A meeting between the Wampanoag and Pilgrims is depicted in this sketch. The Pilgrims were allowed to settle in Patuxet after the pair negotiated an agreement.
The Pilgrims don't start in 1620, as is implied in "A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving" and in school history books, but in 1620.
The Pilgrims and the native Wampanoag are sitting together to break bread and celebrate their first successful harvest and a long, harmonious relationship to come.
It doesn't start there because those things never happened.
The Wampanoag village of Patuxet was where the Pilgrims spent a few weeks in 1620. The Wampanoag were not invited to the 1621 feast, but they showed up later. Pilgrim leaders gave toasts that day that said their role in helping the Pilgrims survive by sharing resources and wisdom went unacknowledged.
There are scenes from the Pilgrim Village. An interpreter wearing a mask works in a replica of a Pilgrim house.
Lincoln did not mention Pilgrims on his first Thanksgiving Day.
The Pilgrims were not invoked on the first national Thanksgiving Day. In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln declared a Thanksgiving Day to reconcile the country after the Civil War.
The story of the Pilgrim forefathers coming to the New World and founding America for religious freedom gained steam as New England Protestants used it to gain the top spot in the country's cultural hierarchy.
The humble, bloodless story of the 102 Pilgrims forging a path in the New World in search of religious freedom was what Americans needed as they looked for an origin story that wasn't soaked in the blood of Native Americans or built on the backs of slavery. It became accepted as such regardless of whether it was historical or not.
Some Native Americans don't celebrate Thanksgiving. Find out why.
The harbor is next to the rock.
The two tracks crossed when President John F. Kennedy baked the plaits together in his Thanksgiving Day Proclamation.
The Pilgrims and the founding of the colony 400 years ago are not in most school history books. It is not the replica of the cargo ship that the Pilgrims crammed into to cross the Atlantic that you will find at Pilgrim Memorial Park.
The more historically accurate telling is gaining a foothold in small circles, as members of the Herring Pond, Mashpee and Aquinnah Wampanoag tribes, as well as the executive director of Plymouth 400, bring the documented facts to light.
If we don't understand the sorry record, how are we supposed to improve it?
Steven Peters, a spokesman for the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, said that the only way forward was to understand the history. The history of the indigenous people who lived in the region for thousands of years before the Pilgrims was elevated by the work of the Wampanoag tribe.
It really changes your perspective.
The gallery was opened for Native American Heritage on Month in November of 2020. There is an exhibit of artwork and movies about the Wampanoag tribe at the Wampanoag Trading Post and Gallery.
Hostility, slavery and pandemic are related.
The story of the Pilgrims begins in September 1620 when the Pilgrims leave for the New World.
The Wampanoag and their neighbors in New England are painted in a broad stroke of simplicity, ignoring the complex regional relationships and politics at play.
The first known contact between Native Americans and Europeans in southern New England was in 1524.
Pilgrim myths say don't believe everything your teacher tells you.
It could start in 1602, when the Wampanoag began trading with the Cape Cod Indians, and ended in violence. Future annual encounters between the two would follow the same high-tension pattern, as was written in the book by Silverman.
Epenow was captured by Europeans in 1614 and kept in bondage for three years. He went back to his people on Martha's Vineyard. Tisquantum and 19 other Wampanoag men were sold into slavery after being lured on to an English ship.
Tisquantum and Epenow would play important roles in the Wampanoag-Pilgrim relations after they returned to Patuxet. In the Pilgrim story, only Squanto was mentioned.
According to Peters and other historians, the best starting point is 1616, when a lethal Pandemic devastated many Wampanoag villages. In three years, Patuxet, where the Pilgrims would eventually settle, was a wasteland. The Wampanoag's existence was further threatening, but the Narragansett Tribe, their powerful western rivals, were left largely untouched.
"We weren't used to diseases here," said an elder with the Herring Pond Wampanoag Tribe. The Europeans and Pilgrims brought with them illnesses that our systems were not used to.
Pilgrims arrived in Provincetown 400 years ago and created a clash of cultures.
The beginning of American democracy on Cape Cod is called the Mayflower Compact.
The Wampanoag were in a difficult spot by 1620, shaped by years of volatile contact with Europeans, slavery, regional threats to their power and a mysterious, devastating illness.
Peters said that it was important for him to understand the big decisions that were made. It would have been a very complex situation.
The Pilgrims were helped by Massasoit.
When the Pilgrims arrived in what is now known as Provincetown, they found themselves in a land that was not free of Europeans, but was still home to the indigenous people.
It is difficult to separate the Pilgrims from the United States. He said it was easy to believe that they arrived here to seek religious freedom and eventually form their own country.
The idea that the main reason for colonization was the search for religious freedom is held very dear by many white Americans. The most common explanation is the general public. It's not right.
The Puritans left the Church of England for religious reasons, but they were free to practice their religion in Holland. After a decade of struggling to find jobs and fearing the Dutch influence on their children, the congregants sought a charter from The London Company to start a colony in America.
The Pilgrims were worried about their own survival in the New World and turning a profit for those who supported the venture. The Wampanoag helped make it possible for that survival to happen.
The decision to help the Pilgrims came after they stole Native food and seed stores and dug up Native graves, as described by Pilgrim leader Edward Winslow in "Mour."
