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In American lore, friendly Indians helped freedom-loving colonists. In real life, the Wampanoags had a problem they didn't know how to fix.

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In the familiar American account of the first Thanksgiving, in 1621, the Pilgrims who settled in Plymouth were pious English refugees, one of many boatloads of Europeans who fled the tyranny of the Old World to become a liberty-loving people in the New World. The Indians whom they encountered (rarely identified by tribe) overcame their caution and proved to be friendly (a term requiring no explanation). Their chief, Massasoit, was a magnanimous host who took pity on the bedraggled strangers, taught them how to plant corn and where to fish, and thereby helped them survive their first harsh winters in America. Like Pocahontas and Sacagawea, two of the other famous Indians in American lore, Massassoit's people helped the colonizers and then moved offstage.

Contrary to the Thanksgiving myth, though, friendliness does not account for the alliance the Wampanoag tribe made with the nascent Plymouth settlement. The Wampanoags had an internal politics all their own; its dynamics had been shaped by many years of tense interaction with Europeans, and by deadly plagues that ravaged the tribe's home region as the pace of English exploration accelerated. Chief Massassoit-whom historians today generally refer to as the sachem Ousamequin-faced stiff opposition from his own people as he tried to manage the English newcomers and looked for ways to survive the forces of colonization already tearing at the Wampanoags.
Read: Thanksgiving used to look a lot like Halloween, except more racist
The traditional Pilgrim-centered account of the era, according to which the Wampanoags all but consented to their own displacement, comes from documents left behind by English colonists and later white Americans-including missionaries, diplomats, fur traders, curious travelers, and others. Yet to acknowledge that Wampanoag perspectives are distorted or selectively represented in the historical record is not to say they are absent. However imperfectly, those same sources also shine light on how these events looked to the Wampanoags, who had been dealing with European voyagers intermittently since at least 1524 and nearly annually since 1602-that is, years before the Pilgrims arrived.

In 1614, Captain Thomas Hunt had anchored his ship in the harbor of the Wampanoag community of Patuxet-the very site where the colony of Plymouth would be founded six years later-and invited curious members of the tribe onboard. Though meetings between European explorers and Native Americans tended to degenerate into bloodshed, the lure of trade was too enticing for either party to resist. Europeans sought furs, particularly beaver pelts, to sell back home. The Wampanoags wanted to pick through the strangers' merchandise of metal tools, jewelry, and cloth. And so a number of them-including a man named Tisquantum, or Squanto for short-went aboard Hunt's vessel.

Hunt double-crossed them, seizing 20 of their men, then stuffing them below decks. Soon seven other Wampanoags farther east at Nauset fell into the same trap, joining their tribesmen on a horrific oceanic journey toward an unimaginable destiny. It would have come as cold comfort when they discovered Hunt's actual plan to sell them as enslaved people in Málaga, Spain, alongside his catch of fish. That is the last we hear of most of these unfortunate souls, who disappeared into Iberia's mass of bound laborers drawn from around the globe.

Tisquantum very nearly shared this end but for two strokes of fortune. First, a group of friars blocked his sale, doubtlessly citing a routinely ignored Spanish law that Native Americans should not be enslaved. Then, after an uncertain period of time, Tisquantum made contact with one of Málaga's many English merchants who, in turn, took him to London.

Finally, in 1618, Tisquantum got his chance to return to his native land. He was introduced to Captain Thomas Dermer, who, back in 1614, had been part of the very exploring and fishing expedition that had kidnapped Tisquantum. By this point, Tisquantum had learned enough English to offer his services to Dermer in exchange for passage home. As it turned out, Dermer was just the right person for such an overture. Dermer's employer, Sir Ferdinando Gorges, was a prime mover of English colonization schemes and, as such, a collector of captive Native Americans who could serve as cultural brokers.

By 1619, Gorges financed an expedition by Dermer to send the Wampanoag home and see what they could accomplish together. Yet when Dermer set sail for the New England coast that spring, he knew that he was heading to a place with a growing reputation for violence between Native Americans and European explorers. Harrowing stories of the two peoples capturing and killing each other had been in circulation among sailors for years. As for Tisquantum, his heart must have been ready to burst with relief, because five years of forced exile were about to end. Then the worry set in.

Doubtless Tisquantum had already heard from English sailors that a terrible disease had struck the Wampanoags during his absence, but there was no way for him to prepare for what he saw when Dermer's ship reached American shores. Landing in Maine, the ship sailed south along a coastline usually teeming with people at work in their cornfields and villages. This time, however, there was no one to be seen or heard. Tisquantum's anxiety must have built with every moment until the ship finally reached Plymouth Harbor, when the grim truth finally emerged. According to Nathaniel Morton, who visited the place in 1622 and went on to become Plymouth colony's secretary and historian, Patuxet and the surrounding country had turned into "sad spectacles of ... mortality"; they exhibited "many bones and skulls of the dead lying above the ground," like inverted cemeteries. The exuberant homecoming Tisquantum had been imagining for years had instead uncovered a tragedy of epic proportions. The majority of the Wampanoags were dead.

Dermer's life was in danger too, though he seems to have been oblivious to it. After dropping off Tisquantum at Cape Cod, Dermer proceeded to Martha's Vineyard, where he was stunned to be greeted by a Wampanoag who spoke "indifferent good English." The man, whose name was Epenow, was another former captive of Dermer's employer. Dermer believed that Epenow had gotten over his former plight, insofar as he "laughed at his own escape and reported the story of it," as the English captain recorded their exchange. Indeed, in broken English he invited Dermer to return to the Vineyard to trade for furs after the captain completed his voyage down the coast to Virginia. The Englishman's greed led him right into Epenow's snare.

Dermer returned to southern New England in June 1620 to take up Epenow's offer, but he should have thought twice. Tisquantum rejoined the expedition and told the English captain that the Wampanoags would not welcome the visit. According to Dermer's account, Tisquantum warned that an English vessel had recently visited the Wampanoag community of Pokanoket, invited "many" of the people aboard, and then "made a great slaughter with their murderers"-that is, small cannons-even though the Wampanoags "offered no injury on their parts." The identity of the captain who committed this outrage went undocumented, but to the Wampanoags it hardly mattered. He was just one more in a string of overseas brutes who left them with "an inveterate malice to the English"-all of them.

Eager for riches, Dermer pressed on to the Vineyard anyway. When he went ashore, the landing party was attacked, and all but one of his men were killed. Dermer himself was badly injured before escaping to the mother ship, and died after sailing back to Virginia for medical treatment. The sailors who had remained on the main vessel during the attack lived to tell this tale. Tisquantum escaped from the fray alive, whereupon the Vineyard Wampanoags transferred him to their primary sachem, Ousamequin. The great leader knew this bilingual globe-trotter would be useful whenever the strangers returned.

