic groups or schoolrooms to tell this happy story.
William B. Newell (Penobscot Nation) was chairman of the University of
Connecticut Anthropology Department. He researched the true story of
Thanksgiving in the state records of the Dutch colonies, letters and
reports from colonial officials to the English crown and the private
papers of Sir William Johnston, British Indian agent for the northern
colonies. Following are the results of his study, to which I have added
some pertinent material.
The year was 1637. Seven hundred men, women and children gathered for
their annual green corn dance in the area now known as Groton,
Connecticut, at that time part of the Massachusetts Colony. While they
were gathered in this place, they were surrounded and attacked by
mercenaries of the English and Dutch. The Indians were ordered to come
out of their longhouses and as they came forth they were shot down.
Those who did not come out were burned to death when the English and
Dutch set fire to the buildings. The Dutch on their return to New York
stopped at such villages along the way as Wysquaqua on the Hudson (now
Dobbs Ferry), where they mopped up by massacring the women and children
who had remained behind. The Dutch later boasted that they did not even
have to use any ammunition, clubbing to death most of their victims with
their rifle butts.
The next day, the Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony declared "a
day of publick Thanksgiving," thanking God for helping His servants
"send 700 red devils to hell." The Puritan leader Cotton Mather used to
preach on this theme. For the next 100 years, every "Thanksgiving Day"
in America commemorated this battle. As the Indian population gradually
nearly died out in the New England states, the romantic legend of
helpful Indians feasting with pious Pilgrims replaced the ugly truth.
Happy Thanksgiving!