Opinion by Ken Herron:

When I was a youngster in school about this time of the year we would study about the first Thanksgiving. I don’t know whether this story is taught in our schools today. One of the first things that we learned in American history was that Columbus discovered America in 1492. In the early 1600s Europeans began to arrive in America. In 1616 traders from Europe arrived in the northeast and brought the disease Yellow Fever to the Indian tribes and it has been estimated that 45,000 of them died. They had no resistance to the diseases of Europe. The first English Colony was established in Jamestown, Virginia, before the Pilgrims arrived in the Massachusetts area. In 1620 the Mayflower completed its sixty five day journey of 3000 miles from England and the Pilgrims arrived in Massachusetts near the present city of Provincetown. They moved across the Cape Cod Bay and settled in a location that the Indians called Pahtuksut. The Pilgrims renamed the city Plimouth after the city they had left which was Plymouth, England, and they called the land New England.

The Pilgrims considered this to be a religious trip or a pilgrimage to a new land where they could practice their religion and worship God in the manner that they chose. They arrived in the middle of winter and had no homes to live in to protect them from the weather which was very cold. Many of the Pilgrims died during this winter.

The Indians of the area were called the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe and they were very civilized. The Wampanoag Nation consisted of 69 tribes of which the Mashpee Tribe was one of them. They had their own government and tribal court system. They had developed their own spoken language. When the Mayflower arrived, the Indians would not approach the Europeans for about three months because they were afraid that the Europeans would bring more diseases to them but they did help them to get through the first winter. In 1632 a man by the name of John Eliot arrived and began to learn the language of the tribes. The language was called Wopanaotaok. He developed an alphabetic writing system for their language and began to teach them about Christianity. In 1655 the Europeans opened a college which they called the Harvard Indian College for the purpose of educating the Indian youth. They solicited donations from their benefactors in England to finance the college.

The Pilgrims were a group of Christians who were not in fellowship with the Church of England. A law was passed requiring everyone in the nation to attend the Church of England and there was a fine imposed for every worship that a citizen did not attend. The Pilgrims first moved to the Netherlands as a group and then decided to go to America when they realized that their youth were beginning to accept the modern ways and not observe their religion. They were able to find sponsors in England who wanted to establish a colony in America. The sponsors paid the transportation for the group to come to America. The first voyage of the Pilgrims brought 102 people to America on board the Mayflower. There were seventy-three males and twenty-nine females on the boat.

There was a well-known route to the Virginia area but for some reason the Mayflower left the route and came to America at a more northern point. A contract had been discussed with the investors but not written or signed before the Mayflower left England. There was a meeting held on the boat and they drew up a document called the Mayflower Compact that determined how there colony would be run and it was basically to be a democratic group with everything being settled by a vote of the people. They arrived in December and about half of the group died before the spring came. They selected a place for their village that was already cleared and the natives had died of various diseases. They made peace with the Indians and built houses for the people as rapidly as possible. When time to plant the crops came they planted the seed they had brought with them.

The Indians helped them and taught them about hunting and fishing and the wild foods that grew in the forests.
When the fall came and the crops were harvested from the fields they declared a time for a celebration. The Pilgrims declared this to be a time of Thanksgiving to God for blessing them. It was a three day feast. There were 53 Pilgrims remaining of the original 102 that left on the Mayflower to come to America. There were 90 Indians that participated. The Indians killed and brought five deer to the celebration. There was no turkey served at this original Thanksgiving. They celebrated with games and contests to find who the best shot with a bow and arrow was and who could throw spears with the most accuracy.

President Washington declared a day of Thanksgiving to God be celebrated by the country while he was President but it did not become an annual observance for many years.

We are all indebted to God for his blessings to us. Let us not fail to be thankful and recognize that our good things come from Him.