Just months later, the Mayflower appeared off Cape Cod.
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The Wampanoags were deeply divided over what to do with these new arrivals, given the enslavement, murder, and disease that Europeans had inflicted on them. Ousamequin favored cultivating the English as military allies and sources of metal weaponry to fend off the Narragansett tribe to the west, who had escaped the epidemic and were using their newfound advantage in strength to reduce the Wampanoags to tributaries. In later years, Ousamequin frankly acknowledged that he was willing to have peace with the English because, as Plymouth's William Bradford and Edward Winslow recounted, "he has a potent adversary in the Narragansetts, that are at war with him, against whom he thinks we may be of some strength to him, for our pieces"-guns-"are terrible to them." Ousamequin also seems to have believed that the English had weaponized disease, which he hoped to put to Wampanoag use. At one point, according to the fur trader Thomas Morton, he asked his English friends to send the plague against another sachem-probably the Narragansett leader Canonicus-whose territories bordered the Wampanoags'.

Yet many Wampanoags bitterly disagreed with Ousamequin. Some of them attributed the epidemic to a curse put on them by a shipwrecked Frenchman whom they had held as a slave. According to New England's Memorial, an early volume of colonial history, the Frenchman had admonished the Indians "that God was angry with them for their wickedness, and would destroy them, and give their country to another people." A number of Wampanoags feared that the Pilgrims were conquerors of this prophecy and therefore favored cutting them off. Others, Epenow among them, saw the Pilgrims as belonging to the same class of men who had been slaving and slaughtering their way along the coast. Why allow such scoundrels to gain a foothold in Wampanoag country?

These tensions nearly destroyed Plymouth and the Wampanoag polity along with it. A Wampanoag sachem named Corbitant conspired with the Narragansetts to unseat Ousamequin and put Plymouth to the knife. It took an English military strike orchestrated by Ousamequin to snuff out this fire. A year later, Ousamequin warned Plymouth that Wampanoags from the Vineyard and Cape Cod were plotting with the Massachusett tribe to attack Plymouth and a small English fur-trade post to the north. He foiled the scheme by directing an English attack, this time against the Massachusett tribe. It was his way of warning Wampanoag dissidents that they would be next if they continued to undermine his leadership.

The so-called first Thanksgiving was the fruit of a political decision on Ousamequin's part. Violent power politics played a much more important role in shaping the Wampanoag-English alliance than the famous feast. At least in the short term, Ousamequin's league with the newcomers was the right gamble, insofar as the English helped to fend off the rival Narragansetts and uphold Ousamequin's authority. In the long term, however, it was a grave miscalculation. Plymouth and the other New England colonies would soon go on to conquer Ousamequin's people, just as the Frenchman's curse had augured and just as the Wampanoags who opposed the Pilgrims feared that they would.

Throughout the 19th century and much of the 20th, the work of most American historians contributed to a powerful narrative in which the Pilgrims laid the foundations for the United States so it could fulfill its manifest destiny. Since the 1960s, historians have approached the sources from a different angle, and serious, critical history tends to be hard on the living. Seeing Native Americans and other marginalized groups as our fellow citizens, and concerned with how triumphalist historical narratives have buttressed chauvinism in American foreign policy and white supremacy on U.S. soil, scholars have more and more focused on people of all complexions, classes, sexes, and conditions, not just the victors. It is not easy to recover the experiences of such historical actors given the silences and biases of records compiled overwhelmingly by powerful interests. Yet careful reading, resourcefulness, perseverance, and imagination sometimes can bring previously ignored or suppressed stories to the fore. The result is not only better history, but a better path forward for our society.

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familiar american account of the first thanksgiving

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harbor of the wampanoag community of patuxet

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prime mover of english colonization schemes

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In 1621, the Wampanoag Tribe Had Its Own Agenda

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In American lore, friendly Indians helped freedom-loving colonists. In real life, the Wampanoags had a problem they didn't know how to fix.

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In Thanksgiving pageants held at schools across the United States, children don headdresses colored with craft-store feathers and share tables with classmates wearing black construction paper hats. It's a tradition that pulls on a history passed down through the generations of what happened in Plymouth: local Native Americans welcomed the courageous, pioneering pilgrims to a celebratory feast.

But, as David Silverman writes in his new book This Land Is Their Land: The Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving, much of that story is a myth riddled with historical inaccuracies. Beyond that, Silverman argues that the telling and retelling of these falsehoods is deeply harmful to the Wampanoag Indians whose lives and society were forever damaged after the English arrived in Plymouth.

Silverman's book focuses on the Wampanoags. When the pilgrims landed at Plymouth in 1620, the sachem (chief) Ousamequin offered the new arrivals an entente, primarily as a way to protect the Wampanoags against their rivals, the Narragansetts. For 50 years, the alliance was tested by colonial land expansion, the spread of disease, and the exploitation of resources on Wampanoag land. Then, tensions ignited into war. Known as King Philip's War (or the Great Narragansett War), the conflict devastated the Wampanoags and forever shifted the balance of power in favor of European arrivals. Wampanoags today remember the Pilgrims' entry to their homeland as a day of deep mourning, rather than a moment of giving thanks.

We spoke with Silverman, a historian at George Washington University, about his research and the argument he makes in his book.

The Myth of Thanksgiving
How did you become interested in this story?
I've had a great many conversations with Wampanoag people, in which they talk about how burdensome Thanksgiving is for them, particularly for their kids. Wampanoag adults have memories of being a kid during Thanksgiving season, sitting in school, feeling invisible and having to wade through the nonsense that teachers were shoveling their way. They felt like their people's history as they understood it was being misrepresented. They felt that not only their classes, but society in general was making light of historical trauma which weighs around their neck like a millstone. Those stories really resonated with me.

What is the Thanksgiving myth?

The myth is that friendly Indians, unidentified by tribe, welcome the Pilgrims to America, teach them how to live in this new place, sit down to dinner with them and then disappear. They hand off America to white people so they can create a great nation dedicated to liberty, opportunity and Christianity for the rest of the world to profit. That's the story-it's about Native people conceding to colonialism. It's bloodless and in many ways an extension of the ideology of Manifest Destiny.

What are the most poignant inaccuracies in this story?

One is that history doesn't begin for Native people until Europeans arrive. People had been in the Americas for least 12,000 years and according to some Native traditions, since the beginning of time. And having history start with the English is a way of dismissing all that. The second is that the arrival of the Mayflower is some kind of first-contact episode. It's not. Wampanoags had a century of contact with Europeans-it was bloody and it involved slave raiding by Europeans. At least two and maybe more Wampanoags, when the Pilgrims arrived, spoke English, had already been to Europe and back and knew the very organizers of the Pilgrims' venture.

