November 25, 2003

• Happy Thanksgiving

  
  

  I'm packing up my little family today, we'll be traveling to visit grandparents for our Thanksgiving Holiday.  Usually at this time of year, we see all the decorations with the little Pilgrims and Indians sharing corn and squash.  Like many of our traditions, Thanksgiving is rooted in a history whose many details were not preserved and in a culture that we can barely understand as we look back on it.  From the comfort of our homes, and the security of knowing that the corner grocery has all we need, it's hard to imagine what it must have been like for those people huddled in Plymouth Plantation. 

  
  

  Several years ago, I picked up a paperback copy of William Bradford's journal, printed in a volume entitled "Of Plymouth Plantation, 1620-1647."  Except for five years in which he specifically requested that someone else be elected to the position, Bradford served as Governor of Plymouth for 36 years.  His journal records dates, events, people, and documents from those early years of European presence in America. 

  
  

  The Pilgrim experiment is a remarkable one.  They were blown off course, and found themselves outside the area covered by the charter they were granted by King James.  So before they left the ship, they drafted a document, the Mayflower Compact.  They had no idea the significance of their act, but it marked the first time in recorded history that free and equal men covenanted together to create their own civil government.  They based their government on the principles of equality and the free consent of the governed.

  
  

  The first year of the Pilgrim's experience in the New World, they battled starvation and sickness and lost 47 (about half) of their original number.  Thirteen out of eighteen wives died, only three families remained unbroken.  Bradford's wife, Dorothy was one of the first lost, but he barely mentions this pain in his journal.

  
  

  After descriptions of hope from a summer of planting and learning about the land they now inhabit, Bradford mentions the time of the first Thanksgiving, but not the date of the festival.  Indeed, his description is sparse. We have a few more details from a letter written by Edward Winslow and published in a volume entitled, "Mourt's Relation." 

  
  

  Our harvest being gotten in, our Governor sent four men on fowling that so we might after a more special manner rejoice together, after we had gathered the fruit of our labours.  They four in one day killed as much fowl as, with a little help beside, served the Company almost a week.  At which time, amongst other recreations, we exercised our arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and amongst the rest their greatest king, Massassoit with some 90 men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted.  And then they went out and killed five deer which they brought to the plantation and bestowed on our Governor and upon the Captain and others.

  
  

  What Winslow didn't tell us, but Bradford did, is that the Pilgrims were in a difficult position after that first harvest.  They had enough food stores for each person to have a peck of meal per week.  That's approximately 2 gallon jugs or 7 metric litres.  They also had some dried turkeys and venison.  He had hopes that no one would starve.  But in the very next entry, he writes that a ship put in to the harbor and Cape Cod.   Thirty-five more people whom Bradford describes as lusty young men joined the colony, but brought no food, no supplies, barely more than the clothes on their backs.  The stores that the Pilgrims worked so hard to amass, were divided to provide for these newcomers. 

  
  

  In recent times, it has become popular to look back and scoff at these people for their religious views and for what we view as an unduly harsh attitude toward the nature of man and God.  But I wonder, if we were living in their shoes, might we have a different perspective. 

  
  

  I wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving.  I'll be back next week.

  
  

  

  • 9:23 am
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