The decision was made by Ousamequin, also known as Massasoit. Peters says that the Wampanoag territory was organized into sachemships, each with a leader who would oversee that particular village. The people ruled by the will of the Sachems. The sachemships were independent but had relationships with the other sachemships that were under the control of the great sachem.
The statue dedicated to him overlooking Plymouth Rock says that he is the "protector and preserver" of the Pilgrims. Peters said that his decision to allow the Pilgrims to stay at Patuxet and eventually provide them aid had less to do with a sense of dutiful benevolence and more to do with a careful weighing of circumstances and outcomes.
The site supervisor of the Plimouth Plantation is cutting out a pine mishoon. The Wampanoag indigenous program associate director helped make a white pine mishoon that will be donated to the Smithsonian. The file is from the Cape Cod Times.
Driving off or killing the Pilgrims was a valid option. The threat of betrayal, violence and enslavement seemed to follow contact with the Europeans, so whatever benefit they might gain would not be worth it. It would cost valuable warriors, in short supply after the epidemic, and there was the risk of Europeans returning in large numbers or sailing around the Outer Cape to take their guns, knives and armor to the Narragansett.
Allowing the Pilgrims to establish diplomatic relations with them brought risks but also rewards. The Pilgrims had weapons and armor that would intimidate enemies. The Wampanoag would finally gain a source and considerable trading power after generations of trading secondhand and thirdhand for European goods.
It was better for him to have the danger on his side than to face it.
Peters said they needed a friend. We needed an ally. It would have been difficult for them to make that decision.
A deal and a meal for the Wampanoag and Pilgrims.
The Pilgrims, who were still living on the cramped and creaking Mayflower, were struggling to survive the winter. Half of them died of illness, cold, or a combination of the three.
The Wampanoag made their presence known throughout the season, but did not approach until February, when Samoset, a visiting Abenaki tribesman from Maine, approached Pilgrim leaders. The Wampanoag were ready for war with their new neighbors and the Pilgrims needed to make their intentions clear.
In late March, diplomatic relations between the two groups were formally opened when Massasoit arrived in the city. With Tisquantum acting as a broker, the two groups worked out a kind of alliance through a series of visits, exchanges and the belief that this small band of Pilgrims would stay just that: small.
A scene from the Pilgrim Village at the Plimoth Patuxet living museum.
If the Pilgrims knew how quickly they would arrive, they wouldn't have agreed.
After receiving help and protection from the Wampanoag, the Pilgrims held a harvest feast. The Wampanoag members showed up. Peters said that a group of about 100 men and Massasoit came not to celebrate, but to remind themselves that they were the ones who had control of the land the Pilgrims were staying on.
This is where the Pilgrims and the Thanksgiving myth ends, with the two groups sitting down to dinner, celebrating their partnership and toasting to a future to come. The real story stretches back before the Pilgrims even arrived.
European settlers would outnumber the indigenous people in a little more than 50 years, with growing settlements such as the Massachusetts Bay Colony to the north and Rhode Island to the south.
Wamsutta died after he was imprisoned for negotiating a land sale to the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The colonists were pressing deeper and deeper across the region. The King Philip's War, which ended with death, enslavement or displacement of the majority of the Native people in southern New England, was caused by the deteriorated relations between the settlers and the Native people.
The head of another of Massasoit's sons, King Philip, was mounted on a pike as a warning, and the descendants of the Pilgrims' great "protector and preserver" were captured and sold into slavery.
The part of the story that did not make it into school history books or Thanksgiving celebrations is the reason.
Peters said that the story is not a good one, but that it is telling and brings the focus away from the Pilgrims. The telling builds the empathy that has been lacking when it comes to Native American lives.
Peters brought up King Philip's War. When we talk about it, there is no compassion. The native life has a different value.
He said that if people were to understand the history and how it happened, they would start to see Native American lives in the same light as European ones.
Raising up Native voices.
The 400th anniversary of the Pilgrims is being commemorated by people, but they are being told they shouldn't use it to insult them. She said that any change feels like a monumental one when you have been telling a story for four centuries.
The way we have gone about it is balanced, according to Pecoraro. You have to swing the pendulum a bit more to balance it.
The Wampanoag still live in southern New England, so the commemorations were brought into the 21st century.
Despite centuries of removal from their land, destruction of their culture and denial of their rights, the Wampanoag still cling to their culture. The Trump administration is trying to get rid of reservation status for hundreds of acres of tribal lands.
Troy is a medicine man with the Herring Pond Tribe.
The Herring Pond, Aquinnah and the Mashpee are three of the 69 Wampanoag tribes that lived here before contact. We're fortunate to be one of them. We made it. We are still here. We have a chance to re-educate people. We adapted.
Peters doesn't think Thanksgiving should be like Confederate statues and names of slaveholders on buildings as the nation thinks of its history.
He and his family celebrate Thanksgiving every year after the National Day of mourning in Plymouth. He said that it is important to bring the other side of history to light.
Even though it is inaccurate, we can't just bury it. There is a place where we don't make that mistake again, as a point that those things do belong.
The story behind the history of the Thanksgiving holiday was originally published on the USA TODAY NETWORK.