Most poignantly, using a shared dinner as a symbol for colonialism really has it backward. No question about it, Wampanoag leader Ousamequin reached out to the English at Plymouth and wanted an alliance with them. But it's not because he was innately friendly. It's because his people have been decimated by an epidemic disease, and Ousamequin sees the English as an opportunity to fend off his tribal rebels. That's not the stuff of Thanksgiving pageants. The Thanksgiving myth doesn't address the deterioration of this relationship culminating in one of the most horrific colonial Indian wars on record, King Philip's War, and also doesn't address Wampanoag survival and adaptation over the centuries, which is why they're still here, despite the odds.

The Thanksgiving Feast

How did the Great Dinner become the focal point of the modern Thanksgiving holiday?

For quite a long time, English people had been celebrating Thanksgivings that didn't involve feasting-they involved fasting and prayer and supplication to God. In 1769, a group of pilgrim descendants who lived in Plymouth felt like their cultural authority was slipping away as New England became less relevant within the colonies and the early republic, and wanted to boost tourism. So, they started to plant the seeds of this idea that the pilgrims were the fathers of America.

What really made it the story is that a publication mentioning that dinner published by the Rev. Alexander Young included a footnote that said, "This was the first Thanksgiving, the great festival of New England." People picked up on this footnote. The idea became pretty widely accepted, and Abraham Lincoln declared it a holiday during the Civil War to foster unity.

It gained purchase in the late 19th century, when there was an enormous amount of anxiety and agitation over immigration. The white Protestant stock of the United States was widely unhappy about the influx of European Catholics and Jews, and wanted to assert its cultural authority over these newcomers. How better to do that than to create this national founding myth around the Pilgrims and the Indians inviting them to take over the land?

This mythmaking was also impacted by the racial politics of the late 19th century. The Indian Wars were coming to a close and that was an opportune time to have Indians included in a national founding myth. You couldn't have done that when people were reading newspaper accounts on a regular basis of atrocious violence between white Americans and Native people in the West. What's more, during Reconstruction, that Thanksgiving myth allowed New Englanders to create this idea that bloodless colonialism in their region was the origin of the country, having nothing to do with the Indian Wars and slavery. Americans could feel good about their colonial past without having to confront the really dark characteristics of it.
Can you explain the discrepancies in English and Wampanoag conceptions of property?
It's incorrect as is widely assumed that native people had no sense of property. They didn't have private property, but they had community property, and they certainly understood where their people's land started and where it ended. And so, when Europeans come to the Americas and they buy land from the Wampanoags, the Wampanoags initially assume the English are buying into Wampanoag country, not that they're buying Wampanoag country out from under their feet.

Imagine a flotilla of Wampanoag canoes crosses the Atlantic and goes to England, and then the Wampanoags buy land from the English there. Has that land now passed out of the jurisdiction of England and become the Wampanoags'? No, that's ridiculous. But that's precisely what the English were assuming on this side of the Atlantic. Part of what King Philip's War was about is Wampanoag people saying, 'Enough, you're not going to turn us into a landless, subjugated people.'
Did all Wampanoags want to enter into alliance with the English?
From the very beginning, a sizable number of Wampanoags disagreed with Ousamequin's decision to reach out to [the English] and tried to undermine the alliance. Ousamequin puts down multiple plots to wipe out the colony and unseat him. Some Wampanoags say, 'Let's make an alliance with the Narragansetts and get rid of these English. They've been raiding our coast for decades, enslaving our people, carrying them off to unknown fates and they can't be trusted.' Some Wampanoags believed they caused epidemics and there were prophecies that this would be the end of the People.

When the English arrived, they entered a multilateral Indian political world in which the internal politics of the Wampanoag tribe and the intertribal politics of the Wampanoag tribe were paramount. To the degree the Wampanoags dealt with the English, it was to adjust the power dynamics of Indian country.
You write that during King Philip's War, efforts to unify different tribes against the settlers weren't always successful. Why was that?
The politics of Indian country are more important to native people than their differences with colonists. There were no 'Indians' when the English arrived. Native people didn't conceive of themselves as Indians-that's an identity that they have had to learn through their shared struggles with colleagues. And it takes a long time-they have been here for 12,000 plus years, and there are a lot of differences between them. Their focus is on their own people, not on the shared interests of Indians and very often, what's in the best interest of their own people is cutting deals with colonial powers with an eye towards combating their native rivals.
How does your telling of these events differ from other existing scholarship?
The main difference has to do with King Philip's War. The question is whether native people, led by Metacomet, or Philip as the English call him, were plotting a multi-tribal uprising against the English. I think they were. Some of my historian colleagues think it's a figment of paranoid English imagination. But I see a lot of warning signals building during the 1660s and 70s from Englishmen who lived cheek-by-jowl with Wampanoag people and were terrified of what they were seeing on the ground. I see a pattern of political meetings between native leaders who hated each other. And yet, they were getting together over and over and over again-it all adds up to me.

There's this tendency to see the English as the devils in all of this. I don't think there's any question they're in the wrong, but it doesn't let them off the hook to say that native people wouldn't take it anymore. And regardless of that, I think the evidence shows that native people had reached their limit and recognize that if they didn't rise up immediately, they were going to become landless subordinates to English authority.

This is about as contrary to the Thanksgiving myth that one can get. That's the story we should be teaching our kids. They should be learning about why native people reached that point, rather than this nonsense that native people willingly handed off their country to the invaders. It does damage to how our native countrymen and women feel as part of this country, it makes white Americans a lot less reflective about where their privilege comes from, and it makes us a lot less critical as a country when it comes to interrogating the rationales that leaders will marshal to act aggressively against foreign others. If we're taught to cut through colonial rhetoric we'll be better positioned to cut through modern colonial and imperial rhetoric.

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The Myths of the Thanksgiving Story and the Lasting Damage They Imbue

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In truth, massacres, disease and American Indian tribal politics are what shaped the Pilgrim-Indian alliance at the root of the holiday

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Linda Coombs

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First Thanksgiving - Boston City Hall Paul Weeden

Wampanoag people held many seasonal thanksgiving ceremonies

Wampanoag people have always held many seasonal thanksgiving ceremonies. But there is a big difference between these ancient and ongoing celebrations and the Pilgrims' first harvest festival which led to the establishment of the National holiday now known as Thanksgiving. For Wampanoag people, this holiday evokes painful feelings about the consequences they are forced to endure for European settlement and the establishment of America. Children in elementary classrooms learn that the Pilgrims had the right to this land. This is a distortion that deprives Wampanoag people of their history and ignores the devastating events that followed. Listen as Wampanoag people describe their own thanksgivings and the national holiday called Thanksgiving.

