Is Thanksgiving a Feast of Lies?! Historian David J. Silverman Separates Myth from Truth

Summary

Podcast Summary: American History Hotline Episode: "Is Thanksgiving a Feast of Lies?! Historian David J. Silverman Separates Myth from Truth"
Host: Bob Crawford
Guest: David J. Silverman
Date: November 19, 2025

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Overview

In this episode, Bob Crawford dives deep into the origins and myths of Thanksgiving with historian David J. Silverman, author of This Land Is Their Land: The Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving. Together, they unpack the common narratives, explore the real historical context of the so-called "First Thanksgiving," and consider how these stories shape American identity and the national holiday. Silverman unpacks the complex motives and experiences of both Pilgrims and Wampanoags, challenges the sentimental mythologies attached to the holiday, and discusses how the Thanksgiving story became central to American culture while often erasing Indigenous voices.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Popular Thanksgiving Narrative vs. Reality

• Common Narrative (06:13–08:09):

  • The widely taught story recounts Pilgrims seeking religious freedom, landing at Plymouth, befriending anonymous “Indians,” and hosting a peaceful, celebratory feast after a successful harvest—symbolizing peaceful colonial beginnings and progress toward American democracy.
  • Silverman: “It’s a story about bloodless colonialism … designed to make us feel proud of America and its colonial beginnings.” (07:21)

• What Actually Happened (08:12–13:30):

  • An alliance did form between the Plymouth settlers and the Wampanoags, but the feast narrative is skewed. The Wampanoags weren’t invited—they showed up, likely in response to gunfire from the colonists’ celebrations.
  • The Wampanoags had suffered catastrophic losses from an epidemic (possibly smallpox) before the Pilgrims’ arrival, making them strategically vulnerable to their rivals, the Narragansetts.
  • Silverman: “It is not a matter of the Natives just happen to be friendly. They are in a desperate position, and they're making a strategic decision for their own preservation.” (13:21)

Indigenous Agency and Strategic Decisions

• Native Strategic Thinking (14:13–16:18):
  • Native nations analyzed the potential benefits of European arrivals and sought alliances for their own aims, not as passive recipients.
  • Native polities acted independently, often seeking military or economic advantage over regional rivals via relationships with colonists.
  • Silverman: “They don't see themselves as Indians or Native Americans or indigenous people ...They are divided into hundreds of different polities, and these polities usually are no larger than 20 or 30,000 people. And they're constantly at odds with one another...” (14:58)

The Peace Treaty: Misunderstandings and Limitations

• Differing Interpretations (16:18–19:26):
  • The peace treaty between the English and Wampanoags had clauses that were alien concepts to the Wampanoags (e.g., becoming subjects to King James, which had no contextual meaning).
  • Actual Wampanoag behavior post-treaty shows they didn’t consider themselves English subjects or accept English legal authority.
  • Silverman: “The notion that they would turn over any members of their community to a foreign people's mode of justice is simply nonsense.” (18:37)

The First Thanksgiving: Closer Look

• The Context of the Feast (19:40–22:31):

  • Colonists, after a harsh first year, celebrated surviving the harvest, partly using stolen Wampanoag seed corn.
  • During their celebration, gunfire from target practice alarmed the Wampanoags, who arrived with 90 armed men—more than the settlers’ population.
  • Trust had developed to the degree that, rather than violence, a shared feast occurred, with the Wampanoags contributing venison.
  • Silverman: “In almost any other colonial context, a group of 90 native warriors showing up at a colony would have produced a bloodbath… Enough trust had been cultivated... instead of firing on one another, the Wampanoags stay and they contribute some venison to the meal and the two parties feast together. That's this first Thanksgiving.” (21:24)

• No Invitations, No Tables (05:57–06:13 & 22:15–22:43):

  • There was likely no shared table—the event more closely resembled a buffet or “lap eating.”
  • The Wampanoags’ presence wasn’t out of neighborly warmth or a formal invitation, but a pragmatic show of force and necessity.
  • Crawford: “So it'd be like if my drunk neighbor is shooting off his guns on a Sunday afternoon and I go over to his house to see what's going on and he gets out a six pack and says, come on, let's have a couple beers.”
  • Silverman: “It would be like you showing up with a gang and him feeling like he doesn't have any choice but to open the door for you.” (22:43)

