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A Blessed First Thanksgiving, Thanks to the Indians
By Marcel LeRoy, Southbury
If it weren't for Indian deaths, the Pilgrims would have been hard-pressed to settle in Plymouth that cold winter in 1620. In a brief skirmish, the Pilgrims' muskets had slain no natives, nor had any arrows struck any Englishmen. Disease had been the killer. The Pilgrims discovered cornfields cleared in the forest, now deserted. What once had been a bustling nearby village of Patuxet Indians stood empty, ravaged by disease four years earlier, leaving but a single survivor.
The Pilgrims themselves lived on the edge of survival that first winter. They had begun well enough. After 66 days crossing the stormy Atlantic, 104 Pilgrims beheld the New World, including a baby boy, Oceanus, who was born at sea.
"Being thus arrived in a good harbor and brought safe to land," wrote Governor William Bradford, "they fell upon their knees and blessed the God in heaven, who brought them over the vast and furious ocean, and delivered them from all perils and miseries thereof, again to set their feet on the firm and stable earth, their proper element."
But within four months, scurvy, pneumonia, and a virulent strain of tuberculosis had cut down whole families of Pilgrims. As the sickness raged, only six or seven persons in the whole company were strong enough to tend the sick and comfort the dying.
Six died in December, then eight in January and seventeen in February. Of March, Bradford wrote, "This month thirteen of our numbers die … scarce fifty remain, the living scarce able to bury the dead." Of eighteen married women, only three remained. Baby Oceanus died.
But in April when it was time to put in gardens, the Indians, whom they feared, came to their aid. One day, unannounced, the tall, powerful warrior Samoset strode into their camp, armed with bows and arrows and nearly naked—he wore a leather string around his waist "with a fringe about a span long, or a little more," as the embarrassed Bradford recorded. To the Pilgrims' surprise, Samoset greeted them with the word, "Welcome!" He had learned some English from fishermen in his native Maine. Later, he introduced the Pilgrims to Massasoit, chief of the neighboring Wampanoag tribe, and Squanto, the last known survivor of the Patuxets.
Though the Wampanoag braves towered over the short Englishmen and outnumbered their tiny militia sixty to twenty, they reached a treaty of peace that stood for forty years until Massasoit's death.
Squanto, who had been kidnapped and lived for a while in England, spoke their language, too. He taught the Pilgrims where to trap eels and how to plant corn. The Pilgrims, who had pilfered Indian corn the previous December, may not have been deserving. But this unexpected help made the difference for them between survival and starvation. Settler Edward Winslow described it thus:
"We set the last spring some twenty acres of Indian corn, and sowed some six acres of barley and peas, and according to the manner of the Indians, we manured our ground with herrings or rather shad, which we have in great abundance, and take with great ease at our doors. Our corn did prove well, and God be praised, we had a good increase of Indian corn, and our barley indifferent good, but our peas not worth the gathering, for we feared they were too late sown, they came up very well, and blossomed, but the sun parched them in the blossom."
Nevertheless, the Pilgrims invited Massasoit to a harvest festival, and a hunting party shot enough waterfowl to feed the company for a week. For their contribution the Indians went out and returned with five deer. It was a three-day feast of venison, roast duck, roast goose, clams and other shellfish, succulent eels, bread, corn bread, leeks and watercress, with wild plums and dried berries—all enjoyed with wine newly made from grapes that grew wild in the forest.
It was a feast of thanksgiving, of thankfulness to God. Edward Winslow wrote to friends in December, "Although it be not always so plentiful as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want that we often wish you partakers of our plenty."
The goodness of God was often on their minds. Though the Pilgrims had suffered loss and hardship, they were aware of God's great blessings: the produce of the land, peace with the natives, the joy of life, and homes snug for winter.
Many in this little group of Pilgrims read from Psalm 100:4-5, "Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise. Be thankful unto him, and bless his name. For the Lord is good; his mercy is everlasting; and his truth endures to all generations."
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