-- Ramona Peters
Mashpee Wampanoag

When Linda Coombs, Aquinnah Wampanoag historian, scholar, educator and artist, appeared at the New England American Studies Association's (NEASA) annual meeting this fall, she captured her audience by beginning her presentation with a joke. "Everybody knows that April showers bring May flowers. But what do Mayflowers bring?" Coombs said. The answer? "Pilgrims!"Probably that it's perceived that we welcomed them. Yeah, they think we were just standing there waiting for them and welcoming [them] and one guy handed them the turkey and another guy handed them the carving knife and they all went to dinner-it's just ridiculous! What really happened was there was no contact with them for six months. But we were watching them and seeing what they were doing. And it was Samoset who was from Maine and was down visiting who made the first contact-I always figured they sent the guy from out of town to do it! But then there was a feasting event the next fall that's been interpreted as the first Thanksgiving. But it wasn't even dubbed that till the 19th century.Over the years I held various titles. I started out as an interpreter and an artisan because in the Wampanoag Program we get to learn the 17th century technologies and skills because the staff creates the outdoors exhibit. Over the years I did foodways, and collections management and horticulture and wardrobe. At one point I oversaw the education component and then in 1996 I became the associate director.Yes, the 2020 event. When I wrote that [NEASC] speech I looked up the website and it was all pilgrim focused. The only mention of Natives was that Natives have lived here for thousands of years. To me that's just the thinking of a very large number of American people. That committee [planning the 400th anniversary events] started back in 2007 and there were 27 members on it and there were two Wampanoag people. And after a few years they both left. My impression is every time they suggested some Native component they were shot down, disregarded, glazed over. A Cherokee guy and an Aquinnah guy joined them a few years ago. In a conversation I had with the Cherokee guy he was saying, 'Oh, we can have a powwow! We can have the Wampanoag Nation singers and dancers.' And I'm thinking, what? Our part in this whole thing is going to be to sing and dance for them? After 400 years? Come on!Well, the way they see it or want to see it-or both. It's just time to be inclusive, you know?

The subject of pilgrims and Thanksgiving are particularly significant to the Wampanoag people who were the first to come in contact with the fleets of settler colonists who invaded the shores of the Wampanoag territory in what became Massachusetts. Coombs spent three decades with the Wampanoag Indigenous Program at Plimoth Plantation, serving as the program's associate director for 15 years. She has written several essays documenting colonial history from a Native American perspective and is a frequent speaker about the need for more accurate representations of colonial events including the first Thanksgiving and Columbus Day. She is director of the Aquinnah Cultural Center at the tribe's island homeland on what is now known as Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts, where she was born and grew up. She lives with her family in the Mashpee Wampanoag community on Cape Cod. She talked with Indian Country Today Media Network about Thanksgiving and the upcoming 400th anniversary of the arrival of the pilgrim settler colonists on Wampanoag territory.

What's your take on Thanksgiving; what do you do?
Well, years ago everyone used to go to the National Day of Mourning in Plymouth and it still goes on, but it's changed over the years. They've included black issues and gender issues and Latino issues, which in and of itself is fine except all of those groups have so many more people than we do-far more than Native Americans as a whole, so I think that day should have been kept just as a Native day because our issues get lost in the larger tsunami [of injustices]. Some people still go... On Martha's Vineyard, I think if people celebrate it at all, it's to have a turkey dinner with family. You could talk to 10 people and get 10 different answers. There are people who think similarly to me that the whole concept of Thanksgiving as it's generally seen or practiced in this country is kind of like a superficial layer over what's really on the ground. I think a lot of people get that.

What do you think is the most egregious misunderstanding about Thanksgiving?

What did you do at the Plimoth Plantation?

When did you leave, and why?

I was laid off in 2010.

Let's talk turkeys!
The way I look at the whole turkey thing is turkeys are one of our indigenous birds here, so I have no problem eating turkey any day of the year. They were one of the things we could get on a year-round basis. Squash, cranberries-all that comes from us.

But non-Natives don't know that or they don't think about that.
No, they don't.

At the NEASC meeting you said there isn't much Native representation in the planning for the 400th anniversary of the landing of the pilgrims at Plymouth Rock.

Are they really or is it just the way the dominant society sees things?

Interview with Linda Coombs by Gale Courey Toensing from Indian Country Today at:

This isn't about bashing pilgrims, which is something I've been accused of in a circuitous way. When I was younger working at the Plantation we used to say some pretty sassy things like, 'Oh, the English only bathed twice a year'-which I think was true-and I would add, 'whether they needed it or not.' And then I realized that's not good interpretation at all. And if I'm going to talk about English hygiene practices I need to be as accurate as I am when I talk about Wampanoag practices, because there are enough distortions in history and people don't always get the humor and sarcasm. That was one lesson I learned and I've always since worked toward that end-to be truly representational. On the other hand, when the English came here there are things that happened because they came here and they did hold certain attitudes toward us and had certain intentions. And I don't think it's right to cover it up and say, oh, they all sat down and had a lovely turkey dinner and lived happily ever after.
The 2020 website says: 'Be a part of Plymouth turning 400! Rediscover the partnership formed between the Wampanoag Nation and the Pilgrims... It's an American story and a national legacy.'
Oh God! Those are the words that are so phony!

What can be done about educating people about history?
I'm not sure I have an answer. Sometimes it just gets lost in the wind, you know? But-and it's not just me-we're not giving up. We write, we speak, we teach classes, we work through the museums we work at, and just try to reach people that way. We don't count in the everyday life of America and I think that's a perception that has to change. http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2013/11/28/wampanoag-historian-talks-thanksgiving-and-upcoming-400th-anniversary-152455

Interview with Earl Mills, Sr. - Mashpee Wampanoag

Earl Mills, Senior
A Native view on Thanksgiving

With little mention of the native population, the Wampanoag presence was virtually relegated to the background, and the Pilgrim presence promoted to the fore.

"The Wampanoag, we sometimes forget, were the majority population," Ms. Brennan says. "In the 19th and 20th centuries, Thanksgiving was really a tool for Americanization amid the great influx of immigration. It was supposed to bind this diverse population into one union."

And so, over the centuries, that first Thanksgiving took on a shape of mythological proportions. But how Americans celebrate today has little to do with the convergence of two different populations across an enormous cultural divide.

One man who would like people to know more about the actual Thanksgiving is descended from the Wampanoag Indians who were such an essential part of the first Thanksgiving celebration.

He steps out onto the porch in front of the Flume restaurant in Plymouth and looks south. He lifts his face - marked by deep lines and dark, heavy eyes - toward the open sky.

"I'm looking down the river here now, and the sun is bright, and the tide is high, and the wind is blowing," he says. "My people would say that is the spirit coming from the southwest, where the corn and beans and squash come from. So we thank the spirit world - the fire, the moon, the sky, the sun, the earth."