The Making of a National Holiday

• Lincoln and the Civil War (27:44–30:13):

  • Thanksgiving only became a national holiday during the Civil War, partly due to advocacy by Sarah Josepha Hale, in hopes of unifying the nation.
  • Prior to Lincoln, days of thanksgiving were New England traditions or responses to specific local events—nothing tied to Pilgrims and Native Americans.
  • Silverman: “Nobody associated the Thanksgiving holiday with Pilgrims and Indians.” (30:11)

• Tourism, Myth-Building, and Primary Sources (30:13–34:45):

  • Plymouth, after the Revolution, sought to boost tourism by emphasizing its Pilgrim history, reenforcing the Pilgrim story and inventing lore like Plymouth Rock.
  • The real connection between Thanksgiving, Pilgrims, and Natives developed after an 1841 publication, when a historian’s footnote (Alexander Young declaring the feast the “first Thanksgiving”) gained surprising cultural traction.
  • The story was spread further by 20th-century school pageants reenacting the myth and embedding it in American consciousness.
  • Silverman: “Somehow this footnote took hold… So that by the time Lincoln makes his pronouncement ...the notion that Thanksgiving began with pilgrims and Indians had begun to capture the public imagination.” (33:11)

The National Day of Mourning

• Indigenous Response & Activism (34:45–39:48):
  • The mythologized Thanksgiving became the dominant story about Native Americans in U.S. education and culture, overshadowing realities of violence and dispossession.
  • Native students, including Wampanoag children, were subjected to reenactments of this myth even in Indian boarding schools, often being told by teachers, “They’re all gone,” even when Native children were present.
  • In response, Frank James, a Wampanoag activist, created the National Day of Mourning in 1970, reframing Thanksgiving as a day of loss and survival rather than celebration.
  • Silverman (on Frank James’ message): “The story that you tell as a triumph is for us, a tragedy. And we are your countrymen and women, and our experience counts, too. Furthermore, he says, recognize we're still here. We haven't gone anywhere, and we still have sovereign rights that we're trying to defend.” (38:09)

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• On the fabricated feast:

  • “There was probably no table.” (Silverman, 05:57)
  • “It's lap eating.” (Silverman, 06:09)

• On the power dynamics:

  • “Native people could have wiped out almost all these places if they had wished to do so. Generally speaking, they did not wish to do so, not at first. They would learn that these people posed an existential threat to them... at the beginning... Europeans are your advantage.” (14:33–15:19)

• On the impact of myth:

  • “It's a bedtime story. It's a fairy tale of colonists and Native people making friends and Native people conceding to their own dispossession. Right. Which is patent nonsense. Colonial America is a bloodbath, quite frankly.” (Silverman, 35:00)

• On the school experience for Native kids:

  • “Almost invariably they say it's followed up by some kid saying, well, where are the Indians? And the teacher saying, oh, well, they're all gone. Even as there's a Wampanoag kid sitting right there...” (36:40)

• On the truth about Thanksgiving:

  • “If we're going to invoke pilgrims and Indians in relation to Thanksgiving holiday, let's get the story straight. We're all grownups. We can deal with the truth, right? But I don't think we have to do that. Who wants to talk about genocide and then serve up a meal?” (41:21)

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Important Segment Timestamps

• [05:44–06:13]: The myth of the “table” and the “buffet” reality.
• [08:09–13:30]: Real motivations and context for Wampanoag–Pilgrim alliance.
• [16:28–18:06]: The meanings behind the peace treaty and misunderstandings.
• [19:40–22:31]: How the actual Thanksgiving event unfolded.
• [27:44–30:13]: Abraham Lincoln, Sarah Josepha Hale, and the nationalization of Thanksgiving.
• [30:13–34:45]: The rise of the “Pilgrims and Indians” myth in American culture.
• [34:45–39:48]: The establishment of the National Day of Mourning and Native remembrance.
• [40:43–43:37]: Thoughts on modern Thanksgiving, divisions, and the challenge of reconciling history with holiday.

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Final Thoughts

David J. Silverman emphasizes that Thanksgiving's familiar story is a comforting myth that masks a much grimmer reality of colonial dispossession and Indigenous strategic survival. He argues for facing historical complexities with honesty, suggesting that the holiday can still be meaningful if it focuses on gratitude—without resorting to sanitized and exclusionary narratives.

