|
|
A Texas Thanksgiving
|
The celebration of the 1621 Plymouth feast is commemorated, via Abraham
Lincoln's proclamation, as the U.S.A.'s National Day of Thanksgiving.
Naturally, much of the mythos surrounding such a symbolic event is bunkum, but
the outline is accurate. The Pilgrims had migrated to Massachusetts seeking
greater religious freedom. When there, they allied with the Wampanoag Indians
who used the Pilgrims as trading partners and muscle to counter
the Narragansett people who they were in conflict with.
The Pilgrims had endured a very hard year so, before the winter set in,
they held an autumnal harvest feast to celebrate surviving their struggles. It is unclear why, but numbers of the Wampanoag joined in with the
celebration and thus the outline of Thanksgiving was laid out: religious
freedom, the difficulty settlers faced, complex relationships with the
Indians, and the wild nature of the American wilderness.
Harvest feasts were common in the more aquarian older times. They marked
bringing in the harvest and enjoying the last few days before the long, brutal
winter arrived. As a result, harvest fests were held in many areas and,
Americans being Americans, many of them have
claimed the title
of the 'first' Thanksgiving. Well, Lincoln put an end to that trivia, but any
excuse for a fall festival, I guess.
By the way, the above picture is
the Spanish/Texan entry
into the First Thanksgiving derby. However, it is not a harvest festival.
Instead, a number of Spanish colonists moved north from Mexico intending to
settle near present day El Paso. They had a very difficult crossing of
the Chihuahuan Desert and were greatly relieved when they finally got to
the waters of the Rio Grande. After recovering from their ordeal, they held a
feast. It was also attended by the local Manso people. What would they have
eaten at that Thanksgiving meal? From the above linked article:
Waterfowl were plentiful in the area; an earlier explorer had noted that
the Manso ate cranes, ducks and geese. Primarily foragers, the Manso ate
“whatever was available,” Ortega says. “I mean anything. Turtles, cactus,
deer, rabbit and probably snakes.” But they also cultivated corn, beans and
squash in tiny fields along the river, she adds. It’s also possible that our
favorite Thanksgiving poultry made an appearance. “The Manso would have been
raising turkeys, and [the Europeans] would have taken them.”