This man's name is Earl Mills Sr., and he is a retired high school teacher and athletic director, the author of two books, and the owner of the restaurant.

But Mr. Mills has another name and another job. As Flying Eagle, he is the chief of the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe.

Still, he doesn't see himself as caught between two cultures. Instead, he embraces both.

With equal relish, Mills will spend an afternoon walking in peaceful silence, as his ancestors did, or an evening listening to the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

He has always spent a lot of time thinking about the history of his people, however, and the confusion about what really happened back in 1621.

"Things have changed so much," he says, choosing his words carefully. "Even Thanksgiving has changed. Young people today don't remember what it was like 50 or 100 years ago.

"Then, we picked our own cranberries from our own cranberry bogs, and we caught rabbits and hung them outside our garage doors."
It is not just the eating, but the gathering together, preparing, and thanking that matters, Mills says. "The role of food is important, but it's gotten to the point where we become gluttons.... We could spend a lot more time really thinking about what's going on in our world and giving more thanks."
Mills points to the Plymouth Rock on the town's waterfront as an example of differing views. The rock, first placed in 1774, is a monument to the landing of the Mayflower, the ship that brought the Pilgrims to Massachusetts 382 years ago.

"They're saying this is 'America's hometown,' that this is the rock [the colonists] stepped on," Mills says. "I'm not against that, and it's nice to have the rock, but don't try to make it true when it's really a symbol, a mythology."
He's also disturbed by the fact that many people still don't know or seem quick to dismiss the native side of the story. "When I talk about Thanksgiving, [some people think] it happened too long ago to matter," Mills says. "But when they talk about it, well, it's history." Still, the Wampanoag now have many more opportunities to contribute to historical accounts of the region, offering insight into the traditions of their people that have been passed down orally through the generations. "The two groups are working very well together in recent years," Mills says. "And those connections turn into a circle. No matter how small, how minor, they all contribute to the human beings that we are."
In late 1621, remembering the first Thanksgiving gathering, Edward Winslow expressed a sentiment similar to Mills's call for sharing and giving thanks:"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."

Source:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/1127/p13s02-lign.html/(page)/2

In the culture of the Wampanoag Indians, who inhabited the area around Cape Cod, "thanksgiving" was an everyday activity.

"We as native people [traditionally] have thanksgivings as a daily, ongoing thing," says Linda Coombs, associate director of the Wampanoag program at Plimoth Plantation. "Every time anybody went hunting or fishing or picked a plant, they would offer a prayer or acknowledgment."

But for the 52 colonists - who had experienced a year of disease, hunger, and diminishing hopes - their bountiful harvest was cause for a special celebration to give thanks.

"Neither the English people nor the native people in 1621 knew they were having the first Thanksgiving," Ms. Coombs says. No one knew that the details would interest coming generations.

"We're not sure why Massasoit and the 90 men ended up coming to Plimoth," Coombs says. "There's an assumption that they were invited, but nowhere in the passage does it say they were. And the idea that they sat down and lived happily ever after is, well, untrue. The relationship between the English and the Wampanoag was very complex."

Found at: http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/1127/p13s02-lign.html/(page)/2

The Suppressed Speech of Wamsutta James, a Wampanoag Indian

In 1970 Wamsutta James, a Wampanoag Indian, was invited to speak at Plymouth Rock during the annual reenactment of Thanksgiving in Plymouth Massachusetts which started in 1921 and has since become a large tourist attraction. During this annual event people gather at a church on the site of the Pilgrims' original meeting house, in 17th century costume, and after prayers and a sermon they march to Plymouth Rock. But when the Commonwealth of Massachusetts anniversary planners reviewed Wamasutta James speech, they would not let him give it. In the place of this speech, James was offered an alternative, written by a public relations person, but he refused to be censored and withdrew from participating in the celebration. This speech is known as "The Suppressed Speech of Wamsutta (Frank B.) James". It is also known to be the beginning of the National Day of Mourning. This is his speech:

"I speak to you as a man -- a Wampanoag Man. I am a proud man, proud of my ancestry, my accomplishments won by a strict parental direction ("You must succeed - your face is a different color in this small Cape Cod community!"). I am a product of poverty and discrimination from these two social and economic diseases. I, and my brothers and sisters, have painfully overcome, and to some extent we have earned the respect of our community. We are Indians first - but we are termed "good citizens." Sometimes we are arrogant but only because society has pressured us to be so.

It is with mixed emotion that I stand here to share my thoughts. This is a time of celebration for you - celebrating an anniversary of a beginning for the white man in America. A time of looking back, of reflection. It is with a heavy heart that I look back upon what happened to my People.

Even before the Pilgrims landed it was common practice for explorers to capture Indians, take them to Europe and sell them as slaves for 220 shillings apiece. The Pilgrims had hardly explored the shores of Cape Cod for four days before they had robbed the graves of my ancestors and stolen their corn and beans. Mourt's Relation describes a searching party of sixteen men. Mourt goes on to say that this party took as much of the Indians' winter provisions as they were able to carry.

Massasoit, the great Sachem of the Wampanoag, knew these facts, yet he and his People welcomed and befriended the settlers of the Plymouth Plantation. Perhaps he did this because his Tribe had been depleted by an epidemic. Or his knowledge of the harsh oncoming winter was the reason for his peaceful acceptance of these acts. This action by Massasoit was perhaps our biggest mistake. We, the Wampanoag, welcomed you, the white man, with open arms, little knowing that it was the beginning of the end; that before 50 years were to pass, the Wampanoag would no longer be a free people.

What happened in those short 50 years? What has happened in the last 300 years? History gives us facts and there were atrocities; there were broken promises - and most of these centered around land ownership. Among ourselves we understood that there were boundaries, but never before had we had to deal with fences and stone walls. But the white man had a need to prove his worth by the amount of land that he owned. Only ten years later, when the Puritans came, they treated the Wampanoag with even less kindness in converting the souls of the so-called "savages." Although the Puritans were harsh to members of their own society, the Indian was pressed between stone slabs and hanged as quickly as any other "witch."

And so down through the years there is record after record of Indian lands taken and, in token, reservations set up for him upon which to live. The Indian, having been stripped of his power, could only stand by and watch while the white man took his land and used it for his personal gain. This the Indian could not understand; for to him, land was survival, to farm, to hunt, to be enjoyed. It was not to be abused. We see incident after incident, where the white man sought to tame the "savage" and convert him to the Christian ways of life. The early Pilgrim settlers led the Indian to believe that if he did not behave, they would dig up the ground and unleash the great epidemic again.

The white man used the Indian's nautical skills and abilities. They let him be only a seaman -- but never a captain. Time and time again, in the white man's society, we Indians have been termed "low man on the totem pole."