“The myth of the first Thanksgiving is just that. It's a myth. It is not true. What's more, it's an untruth that is deeply insulting to our indigenous countrymen and women. And they've suffered a lot for the creation of this country. They shouldn't have to revisit it every single year.”
(David J. Silverman, 42:59)

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For further learning:

• David J. Silverman’s This Land Is Their Land: The Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving
• Upcoming: The Chosen and the Damned: Native Americans and the Making of Race in the United States (Feb. 2026)

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This summary covers the substantive content of the episode, leaving out promotional segments and focusing on the historical dialogue and analysis provided by Bob Crawford and David J. Silverman.

Transcript

[Bob Crawford]

So it'd be like if my drunk neighbor is shooting off his guns on a Sunday afternoon and I go over to his house to see what's going on and he like gets out of six pack and says come on, let's, let's, let's have a couple of beers.

[David J. Silverman]

It would be like you showing up with a gang and him feeling like he doesn't have any choice but to open the door for you.

[Bob Crawford]

Good, Good context. You've reached American History Hotline. You ask the questions, we get the answers. Leave a message.

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[Bob Crawford]

Hey there, American History Hotliners. Bob Crawford here. Thrilled to be joining you again for another episode of American History Hotline, the show where you ask the questions. But today I want to start things off a little bit differently. I want to ask you a question. For an upcoming show. We're going to do an episode about the New York times list of 100 best films of the 21st century. What do you think about the list? Is it accurate? Any snubs? And what do you think should have been voted number one best film of the 21st century? Give us all your hot takes. We'd love it if you could record a video or a voice memo and email it to AmericanHistoryHotlinEmail.com for all questions. It's AmericanHistoryHotlinEmail.com okay, now we're going to make a hard turn to today's topic, which is Thanksgiving. Here to help me answer this question today is David J. Silverman. He's a historian and author of the book this Land Is Their the Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving. He's got a new book coming out in February titled the Chosen and the Native Americans and the Making of Race in the United States. David, thank you for joining us today.

[David J. Silverman]

It's great to be here. Thanks for having me.

[Bob Crawford]

Okay, David, here's the question we were hoping you could help us answer.

[Commercial Announcer]

Hi, this is Gillian. My question is around the origins of Thanksgiving. So Native Americans, pilgrims sitting together, eating dinner at a table. This narrative, I'm wondering how much of it is true and why it has just continued to be told is kind of like the only story that we hear about Thanksgiving and even early America. Yeah. Just like why this story has pervaded in history for so long and why it's still the only story surrounding early Native American history that we hear in schools now.

[Bob Crawford]

David, before we jump into answering this question, can you give us just one fact we can bring to our Thanksgiving table this year that's gonna surprise our family members?

[David J. Silverman]

Sure. In direct answer to your listener's question, there was probably no table.

[Bob Crawford]

So you're saying it was more of a buffet?

[David J. Silverman]

More of a buffet. It's lap eating.

[Bob Crawford]

Okay, so let's start with the common narrative of Thanksgiving. What is the story that most of us are taught about Thanksgiving in school?

[David J. Silverman]

Well, the question you mentioned is part of it to be sure. We have this patriotic story that the Pilgrims, folks who cross the Atlantic in search of religious freedom, land off Cape Cod and make contact with native people, who almost always are unidentified in the stories. They're just Indians. Right. They're supposed to be symbols for Native America and large. After some wariness between the two parties, they make contact with one another. They become friends, and then ultimately, the story goes. The English invite. This is a problem with the story. Invite the native people to a harvest feast. They break bread together, celebrate together for a few days, and then after the dishes are cleared, the. The natives wave goodbye and fade into the mist, symbolically ceding their country to the English so that the English confound the United States, and the United States can begin its march to greatness. That's the story. It's a story about bloodless colonialism. It's a story about colonialism carrying forth the best of America, religious freedom, family peace, and ultimately, democracy. It's a story designed to make us feel proud of America and its colonial beginnings.

[Bob Crawford]

So what really happened?

[David J. Silverman]

Well, not much of that. It is certainly true that the English of Plymouth Colony and the native people of what's now southeastern Massachusetts, the Wampanoag people, created an alliance together. That's true. It is true that the two parties did feast together, though the Wampanoags weren't so much invited as they just showed up unannounced. And the English really had no choice in the matter but to concede to them. Stay.

