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.