Has the Wampanoag really disappeared? There is still an aura of mystery. We know there was an epidemic that took many Indian lives - some Wampanoags moved west and joined the Cherokee and Cheyenne. They were forced to move. Some even went north to Canada! Many Wampanoag put aside their Indian heritage and accepted the white man's way for their own survival. There are some Wampanoag who do not wish it known they are Indian for social or economic reasons.

What happened to those Wampanoags who chose to remain and live among the early settlers? What kind of existence did they live as "civilized" people? True, living was not as complex as life today, but they dealt with the confusion and the change. Honesty, trust, concern, pride, and politics wove themselves in and out of their [the Wampanoags'] daily living. Hence, he was termed crafty, cunning, rapacious, and dirty.

History wants us to believe that the Indian was a savage, illiterate, uncivilized animal. A history that was written by an organized, disciplined people, to expose us as an unorganized and undisciplined entity. Two distinctly different cultures met. One thought they must control life; the other believed life was to be enjoyed, because nature decreed it. Let us remember, the Indian is and was just as human as the white man. The Indian feels pain, gets hurt, and becomes defensive, has dreams, bears tragedy and failure, suffers from loneliness, needs to cry as well as laugh. He, too, is often misunderstood.

The white man in the presence of the Indian is still mystified by his uncanny ability to make him feel uncomfortable. This may be the image the white man has created of the Indian; his "savageness" has boomeranged and isn't a mystery; it is fear; fear of the Indian's temperament!

High on a hill, overlooking the famed Plymouth Rock, stands the statue of our great Sachem, Massasoit. Massasoit has stood there many years in silence. We the descendants of this great Sachem have been a silent people. The necessity of making a living in this materialistic society of the white man caused us to be silent. Today, I and many of my people are choosing to face the truth. We ARE Indians!

Although time has drained our culture, and our language is almost extinct, we the Wampanoags still walk the lands of Massachusetts. We may be fragmented, we may be confused. Many years have passed since we have been a people together. Our lands were invaded. We fought as hard to keep our land as you the whites did to take our land away from us. We were conquered, we became the American prisoners of war in many cases, and wards of the United States Government, until only recently.

Our spirit refuses to die. Yesterday we walked the woodland paths and sandy trails. Today we must walk the macadam highways and roads. We are uniting We're standing not in our wigwams but in your concrete tent. We stand tall and proud, and before too many moons pass we'll right the wrongs we have allowed to happen to us.

We forfeited our country. Our lands have fallen into the hands of the aggressor. We have allowed the white man to keep us on our knees. What has happened cannot be changed, but today we must work towards a more humane America, a more Indian America, where men and nature once again are important; where the Indian values of honor, truth, and brotherhood prevail.

You the white man are celebrating an anniversary. We the Wampanoags will help you celebrate in the concept of a beginning. It was the beginning of a new life for the Pilgrims. Now, 350 years later it is a beginning of a new determination for the original American: the American Indian.

There are some factors concerning the Wampanoags and other Indians across this vast nation. We now have 350 years of experience living amongst the white man. We can now speak his language. We can now think as a white man thinks. We can now compete with him for the top jobs. We're being heard; we are now being listened to. The important point is that along with these necessities of everyday living, we still have the spirit, we still have the unique culture, we still have the will and, most important of all, the determination to remain as Indians. We are determined, and our presence here this evening is living testimony that this is only the beginning of the American Indian, particularly the Wampanoag, to regain the position in this country that is rightfully ours.

Wamsutta

September 10, 1970

Thanksgiving Traditions in the Wampanoag tribe

Some people believe that the Pilgrims celebrated the "first" Thanksgiving with the Wampanoag. However, the Wampanoag have a tradition and way of giving thanks that began much, much earlier than the harvest festival the Pilgrims and Wampanoag shared in the 1620s. It has been documented, in fact, that our Tribe has lived on the lands we still live on (called Aquinnah on the island of Martha's Vineyard) for at least twelve thousand years!

Read what tribal elder Gladys Widdiss has to say about the Wampanoag and thanksgiving:

"Every day (is) a day of thanksgiving to the Wampanoag . . .(We) give thanks to the dawn of the new day, at the end of the day, to the sun, to the moon, for rain for helping crops grow. . . There (is) always something to be thankful for. .. Giving thanks comes naturally for the Wampanoag."

These thanksgiving celebrations within the Tribe continue today. In addition to daily thanks there have always been set times for celebration that coincided with changes of season and harvests times. Our New Year comes at the Spring planting time. Summer is celebrated with Strawberry Thanksgiving, at the time when the first wild berry ripens. Green Bean Harvest and Green Corn Harvest come at mid-summer. Cranberry Harvest celebrates the ripening of the last wild berry. A ceremony is held around the time of Winter solstice as well. The harvest celebrations are held after the work has been completed. The celebrations held at these different points in the year are times of reflection and a prayer of thanks to the Creator for providing sustenance for our people. Our celebrations have always also included singing, dancing, and the sharing of food throughout the community.

Gladys Widdiss goes on to further explain the importance of this thanksgiving:

"With Native Americans you do not separate the spiritual from the rest of your life. You're very involved with who you are, where you came from , and where you are going. We have special holidays or festivals, but every day is a day of thanksgiving." [1]

She gives this example of giving thanks that her grandfather set:

"We had only the one wood stove downstairs. I remember (my grandfather) would get up and go downstairs each morning in the middle of winter. No matter if it was snowing or raining or sleeting, he opened every window in the house at least for five minutes. Then he would dance and sign to give thanks for the fire." [2]

The U.S. National Thanksgiving Holiday

Now read what another Wampanoag tribal member has to say about the national holiday of Thanksgiving celebrated each November:

"This is a time . . . to look back, a time of reflection. It is with a heavy heart that I look back at what happened to my people." - Frank James, Aquinnah Wampanoag, from a speech James was banned from delivery at a conference in 1972

Mashpee Wampanoag letter from the Chairman to the community
Thanksgiving Day 2012
Dear Tribal Community,

Warm greetings to you and your family on this Thanksgiving Day 2012. The Thanksgiving holiday is a complicated day for our people. We are forever intertwined with the American Thanksgiving myth, however inaccurate it may be. Some of our people choose to observe this day as a Day of Mourning. Some choose to celebrate in a thoroughly American way. Many choose a different path, spending the day with family and friends, but acknowledging our unique history and connection to this day.

Thanksgiving is not something we as Wampanoag people do on a single day, it is a way of life. Every day we give thanks to the Creator, thanks to our ancestors, and thanks to the natural world around us. Today is no different. We give thanks.

We strive every day to continue in the ways of our ancestors: welcoming people and treating them with dignity and respect. Helping each other in any way we can. Creating a better future for seven generations to come.