[Bob Crawford]

Well, I think that's a good. Let's kind of, like, dig in on that.

[David J. Silverman]

Okay, sure.

[Bob Crawford]

So they just showed up. Like, talk about this feast. The doorbell rings, and who's. We have a caller at this hour during our feast who's at the door.

[David J. Silverman]

Right. So let's sketch out the power dynamics on the ground when this feast occurs. When the Mayflower lands off Cape Cod, there's about a hundred English passengers. By the time this feast occurs, there's less than half that number so half these folks have died over. Over the previous year. Those who have survived have done so because the Wampanoags permitted it. There was a debate within Wampanoag society over the course of the year 1621 as to whether to wipe out this. This settlement. The Wampanoags had a hundred year, hundred year history with Europeans before the arrival of the Mayflower. And by and large, that had not been a pleasant history. It had been a history of European explorers enslaving native people and ferrying their captives across the ocean for sale into bondage. It had been a story about shoreline clashes, you know, when one side read the worst into the other's mostly unintelligible actions. But the Wampanoags when the Mayflower arrived are in a very, very difficult spot for two reasons. One is they had suffered a terrible epidemic between 1616 and 1619, almost certainly introduced to them accidentally, but introduced to them by Europeans. And this disease, we don't know the name of it, I suspect it was smallpox, but we can't be sure. It wiped out a sizable number of the Wampanoag people. And when I say sizable, I'm not talking about COVID numbers. I'm talking about more than half of.

[Bob Crawford]

The population, which is insane because Covid numbers are big.

[David J. Silverman]

Right? But, you know, our societal death rate from COVID was less than 1%. And you saw, you know, we all experienced what that did to our society in this case. And we knew what it was. Right? We had a name for it and we had means to combat it. Not everyone took advantage of those means, but we had means to combat it, and so on and so forth. In this case, the Wampanoags have been attacked by a disease with no name. They don't know how to explain its cause. It could be witchcraft. It could be their gods punishing them for something they did or didn't do. They simply don't know. What they know is that their kin are dying all around them. And we don't have exact numbers as to how many people died. We have very kind of general numbers. But here's what I can tell you. The English say that when they arrive in this part of the world, they encounter village sites that are covered with skeletons. Yeah. In other words, the people died where they were. And the living were so terrified of what was happening, they fled the scene, which means a lot because Native people were diligent about caring for the remains of their dead. Okay, so the Wampanoags have been depopulated. So that's the first problem. The second problem is their Narragansett enemies to the west have not been depopulated. And the Narragansets take advantage of the Wampanoag's weakness to reduce them to the status of tributaries. So when the English arrive, the Wampanoags have a choice to make. Do they, based on this previous 100 years of hostility, wipe out these strangers and eliminate the potential danger that they pose to Wampanoag people? Or, and this is the choice that their leader, USA Miquin or Massasoidak, finally makes, do they try to ally with these folks and take advantage of their firearms, their swords, their knives, their hatchets, and all the other goods that they have that are of appeal to Native people? That's the choice they make. That is the context that leads to the first Thanksgiving. It is not a matter of the Natives just happen to be friendly. They are in a desperate position, and they're making a strategic decision for their own preservation.

[Bob Crawford]

So from the reading I've done recently, Native Nations, Kathleen Duvall, and a few other books, one of the biggest revelations for myself personally, having a blind spot with Native American history, is that many Native American tribes thought to themselves, when the Europeans were coming. How can this work for us? Like, how can we use them? Like, are there ways that we can use them for our aims? And so it sounds like what you're telling me is that the Wampanoag saw this possibility of an alliance to actually protect them from their enemies from another.

[David J. Silverman]

Yeah, that's exactly right. We have a tendency, or at least the public has a tendency in some circles, to characterize the European arrival in North America as an invasion. And that's understandable in Central and South America and the Caribbean. The Spanish conquest was just that. It was a military invasion. Right. And what's more, eventually in North America, once Europeans have a beachhead on the continent, they do start conquering Native territory. But with very few exceptions, the first colonies are only there at the sufferance of Native people. Native people could have wiped out almost all of these places if they had wished to do so. Generally speaking, they did not wish to do so, not at first. They would learn that these people posed an existential threat to them. They would. They can't see that at the beginning. One of the things we have to understand when we're accounting for Native people's actions is that they don't see themselves as a single group of people. They don't see themselves as Indians or Native Americans or indigenous people or any other general category of that sort they are divided into hundreds of different polities, and these polities usually are no larger than 20 or 30,000 people. And they're constantly at odds with one another, so they're constantly seeking advantage against other tribes. When the Europeans arrive, well, that's your advantage, right? You can get their military wares. You can get other trade goods that will help you attract more followers to your group. And you can try to enlist their soldiers in your cause. And that is precisely what one native group does after another, after another.

