The centerpiece of contemporary Thanksgiving in the United States and Canada is a large meal, generally centered on a large roasted turkey. It is served with a variety of side dishes which vary from traditional dishes such as mashed potatoes, stuffing, and cranberry sauce, to ones that reflec…
Nov 23, 2018 · The main course is the one scholars can speak about with certainty. The only eyewitness account of the first Thanksgiving comes from a …
Aug 31, 2011 · The first Thanksgiving was a harvest celebration held by the pilgrims of Plymouth colony in the 17th century. Many myths surround the first Thanksgiving. Very little is actually known about the event because only two firsthand accounts of the feast were ever written. The first account is William Bradford's journal…
Nov 21, 2011 · Senior Editor. November 21, 2011. Traditional Thanksgiving dinner includes turkey, stuffing and mashed potatoes but the First Thanksgiving likely …
Nov 16, 2017 · Waterfowl – not turkey – would have been the main course. Winslow Homer, 'Right and Left' (1909), National Gallery of Art What the first Thanksgiving dinner actually looked like
Instead of bread-based stuffing, herbs, onions or nuts might have been added to the birds for extra flavor. Turkey or no turkey, the first Thanksgiving's attendees almost certainly got their fill of meat. Winslow wrote that the Wampanoag guests arrived with an offering of five deer.Nov 18, 2021
What They (Likely) Did Have at the First ThanksgivingVenison.Fowl (geese and duck)Corn.Nuts (walnuts, chestnuts, beechnuts)Shellfish.
The English colonists we call Pilgrims celebrated days of thanksgiving as part of their religion. But these were days of prayer, not days of feasting. Our national holiday really stems from the feast held in the autumn of 1621 by the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag to celebrate the colony's first successful harvest.
In 1621, the Plymouth colonists and the Wampanoag shared an autumn harvest feast that is acknowledged today as one of the first Thanksgiving celebrations in the colonies. For more than two centuries, days of thanksgiving were celebrated by individual colonies and states.Nov 11, 2021
Although the settlers may have made a gravy out of the drippings from the meats procured for the feast, a common staple for these early colonizers was a dish known simply as “green sauce.”
Historians attribute the first New England crop of potatoes to Derry, New Hampshire, in 1722, so there’s no way mashed potatoes could have made an appearance during the first Thanksgiving.
17 Comments. on History of the First Thanksgiving. The first Thanksgiving was a harvest celebration held by the pilgrims of Plymouth colony in the 17th century. Many myths surround the first Thanksgiving. Very little is actually known about the event because only two firsthand accounts of the feast were ever written.
Continental Congress declared the first national Thanksgiving on December 18, 1777 and then in 1789, George Washington declared the last Thursday in November a national Thanksgiving as well. These were merely declarations and not official holidays. Future presidents did not continue the Thanksgiving declaration.
Celebrating a fall harvest was an English tradition at the time and the pilgrims had much to celebrate. The 53 pilgrims at the first Thanksgiving were the only colonists to survive the long journey on the Mayflower and the first winter in the New World.
It was simply a harvest celebration. A few years later, in July of 1623, the pilgrims did hold what they called a “Thanksgiving.”. This was simply a religious day of prayer and fasting that had nothing to do with the fall harvest.
This feast most likely happened sometime between September and November of 1621. No exact date for the feast has ever been recorded so one can only assume it happened sometime after the fall harvest. The celebration took place for three days and included recreational activities.
Very little is actually known about the event because only two firsthand accounts of the feast were ever written. The first account is William Bradford’ s journal titled Of Plymouth Plantation and the other is a publication written by Edward Winslow titled Mourt’s Relations. What is known is that the pilgrims held the first Thanksgiving feast ...
One of these Indians, a young man named Squanto, spoke fluent English and had been appointed by Massasoit to serve as the pilgrim’s translator and guide. Squanto learned English prior to the pilgrim’s arrival after he was captured by English explorers and spent time in Europe as a slave.
MODERN THANKSGIVING. In the 19th century, the modern Thanksgiving holiday started to take shape. In 1846, Sarah Josepha Hale, editor of a magazine called Godey’s Lady’s Book, campaigned for an annual national thanksgiving holiday.
On the fourth Thursday of November, people in the United States celebrate Thanksgiving, a national holiday honoring the early settlers and Native Americans who came together to have a historic harvest feast.
