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Well, with Thanksgiving coming up (I started doing this on November 24, 2004) I was in a chatroom and somebody was talking about Thanksgiving being a Native American Day of Mourning. Although, I am not saying that this is not true, I know very few Natives that don't celebrate Thanksgiving. Most Natives are very happy to not have to work on Thanksgiving.
Well, my parents are Christian, so every year we go around the table and say what we are thanksful. We are always thankful for each other and for having each other, but I was thinking that this year, prior to that I should give them a brief history of Thanksgiving, since we are Native Americans and really should know about that.
What I know so far from my research is that there was a dinner held in 1621 in Massachusettes. This was not a yearly event, but a once in a lifetime event. Celebrating Thanksgiving was officially declared a holiday by George Washington on October 3, 1789. General Thanksgiving By the PRESIDENT of the United States Of America: A PROCLAMATION
"Starting with the Pilgrims not only leaves out the Indians, but also the Spanish. In the summer of 1526 five hundred Spaniards and one hundred black slaves founded a town near the mouth of the Pedee River in what is now South Carolina. Disease and disputes with nearby Indians caused many deaths. Finally, in November the slaves rebelled, killed some of their masters, and escaped to the Indians. By now only 150 Spaniards survived, and they evacuated back to Haiti. The ex-slaves remained behind. So the first non-Native settlers in "the country we now know as the United States" were Africans."[1]
The problem with the official story, Mr. Marbury points out, is that "The harvest of 1621 was not bountiful, nor were the colonists hardworking or tenacious. 1621 was a famine year and many of the colonists were lazy thieves."[2]
In relation to this quote I read on Binghampton University's website that the Pilgrims were starving and even went so far to dig up some remains of the Wampanoag people and eat them as a means to survival.
Here is what Thomas Mather, the leader of the Puritans, was reported to have said on Thanksgiving day;
"In a Thanksgiving sermon delivered at Plymouth in 1623, Thomas Mather, an elder, gave special thanks to God for the devastating plague that wiped out most of the native Wampanoag Indians. Mather added in his sermon that he praised God for destroying chiefly the young men and the children, whom he described as the "very seeds of increase, thus clearing the forests to make way for a better growth." [3]
Links about Thanksgiving
Conservative Truth's Tom Barrett writes: Is Thanksgiving a Religious Holiday?
Julia White's 1999 Essay: Thanksgiving: Its True History
Vegetarian Times Karen Gullo written in 1982's The Truth About Thanksgiving
Vernon Coleman's: The Truth about Thanksgiving
Sources:
1. The Truth about the First Thanksgiving
2. The Truth about Thanksgiving
3. Remote Viewing News: The First Thanksgiving - Fact or Myth?