[Bob Crawford]

So the Wampanoag and the Plymouth settlers sign a peace treaty. So how long does this. What is this treaty all about? And how long does it last?

[David J. Silverman]

Well, it depends who you ask. And, you know, one of the things that we, as an American society, have not been done very well over the course of centuries is ask what the Wampanoags thought this peace treaty was all about. Now, I can remember firsthand being assigned this peace treaty as one of the earliest primary source documents assigned to me in school. And we went through each provision of the treaty, and never once did the teacher think to ask us as students, how might the natives have interpreted these. These clauses? So I'll give you an example of. Of what we're talking about. So there's a provision in this peace treaty, right? Yeah. Some of this stuff you can. You could take at face value. We won't attack each other. Okay, I. I think it's safe to assume the Wampanoags agreed to that. If we're attacked by another party will come to one another's aid. Okay, that sounds exactly right. We'll have trade with one another. Okay, but here's where it gets tricky. Now, the Wampanoags are subjects of King James. Well, the Wampanoags don't have a word for subject. They don't have a word for it. It's not a concept to them. They have no idea who King James is. Who's this guy on the other side of the ocean. There's simply no possibility that even if they said, oh, yeah, yeah, sure, we subject ourselves to King James, that they understood what that meant.

[Bob Crawford]

Is there any way for us to know the story from the Wampanoag side? Is there other primary source documentation from the Wampanoags?

[David J. Silverman]

Here's what we can do. We can judge what the treaty said versus the way the Wampanoags behaved after the treaty. And the Wampanoags, after the treaty were signed, did not behave like they were subjects to the King of England. What's more, you know, the treaty says that if the Wampanoags commit any crimes against the English, they will turn over the accused to English justice. Which is preposterous. The English are guests in Wampanoag country. The Wampanoags are not guests in England. The notion that they would turn over any members of their community to a foreign people's mode of justice is simply nonsense. And how do we know that? Well, for the next 50 years, whenever the English demand the Wampanoags to turn over accused wrongdoers, they always say no. And when the English finally push the issue, the two sides go to war. Native people simply, you know, Native people are sovereign in their own land. They're not going to sign over their sovereignty to a group of 50 people.

[Bob Crawford]

So getting back to the first Thanksgiving, as we. The popularly told patriotic tale. Now, with all this in mind, now we have all this context talk about this feast.

[David J. Silverman]

Sure. So the English have been on the brink of starvation since their arrival. You know, they arrive late in the year. It's too late to plant, so they have to survive on whatever supplies they brought, whatever they can scrub up in the cold of. Of a New England winter, and whatever they can trade for or receive as gifts from Native people. And they managed to make it to the planting season. And then they plant a.

[Bob Crawford]

A.

[David J. Silverman]

A bucket of seed corn that they had stolen from a Wampanoag village. They dug up this buried seed corn and took it with them. Eventually, they pay the Wampanoags for it, but, you know, initially, it looks like what it was, theft. They grow a crop, the crop is harvested, and then, you know, that fall, for the first time since they arrived, English say, we're going to rest for a couple of days. This has been a really. It's been a very hard nine or 10 months.

[Bob Crawford]

And this is before the treaty, but no, this.

[David J. Silverman]

This is after the treaty is signed. So, you know, they have this treaty of mutual defense and trade. Okay. So the English start letting their hair down. There's probably a fair amount of drinking. They engage in target practice as part of their amusements. So in other words, they're firing guns. The Wampanoags hearing these guns firing, presume. I think we can assume that the colony is under attack. And so Usamiquin, or Massasoit, the sachem, or chief of the Wampanoag people, arrives at the colony with 90 armed men. That's almost twice the size of the colony. In almost any other colonial context, a group of 90 native warriors showing up at a colony would have produced a bloodbath. You know, someone would have gotten trigger happy and everything would have gone wrong. That's not what happens here. Enough trust had been cultivated between the two sides that instead of firing on one another, the Wampanoags stay and they contribute some venison to the meal and the two parties feast together. That's this first Thanksgiving.