Today and every day, please join me in giving thanks to our ancestors, who, despite attempts to eliminate their presence on this earth, persevered and made it possible for us to be here today. Thanks to our Tribal family, our Elders for their wisdom and guidance; to our Youth and their hard work to make their way in this modern world by learning the ways of their ancestors while also getting the education they need to provide a better future for themselves and their Tribal family; and to all Tribal citizens who work hard every day to provide services to those in need, preserve our history and culture, and lift our whole Tribal nation up with positivity and respect.

No matter how you choose to observe this day, please know this: I am thankful for you. I hope that you are surrounded by your loved ones and have a blessed day.

Kutaputunumuw;

Cedric Cromwell
Qaqeemasq (Running Bear)

Source:

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First Thanksgiving - Boston City Hall Paul Weeden Wampanoag people held many seasonal thanksgiving ceremonies Wampanoag people have always held many seasonal thanksgiving ceremonies. But there is a big difference between these ancient and ongoing celebrations and the Pilgrims' first harvest festival which led to the establishment of the National holiday now known as Thanksgiving.

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Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is a national holiday that takes place on the fourth Thursday in November. But why do we celebrate Thanksgiving? And what is the meaning behind it?

People across the world have been celebrating and giving thanks for thousands of years. In this country, long before English colonists arrived, Native People celebrated many different days of thanksgiving, including, for example, a "Strawberry Thanksgiving" and a "Green Corn Thanksgiving."

The English also had a long tradition of thanksgiving. They declared days of prayer to thank God when something good happened. For example, the English declared a day of thanksgiving in the summer of 1623 when a gentle rain ended a long drought.

Likewise, in the fall of 1621, when their labors were rewarded with a bountiful harvest after a year of sickness and scarcity, the Pilgrims gave thanks to God. They also celebrated their bounty with a tradition called the Harvest Home. In a letter to a friend in England, "E.W." (Pilgrim Edward Winslow) wrote the only record of the celebration that survives:

"Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that we might after a more special manner rejoice together, after we had gathered the fruits 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, amongst other recreations, we exercised our arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and among the rest their greatest king Massasoit, with some 90 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 on 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."

Winslow's Letter in Mourt's Relation (ed. Heath), 82

During the celebration, Massasoit, an important sachem (leader) of the Wampanoag People, along with 90 of his men, joined the English for three days of entertainment and feasting. We don't know for sure why the Wampanoag joined the gathering or exactly what activities went on during those three days. We do know, however, that the celebration occurred sometime between September 21 and November 9, 1621. Later, in the 19th century, the event entered American popular imagination as the First Thanksgiving.

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Thanksgiving is a national holiday that takes place on the fourth Thursday in November. But why do we celebrate Thanksgiving? And what is the meaning behind it? People across the world have been celebrating and giving thanks for thousands of years.

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Native People speak about issues relevant to them - CSPAN

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Native People speak about issues relevant to them - CSPAN

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Native Americans spoke about their culture and history and their present day concerns.

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This Land is My Land? The Legacy of Early Interactions Between Native Americans and Colonists

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This Land is My Land? The Legacy of Early Interactions Between Native Americans and Colonists

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The Corps Network's Moving Forward Initiative - supported by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation - seeks to address bias and structural racism in the conservation workforce and help increase the employment of young adults of color in public lands management and conservation-related careers. As part of this initiative, we aim to provide information to help people develop a foundation to understand the history, policies, practices and societal dynamics that have shaped our country and the conservation field. This blog will explore the relationships between Native Americans and the first permanent British settlements in the present-day United States. This week, as we celebrate Thanksgiving - a holiday built around the lore of peaceful and mutually-beneficial relationships between Native Americans and Pilgrims - we feel it's important to add our voice to the growing conversation about the inaccuracies of these stories. The British - who would later become the first "American citizens" - viewed the indigenous people as subordinate and uncivilized due to their nomadic lifestyles and "underutilization" of the land. The settlers' hunger for expansion drove them to pursue goals of eradication. They took actions which displaced native peoples and redefined tribes' relationships with ancestral lands. Over a period of 300 years, from 1609 to 1900, Native American tribes went from inhabiting the entire land area, to living on specifically defined "native reservations." Long before the founding of the United States, countless acres were taken through illegal treaties, trickery, and bloodshed. These preliminary encounters between Native Americans and colonists laid the foundation for a tradition of land grabbing that repeated itself through the Revolutionary War of 1776, and later through policies of the United States federal government. The phenomenon of taking land from the Native Americans under the banner of supremacy is highly relevant to the Moving Forward Initiative. European settlement of North America altered the way people had interacted with the land for millennia, and proved devastating for indigenous communities and their people. The structural dynamics responsible for the erosion of indigenous land sovereignty continues to the present. Today, exposure to environmental degradation is a concern for Native Americans residing on reservations. However, barriers, including explicit and implicit biases, have historically prevented native voices from participating fully in conservation and preservation discussions. Meanwhile, their historical and sacred sites are celebrated as treasures of America's "public lands."
Native Americans arrived in the Americas about 15,000 years ago. It's difficult to quantify the population of indigenous people inhabiting North America prior to European arrival in the late 15 th century; estimates range from 4 million to over 100 million. What is certain, however, is that their numbers greatly dwindled following contact with white settlers.

European empires began exploring the New World over 500 years ago, laying claim to land and riches for their respective crowns. Dutch and French settlers established mutually-beneficial trading relationships with indigenous people in present-day Canada and the Ohio River Valley. In contrast, the Spanish initially treated the native peoples of South and Central America as enemies to be eradicated in order to take control of the region's natural bounty of gold. However, the Spanish turned toward a policy of assimilation through Christianity in the early 1500s. By the mid-16 th century, Spanish priests were successfully " missionizing " the native people in established communities. Much intermingling took place between the two groups through marriage and reproduction, creating a majority population of mestizos.

The Coronation of Powhatan - John Cadsby Chapman (1835)

The English at Jamestown and the Algonquian-speaking tribes inhabiting the area, led by Chief Wahunsunacawh, lived in relative peace for the first few years after English settlement. Unfamiliar with the Algonquian language, or simply unwilling to learn, the white settlers used the name "Powhatan" for Wahunsunacawh and called the tribes of his kingdom "Powhatans." Neither group desired military conflict, as fighting would distract from other goals, mainly wealth accumulation for the English and maintenance of chiefdom for the Powhatans.

Conflict arose at the end of 1609 when the English found themselves without enough food. Attempts to raid the Powhatans' food stores proved largely unsuccessful; nearly all of the settlers died of starvation in the winter of 1609-1610. With supplies and numbers depleted to almost nothing, and the sobering realization that Virginia would not yield the same mineral riches as discovered by the Spanish in Latin America, the Jamestown settlement abandoned the colony and sailed back to England in 1610. But, while journeying down the James River, the group encountered Lord De La Warr, sent from England with ships of supplies.

