This is the 400th anniversary of the first Thanksgiving in 1621. Pilgrims and natives together bonded over that first feast. There, America was invented. Today is a time of gratitude and a moment for America to consider the important lessons from our nation’s origins.
The people and landscapes of the first Thanksgiving reveal much about the social and geopolitical world that existed along those shores of change. There were Separatist “saints” seeking religious freedom. There were merchant “strangers” seeking economic opportunity. On land, there were inhabitants of thousands of years who were similarly under duress. All told, mutual survival in that intercultural world was no less an imperative as it is now.
Ongoing research views the first Thanksgiving as a pivotal diplomatic moment among Pilgrims and natives — eclipsing the ritual meal itself. For several days, there were provisions, speeches, and games. This conclave ratified “a much firmer peace” agreed to earlier in March to manage the harsh elements facing the Pilgrims and the hostilities facing natives from other tribes. The diplomatic agreement had been holding up, and the autumn banquet ordained it through harvest ritual and prayerful gratitude. The event was as much a “Peacemaking” as a Thanksgiving.
What did that 400-year-old diplomacy look like?
First, there was diplomacy among the arguing passengers of the Mayflower. Their off-course voyage landed far from the law and order of Virginia. They might have turned on themselves. Sober to this danger, they remained aboard ship until resolving to “combine … together into a civil Body Politick … for the general Good.” Each sovereign equally ascribed to this Mayflower Compact, a historic milestone of Magna Carta’s significance informing ages to come.
Second, there was diplomacy to be tried on land. To those spying from the forest, the presence of Mayflower women and children indicated nonthreatening intentions, and the Pilgrims’ obvious distress showed weakness. The natives calculated that a “pacting” with these aliens might intimidate nearby tribal enemies. The Pilgrims’ obvious distress further drew out the natives’ humanitarian spirit without which the seed of democracy on that and rocky land would have perished within weeks.
The 100th anniversary sadly revealed the “pacting” as a less-than-stable, shifting series of compromises and conflicts witnessing wars and native losses. Their efforts at diplomacy worked, but not always and never without complexity; such is the case in our time. Today’s historians continue to seek a fuller idea of New England’s history against challenges to the intercultural progress of 1621.
The 200th anniversary in 1820 at Plymouth featured famed orator Daniel Webster proclaiming, “We feel that we are on the spot where the first scene of our history was laid.” Plymouth was regarded as America’s hometown by an ever-expanding country. Following the cataclysmic Civil War, Thanksgiving family gatherings demonstrated the national desire for reconciliation. The beloved holiday was duly legislated by Congress.
In the 1920s, 300 years hence, the first department-store-sponsored Thanksgiving Day parade was launched. As national pride evolved, Mayflower descendants created the Plymouth Plantation living museum to reenact daily life circa 1627. Historical research continues to help us to understand the all-too-human ideas and ideals that have shaped America.
It is Thanksgiving 400 years later, and its evolution now includes presidential turkey pardons. This suggests that critics of our national celebration might pardon the imperfections and human frailties of its founders. While some 10 million of us might descend from a mere 51 prodigious Pilgrims, all 333 million of us may draw upon their perseverance, courage, faith, and hope in bettering our community, country, and world. This would be progress in our time.
Today, we gather to break bread, learn from one another, and shape the future of this enduring American celebration for generations to come. For this, I am thankful.
Hugh Dugan served as the senior director at the National Security Council after a career in diplomacy. He is producing a musical about the people of earliest America.