[Bob Crawford]

So it's like the Wampanoags show up, they're like, what's all this ruckus? And the settlers are like, it's a party, come on.

[David J. Silverman]

Right?

[Bob Crawford]

It's like an 80s music video, right?

[David J. Silverman]

And so they crashed the party. And so, you know, let's be clear, it's not like they received a written invitation to this event, which is kind of how the story is normally told here.

[Bob Crawford]

So it'd be like if my drunk neighbor is shooting off his guns on a Sunday afternoon and I go over to his house to see what's going on and he gets out a six pack and says, come on, let's have a couple beers.

[David J. Silverman]

It would be like you showing up with a gang and him feeling like he doesn't have any choice but to open the door for you.

[Bob Crawford]

Good.

[David J. Silverman]

Good context.

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[David J. Silverman]

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[Bob Crawford]

This is American History Hotline. I'm your host Bob Crawford. Today my guest is David J. Silverman. He's a historian and author of the book this Land Is Their the Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving. He's got a new book coming out in February titled the Chosen and the Native Americans and the Making of Race in the United States. We're talking about the origins of Thanksgiving. Remember to send us your burning questions about American history and also help us out with an upcoming episode by telling us your favorite films of the 21st century. Record yourself using the voice memo app on your phone and email it to AmericanHistoryHotlinemail.com that's AmericanHistoryHotlinemail.com now back to the show. David Thanksgiving didn't become a national holiday until hundreds of years later during the Civil War. Why was this the time to create this holiday?

[David J. Silverman]

Because of the Civil War. You know, Abraham Lincoln was lobbied by this woman named Sarah Josepha Hale, who, yeah, she, she's kind of like the oprah of the 19th century. She starts this, this magazine for women that becomes enormously popular. And, you know, among the ideas that she traffics in is that the country needs a, a holiday to help bridge the divisions that led to and were perpetrating the Civil War. Thanksgiving is that idea. Now, Thanksgiving had been a Yankee holiday. So the only way you were going to get Thanksgiving declared as a national holiday was for the south to have seceded when that announcement is made. And, you know, so Lincoln, in the spirit that this idea was proposed, takes it up and declares the holiday. Up until this point, New Englanders had celebrated days of Thanksgiving, really since the 17th century, and it had been an English tradition, too. So let's be clear, this is not a tradition that begins in New England. It stretches back into the mists of time on the other side of the ocean. Let's be clear, too, almost every Native American group has days of Thanksgiving. People all over the world have days of Thanksgiving. So, you know, targeting which one was first is really hard. But whereas in the colonial period, days of Thanksgiving were haphazard. They would be announced by the government, depending on the circumstances of the time. So if there was a victory in war, the end of a drought, what have you, government would say, okay, we're going to hold the following day as a day of Thanksgiving. Over time, the day became standardized and eventually people began celebrating the these days of Thanksgiving when you closed your account books for the year, usually late fall, and that was a time to celebrate. So that becomes part of the routine. But let's be clear, during that period, during the 17th century, the 18th century, all the way into the 19th century, up till nearly the time that Lincoln makes this Declaration. Nobody, nobody associated the Thanksgiving holiday with Pilgrims and Indians.

[Bob Crawford]

So how did this happen? How was that connection made?

[David J. Silverman]