Although peace negotiations appeared temporarily successful, skirmishes continued between the English and native peoples as settlers continued to push westward. Opechancanough, who assumed leadership of the Powhatans following the first Anglo-Powhatan War, orchestrated a major surprise attack on English settlements in the spring of 1622, inciting the Second Anglo-Powhatan War. This maneuver killed nearly one-third of the settlers in Virginia. For the next decade, the English continuously attacked and raided North American settlements, greatly depleting the number of indigenous people living in the area. When a peace agreement was finally reached in 1632, the Powhatans found themselves permanently displaced from the present-day Chesapeake Peninsula.

This map indicates the domains of New England's native inhabitants in 1670, a few years before King Philip's War. Image credit: "English Settlements in America" by OpenStaxCollege, CC BY 4.0. - Via Khan Academy

Cultural differences and misunderstandings played a large role in the conflicts over land. When treaties were signed between the Pilgrims and Natives, the Pilgrims sought to own the land through privately held property rights. Meanwhile, the Natives thought the Pilgrims simply wanted permission to hunt or farm the land, as Native property values centered around communal use by and for the group.

The details of the events taking place in the four years following the incident at Taunton in 1671 remain unclear. However, in the Spring of 1675, all-out warfare commenced between Metacomet's faction of tribes and the Pilgrims. Known as King Phillip's War, fighting only lasted fourteen months, but brought unspeakable damage and loss of life. The war ended in August of 1676 when the British beheaded Chief Metacomet.

Of the roughly 4,000 individuals killed over the fourteen-month period, three-quarters were Native Americans. The handful of Natives surviving either fled west, were executed, or sold into slavery. Similar to the outcomes of the Second Anglo-Powhatan war, this defeat of the New England indigenous populations essentially ended their inhabitance of the New England region.

The history of warfare, trickery and misunderstandings outlined above are not unique to Jamestown and Plymouth. Beginning with Jamestown, a 350-year pattern of near-constant conflict brought all but a handful of native lands under the jurisdiction of the United States. Over the course of the nineteen and twentieth centuries, a series of legislative actions and legal mandates attempted to distribute, and in many cases, shrink, the land held by indigenous peoples. Of the 2.3 billion acres composing the United States, Native American reservations comprise approximately 56 million acres, or less than 3 percent of total land mass.
For Your Consideration As you read this blog, here are some questions for you to consider:

1. Read this opinion on Native American Heritage Month by a citizen of the Blackfeet Nation. What are your feelings on the observance of cultural and ethnic recognition "holidays?" What is their purpose? How are they useful, and in what ways might they be problematic?

2. What do you know about the indigenous people of your state or region? What do you know about their culture, traditions or beliefs?

3. Spend some time on this interactive map which chronicles the loss of Native American land from 1784 to the present. You can click on specific tracks of land to learn when and how it was seceded, or designated a reservation. As you familiarize yourself with the map, what stands out to you?
: Were there any Native American settlements in your town or city? What became of these places and people? Where are they today?

4. What do you know about the relationship between the U.S. Government and Tribal Governments?

5. In American schools, many of us grew up learning "sanitized" versions of historical events and inaccuracies about Native peoples and their cultures. What can be done to correct some of these past teachings and increase awareness? What can schools do today to better educate students?

6. For Corps working on Public Lands: How, if in any way, does this narrative conflict with the traditional narrative surrounding public lands? What role can you play in ensuring an honest and holistic conversation about the historical formation of America's public lands system?

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This Land is My Land? The Legacy of Early Interactions Between Native Americans and Colonists - The Corps Network

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The Corps Network's Moving Forward Initiative - supported by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation - seeks to address bias and structural racism in the conservation workforce and help increase the employment of young adults of color in public lands management and conservation-related careers.

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http://traffic.libsyn.com/benfranklinsworld/184_Silverman.mp3

Early North America was a place rife with violent conflict. Between the 17th and 19th centuries we can see a lot of conflict between different Native American peoples, Native American peoples and colonists, colonists from one empire versus colonists from another empire, settlers from one state quarreling with settlers from another state, and in the 19th century, we also see strife between Americans, Canadians, and Mexicans.

Today, we're going to explore some of the causes of the violent conflict that took place in early America by looking specifically at Native America and the ways Native Americans used guns to shape their lives and the course of North American and indigenous history.

Our guide for this exploration is David J. Silverman, a professor of history at George Washington University and the author of Thundersticks: Firearms and the Violent Transformation of Native America.

About the Show

Ben Franklin's World is a podcast about early American history.

It is a show for people who love history and for those who want to know more about the historical people and events that have impacted and shaped our present-day world.

Each episode features a conversation with a historian who helps us shed light on important people and events in early American history.

Ben Franklin's World is a production of the Omohundro Institute.

Episode Summary

David J. Silverman, a professor of history at George Washington University and the author of Thundersticks: Firearms and the Violent Transformation of Native America, joins us for an exploration of Native America and the ways Native Americans used guns to shape their lives and the course of North American and indigenous history.

During our investigation of Native America, David reveals information about the arrival of guns in early America and Native Americans' interest in them; Details about Native American's trade for guns; And, the ways Native Americans used guns to revolutionize their lives.

What You'll Discover

The arrival of guns in North America

Native American interest in guns

Features Native Americans wanted in firearms

Native American-European/Euro-American gun trade

The Haudenosaunee relationship with guns

Why the Dutch traded firearms to Native Americans

How Haudenosaunee use of firearms impacted the lives of their neighbors

Southeastern Native Americans and firearms

Southeastern slave wars during the 17th century

Why the Southeastern slave wars turned into anti-colonial wars

Pontiac's Rebellion

Firearms and the Nootka people

The Nootka raid on the ship Boston

Overview of how Native Americans used firearms to revolutionize their lives

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Bil would like to know, in your opinion, what might have happened if Native peoples had rejected European and American firearms and stuck with their traditional weapons, ways of war, and hunting?
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Episode 184: David J. Silverman, Thundersticks: Firearms and the Violent Transformation of Native America - Ben Franklin's World

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http://traffic.libsyn.com/benfranklinsworld/184_Silverman.mp3 Early North America was a place rife with violent conflict. Between the 17th and 19th centuries we can see a lot of conflict between different Native American peoples, Native American peoples and colonists, colonists from one empire versus colonists from another empire, settlers from one state quarreling with settlers from another state, and in the 19th century, we also see strife between Americans, Canadians, and Mexicans.

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Native Americans spoke about their culture and history and their present day concerns.

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Native Americans spoke about their culture and history and their present day concerns.

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Native Americans spoke about their culture and history and their present day concerns.