Puritans are often thought of having silver buckles on their shoes and wearing somber, black clothing. Their attire was actually bright and cheerful (with no shoe buckles!). The Native Americans actualy didn't wear woven blankets on their shoulders and large, feathered headdresses, even though some artworks portray this. And though today we might refer to the Puritans as "Pilgrims," the Englishmen didn’t call themselves that.
The meal consisted of deer, corn, shellfish, and roasted meat, different from today's traditional Thanksgiving feast. They played ball games, sang, and danced.
NATIVE AMERICANS AND THANKSGIVING. The peace between the Native Americans and settlers lasted for only a generation. The Wampanoag people do not share in the popular reverence for the traditional New England Thanksgiving. For them, the holiday is a reminder of betrayal and bloodshed.
The people who comprised the Plymouth Colony were a group of English Protestants called Puritans who wanted to break away from the Church of England. These "separatists" initially moved to Holland. But after 12 years of financial problems, they received funding from English merchants to sail across the Atlantic Ocean in 1620 to settle in a "New World." Carrying 101 men, women, and children, the Mayflower traveled the ocean for 66 days and was supposed to land where New York City is now located. But windy conditions forced the group to cut their trip short and settle at what is now Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
Since 1970, many native people have gathered at the statue of Massasoit in Plymouth, Massachusetts, each Thanksgiving Day to remember their ancestors and the strength of the Wampanoag.
Wall explains that the Thanksgiving holiday, as we know it, took root in the mid-19th century. At this time, Edward Winslow’s letter, printed in a pamphlet called Mourt’s Relation, and Governor Bradford’s manuscript, titled Of Plimoth Plantation, were rediscovered and published.
Traditional Thanksgiving dinner includes turkey, stuffing and mashed potatoes but the First Thanksgiving likely included wildfowl, corn, porridge and venison. (Bettmann / Corbis)
In addition to wildfowl and deer, the colonists and Wampanoag probably ate eels and shellfish, such as lobster, clams and mussels. “They were drying shellfish and smoking other sorts of fish,” says Wall.
But in later sources, they talk about turnips, carrots, onions, garlic and pumpkins as the sorts of things that they were growing.”. Of course, to some extent, the exercise of reimagining the spread of food at the 1621 celebration becomes a process of elimination.
To form educated guesses, Wall, a foodways culinarian at Plimoth Plantation, a living history museum in Plymouth, Massachusetts, studies cookbooks and descriptions of gardens from the period, archaeological remains such as pollen samples that might clue her in to what the colonists were growing. Our discussion begins with the bird.
They grew beans, which they used from when they were small and green until when they were mature,” says Wall. “They also had different sorts of pumpkins or squashes.”. As we are taught in school, the Indians showed the colonists how to plant native crops.
Two primary sources—the only surviving documents that reference the meal—confirm that these staples were part of the harvest celebration shared by the Pilgrims and Wampanoag at Plymouth Colony in 1621.
Most Americans probably don’t realize that we have a very limited understanding of the first Thanksgiving, which took place in 1621 in Massachusetts. Indeed, few of our present-day traditions resemble what happened almost 400 years ago, and there’s only one original account of the feast.
In addition to the corn (and barley) mentioned in Winslow’s letter, the harvest of 1621 likely included beans, squash, onions, turnips and greens such as spinach and chard. All could have been cooked at length to create a pulpy sauce that later became a staple in early New England homes.
Although the settlers may have made a gravy out of the drippings from the meats procured for the feast, a common staple for these early colonizers was a dish known simply as “green sauce.”
Historians attribute the first New England crop of potatoes to Derry, New Hampshire in 1722, so there’s no way mashed potatoes could have made an appearance during the first Thanksgiving.
All are used in the traditional dish today, and all would have been available in 1621. In fact, clams, fish and other seafood were abundant in the area, so they were probably present in some form, whether in sobaheg or another dish.
Julie Lesnik does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Since waterfowl was plentiful in the Massachusetts Bay area, it’s widely accepted that they were eating goose and duck rather than turkey.
What They (Likely) Did Have at the First Thanksgiving. Venison. Fowl (geese and duck) Corn. Nuts (walnuts, chestnuts, beechnuts) Shellfish. So venison was a major ingredient, as well as fowl, but that likely included geese and ducks. Turkeys are a possibility, but were not a common food in that time. Pilgrims grew onions and herbs.