It's a couple of different ways. One has to do with Plymouth town's attempt to boost tourism. You know, Plymouth Colony was a nothing place. You know, it's a underpopulated, economically marginal colony where really it's only important for two reasons. One is it's the first English colony in the Northeast that survives. And the second is in 1675, 76. It's the place where the Great War between English colonists in New England and native people starts. And this is the war that ends up devastating the Wampanoags and giving the English effectively control of the region. Otherwise, Plymouth gets annexed by Massachusetts in 1691 and that's it. It now is just part of the mainstream of Massachusetts history. Well, after the American Revolution, Plymouth town is falling on hard times. And so a group of men calling themselves like the Old Colony Club decide to start promoting the Pilgrims who had been, you know, they were. They're an eccentric group of religious fanatics who no one really paid attention to. They start promoting these guys as colonial founding fathers and Plymouth Rock. This, you know, we could have a whole story, a whole show on Plymouth Rock and the abuse it's taken over the years. Yeah, but they make up the story that the, the Pilgrims landed on this rock and yeah, they try to get people to come to town and spend their money so that that idea starts to, to start to circulate. But the real key to associating the holiday with Pilgrims and Indians is the publication of one of the two primary sources of the original feast between the English and the Wampanoags. The source is now called Mort's Relation. It's a co authored piece by Edward Winslow, who was a key figure in early Plymouth Colony, and William Bradford, who was the governor of the colony for a long time. In this account, there's one paragraph about this feast. Likewise, in Bradford's account of Plymouth Plantation called of Plymouth Plantation, there's a couple of lines about the feast. Really not a big deal. But the guy who edited this primary source, he's a minister named Alexander Young. He adds a footnote to this section and he says in the footnote, this was the first Thanksgiving, the harvest festival of New England. To my knowledge, or to the knowledge of anyone else who has studied the issue, no one had ever proposed this idea before.

[Bob Crawford]

So what year was that?

[David J. Silverman]

1841.

[Bob Crawford]

1841.

[David J. Silverman]

So, you know, we're now 220 years after that supposed first Thanksgiving. Now, look I'm a historian. I work with footnotes. No one other than fellow historians read footnotes. But somehow this footnote took hold. Enough people read it, especially people in power, orators, politicians and the like, that the idea started to get trafficked around. So that by the time that Lincoln makes his pronouncement that Thanksgiving will be a national holiday, the notion that Thanksgiving began with pilgrims and Indians had begun to capture the public imagination. From that point forward, the, the tie between the holiday and the mythical pilgrim and Indian story gets propagated by schools public schools would regularly hold. And I can remember being in one of these things, Thanksgiving pageants in which they have the kids dress up like pilgrims and Indians and reenact what people imagine that feast would be. By the way, I was a tree in, in the play. Tells you something about my acting abilities as a child. But you know, these, these pageants became standard fare, especially in the north, until very recent times.

[Bob Crawford]

In Plymouth today, there's a plaque that commemorates a national day of mourning every Thanksgiving. Tell us what, what that's all about.

[David J. Silverman]

Right? So once the holiday of Thanksgiving gets tied to the pilgrim and Indian story, it becomes the major story that white Americans tell themselves about the role of Native people in the country's past. And it's a bedtime story. It's a fairy tale of colonists and Native people making friends and Native people conceding to their own dispossession. Right. Which is patent nonsense. Colonial America is a bloodbath, quite frankly. You can narrate the history of colonial America as one colonial Indian war after another after another after another, because colonists want Native land without Native people on it, full stop. And Native people aren't going to concede to any such agenda. So it's a war. So Native people in the country have to listen to this idea year after year after year. And let's be clear, these Thanksgiving pageants that I mentioned, these are performed in Native American boarding schools, right? This story is propagated to Native kids in Native American boarding schools, never mind to Native kids who are in majority white schools all around the country. I have heard firsthand testimony from multiple Wampanoag people about what it's like to be a school aged child in a classroom where a teacher is promoting this nonsense. And almost invariably they say it's followed up by some kids saying, well, where are the Indians? And the teacher saying, oh, well, they're all gone. Even as there's a Wampanoag kid sitting right there who the teacher doesn't, can't conceive of as Indian because the kid doesn't fulfill the stereotypes of Native people that Hollywood has been trafficking in for the last hundred years.

[Bob Crawford]

So it's. It's fairly obvious why there's only one version of this story of Thanksgiving, right?

