The legend is that in the colony of Plymouth, during the year 1621, Wampanoag Indians joined the English colonists in order to celebrate the bounties ...
The legend is that in the colony of Plymouth,
during the year 1621, Wampanoag Indians joined the English colonists in order to celebrate the bounties from the fertile earth in a fantastic fall harvest dinner. Now this celebratory dinner is acknowledged to be one of the first Thanksgiving festivities in the early days of the colonies.
Although that long ago dinner is supposed by a lot of people to be the first Thanksgiving celebration, it was, in reality, part of a long existing custom of celebrating the seasonal harvest and giving thanks for a good bounty of crops that would last till the end of the winter.
Numerous Native American groups of what would become America, including the Pueblo, Cherokee, Shawnee, Huron, Creek, Blackfoot and many others would hold great harvest festivals, consisting in ritual dances, races, games and some more cheerful celebrations of gratefulness many centuries before the European peoples arrived.
Perhaps you would like to know the kind of meals laid out on the table at the harvest festivity? Historians, as usual, are not one hundred percent sure about it; however they are sure that pilgrims weren't baking pumpkin pies nor building castles with mashed potatoes. However, there is no list of the foods commonly available to the colonists during this period of time; but there are two items that historians can say with any confidence that were on the table are venison and different types wild poultry like duck, goose, and wild turkey.
Although there are hundreds of manuscripts describing such feast, the most circumstancial report of this festivity of late harvest date of 1621 and was written by a man named Edward Winslow. It is from his manuscript called "A Journal of the Pilgrims at Plymouth" that historians have gathered much of the information about this first Thanksgiving celebration:
"...Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a special manner rejoice together after we had gathered the fruit of our labors. They four in one day killed as much fowl as, with a little help beside, served the company almost a week. At which time, among other recreations, we exercised our arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and among the rest their greatest king Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five deer, which they brought to the plantation and bestowed upon our governor, and upon the captain, and others. And 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..." - Edward Winslow, 1595-1655.
Now, the common Thanksgiving dinner is focused around the turkey, but this was not the case at this early Thanksgiving dinner. During the 1700's, vegetable dishes were not as important as of today, therefore the meal of this period of time included several different meats. Indeed, during this period of time, there were not as many different types of vegetables than today.
Modernism in term of food preservation was not as evolved as it is in our society and the settlers ate vegetables on a seasonal basis. The impossibility to freeze their food led the Wampanoag and the settlers to dry aliments such as corn, ham, fish, venison and herbs.