Pilgrims grew onions and herbs. Cranberries and currants would have been growing wild in the area, and watercress may have still been available if the hard frosts had held off, but there’s no record of them having been served. In fact, the meal was probably quite meat-heavy.
Shellfish were common, so they probably played a part, as did beans, pumpkins, squashes, and corn (served in the form of bread or porridge), thanks to the Wampanoags. It’s possible, but unlikely, that there was turkey at the first Thanksgiving. Mark Fleming.
Barring ethical, health, or religious objections, it is pretty much the same meal for everyone, across latitudes and longitudes, and through the years of their lives.
Nearly all of what historians have learned about the first Thanksgiving comes from a single eyewitness report: a letter written in December 1621 by Edward Winslow, one of the 100 or so people who sailed from England aboard the Mayflower in 1620 and founded Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts.
Colonists at the First Thanksgiving Were Mostly Men Because Women Had Perished. The three-day feast was about giving thanks, but it wasn't much like today's holiday. Author:
Some 78 percent of the women who had arrived on the Mayflower had died during the first winter, a far higher percentage than for men or children. “For the English, [the first Thanksgiving] was also celebrating the fact that they had survived their first year here in New England,” Begley points out.
In fact, it took place over three days sometime between late September and mid-November in 1621, and was considered a harvest celebration. “Basically it was to celebrate the end of a successful harvest,” says Tom Begley, the executive liaison for administration, research and special projects at Plimoth Plantation.
Massasoit (who was actually named Ousemequin) was the sachem (leader) of the Pokanoket Wampanoag, a local Native American society that had begun dealings with the colonists earlier in 1621. “We don't know for sure how it came about that they were there,” Begley says of the Native Americans at the first Thanksgiving.
William Bradford, Plymouth’s governor in 1621, wrote briefly of the event in Of Plymouth Plantation, his history of the colony, but that was more than 20 years after the feast itself. According to this account, the historic event didn’t happen on the fourth Thursday in November, as it does today—and it wasn’t known as Thanksgiving.
While the 1621 event may not have been called Thanksgiving, the sentiment was certainly present in that historic celebration, just as it would play a defining role in how the tradition developed over the centuries to come.
In a footnote in 1841, Alexander Young claimed that this event “was the first thanksgiving, the harvest festival of New England”. Jamestown, Virginia and other locations have also been suggested as sites of the "First Thanksgiving".
The tradition of Thanksgiving dinner often has been associated in popular culture with New England. New England Puritans proclaimed days of thanksgiving to commemora te many specific events. Such days were marked by religious observances, prayer, and sometimes fasting. Church records of the time do not mention food or feasting as being part of such events. A single exception records that following church services in 1636, there was “Then makeing merry to the creatures, the poorer sort being invited of the richer.”
Because Thanksgiving is always on a Thursday, this meant that turkey and pumpkin pie, two Thanksgiving staples, were discouraged, not only for that holiday, but for Christmas and New Year's Day as well, since those holidays landed on Thursday in 1947. (Pumpkin pie was discouraged because it contained eggs.)
Many Americans would regard Thanksgiving dinner as "incomplete" without stuffing or dressing, mashed potatoes with gravy, and cranberry sauce. A recipe for cranberry sauce to be served with turkey appeared in the first American cookbook, American Cookery (1796) by Amelia Simmons.
Many of the dishes in a traditional American Thanksgiving dinner are made from ingredients native to the Americas, including turkey, potatoes, yams, pumpkin and cranberries. Immigrants such as the Plymouth Pilgrims may have learned about some of these foods from the Native Americans, but other foods were not available to the early settlers.
Thanksgiving dinner. The centerpiece of contemporary Thanksgiving in the United States and in Canada is Thanksgiving dinner, a large meal, generally centered on a large roasted turkey. Thanksgiving may be the largest eating event in the United States as measured by retail sales of food and beverages and by estimates of individual food intake.
At Thanksgiving dinner, turkey is served with a variety of side dishes which vary from traditional dishes such as mashed potatoes, stuffing, and cranberry sauce, to ones that reflect regional or cultural heritage. Many of the dishes in a traditional American Thanksgiving dinner are made from ingredients native to the Americas, including turkey, ...