[David J. Silverman]

So fast forward to the year 1970. We're in the middle of the civil rights movement. We're in the early days of the Red Power movement in which Native activists around the country begin protesting for their own rights and dignity. And there's a. A Wampanoag activist named Frank James who says, you know, I've had it with this. I simply have. He's a student of history. He had been asked to speak at a statewide Massachusetts commemoration of the founding of Plymouth Colony. And when he submitted his speech for review, the white organizers wouldn't accept it. They said it was too provocative. So he said, to hell with this. I'm going to have my own event. I'm going to deliver the speech. And he called the event the National Day of Mourning. And he held it in Plymouth Town on a hill overlooking Plymouth Rock and a replica of the Mayflower right near a statue of Massasoit or Usamiquin. And, you know, what did he say in the speech? It's not all that provocative. Fundamentally, what he says is, look, I know for you white folks, this is a day of celebration, right? The beginning of what you consider to be your civilization. But you need to understand that this is the beginning of the end for my people. The story that you tell as a triumph is for us, a tragedy. And we are your countrymen and women, and our experience counts, too. Furthermore, he says, recognize we're still here. We haven't gone anywhere, and we still have sovereign rights that we're trying to defend. Since that time, this event has grown into an annual tradition. And Native people from all over the country, and indeed all over the world, show up at this National Day of Mourning rally in Plymouth Town. For some Native people, Wampanoags especially, they now, instead of holding a day Thanksgiving, hold a day of morning. Some people do both, and some people have no use for the day of mourning and hold just a traditional Thanksgiving. There's a range of ways that Native people honor this event, but it has become such a big deal that Plymouth Town now has that plaque that you mentioned.

[Bob Crawford]

We celebrate Thanksgiving. We try to as a day of coming together. And it seems in recent years that it's no longer settlers and Native Americans. It's now one part of the family who harbors certain political views versus the other part of the family who harbors opposite political views. Is there a way we can, in your opinion, capture this day and this idea of coming together to, to create peace amongst, you know, honor the Native Americans who, who were here first, who suffered horrible abuses at the hands of Europeans, and also learn to love our family members who we really disagree with? Sure.

[David J. Silverman]

You know, I, I'm not the guy to proffer up solutions for the very deep and substantive political divisions in, in our society, but let me observe this basic point about those divisions. On the right, there's a belief that the purpose of a history education is to cultivate patriotism. Right. So in other words, history is supposed to be in the service of political aims. I'm a professional historian. I don't care whether you come from the history that I write or that I teach. Feeling patriotic, unpatriotic, or indifferent. That is neither here nor there for me. My only goal is to capture complex history in all of its complexity. That's it, full stop. And I think on the left side of the political spectrum, you have a wide population, most, you know, mostly who have been college educated and thus also take that approach to the study of history. And it becomes very hard to have a conversation about history and truth and its role in our society when you're coming at it from such polar opposite views. So back to the issue of Thanksgiving. So what do we do with it? Look, I am all in favor of getting together with family and friends and offering thanks for what's good in our lives. I think we should do it more often than just once a year. And let me be clear. You know, contrary to some of the detractors of this book that I've written, I am not calling for replacing Thanksgiving with a day of mourning or canceling Thanksgiving or declaring war on Thanksgiving or any such things. But here is what I am saying. If we're going to invoke pilgrims and Indians in relation to Thanksgiving holiday, let's get the story straight. We're all grownups. We can deal with the truth, right? But I don't think we have to do that. Who wants to talk about genocide and then serve up a meal? Right? How about we go back to the original Thanksgiving, which didn't invoke pilgrims and Indians at all, and just focus on family and friends and what we're grateful for in our lives? The myth of the first Thanksgiving is just that. It's a myth. It is not true. What's more, it's an untruth that is deeply insulting to our indigenous countrymen and women. And they've suffered a lot for the creation of this country. They shouldn't have to revisit it every single year.

[Bob Crawford]

Well said. Well said. Well, David, I really appreciate you taking the time to answer Gillian's question and being on American History Hotline. I've been talking with David J. Silverman. He's a historian and author of the book this Land Is Their Land, the Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving. He's got a new book coming out in February titled the Chosen and the Damned Native Americans and the Making of Race in the United States. David, I wish you and yours a wonderful, peaceful Thanksgiving.

[David J. Silverman]

Same to you and yours.

[Bob Crawford]

You've been listening to American History Hotline, a production of iHeart podcasts and Scratch Track Productions. The show's executive producer is James Morrison. Our executive producers from iHeart are Jordan Runtal and Jason English. Original music composed by me, Bob Crawford. Please keep in touch. Our email is americanhistoryhotlinemail.com if you like the show, please tell your friends and leave us a review in Apple Podcasts. I'm your host Bob Crawford. Feel free to hit me up on social media to ask a history question or to let me know what you think of the show. You can find me at bobcrawford Base. Thanks so much for listening. See you next week.

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