Everyone knew all about the plague in colonial America. Even before the Mayflower sailed, King James of England gave thanks to "Almighty God in his great goodness and bounty towards us," for sending "this wonderful plague among the savages." Today it is no surprise that not one in a hundred of my college students has ever heard of the plague. Unless they read LIFE AND LIBERTY or PAST AND PRESENT, no student can come away from these books thinking of Indians as people who made an impact on North America, who lived here in considerable numbers, who settled, in short, and were then killed by disease or arms.
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Throughout the nation, elementary school children still enact Thanksgiving every fall as our national origin myth, complete with Pilgrim hats made of construction paper and Indian braves with feathers in their hair. An early Massachusetts colonist, Colonel Thomas Aspinwall, advises us not to settle for this whitewash of feel - good - history.
http://www.trinicenter.com/historicalvi ... giving.htm
This is just one article of many written on the subject of the Thanksgiving Hoax. So the next time you are eating with your family, gathered for those nice and proper culture-building activities that you have, don't let someone interrupt that true and important celebration with lies about pilgrims and "injuns" eating together in peace every year. Explore the true nature of the myth.
Talk about how they would have starved if the generous Native Americans hadn't shown up with the methods of farming and food that spared the poor settlers. Talk about how the settlers ungratefully broke the feast with their fear of "savagery" and how war was shortly after waged upon the very people that saved their lives.
Help America begin the path to healing from a most disastrous and low start. We have a looooooong way to go and a lot of atonement to try to make. Let's at least try. It seems we have barely even made an effort yet and it's been hundreds of years. The hoaxes began a long time ago. And writing pathetic stories about visiting the moon, or evil knife-wielding beards that can hijack airplanes is not going to do any good.
As Americans, we have to start humbling ourselves to our disastrously shameful and ruinous past before we are ever going to find a foundation on which to build a functioning "Nation". (What "Nation" is American, anyway? Isn't "American" a fake nationality thrown together as membership of a terroristic gang that wanted to form a republic - and subsequently was taken over by larger gangs anyway?)
Here is an interesting tidbit about the Wampanoag people and the initial conflict. It is a good idea to make note that there are constantly white-people movements popping up and trying to represent tribes that they have no business representing. Perhaps dialogue starts by not putting words in other peoples' mouths at the onset.
-http://www.pilgrimhall.org/daymourn.htmThis was a missed opportunity to begin a dialogue between the Wampanoags and the Pilgrims. Instead the `Day of Mourning’ began, and continues to this day
Well, thanks for thinking about the difference between fictional Thanksgiving and real Thanksgiving.
Your fellow patriot, hp