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- [00:01]
Sally Helm
Why get all your holiday decorations delivered through Instacart? Because maybe you only bought two wreaths, but you have 12 windows. Or maybe your toddler got very eager with the Advent calendar. Or maybe the inflatable snowman didn't make it through the snowstorm. Or maybe the twinkle lights aren't twinkling. Whatever the reason, this season, Instacart's here for hosts and their whole holiday haul. Get decorations from the Home Depot, CVS and more through Instacart and enjoy free delivery on your first three orders. Service fees in terms of why where'd.
- [00:30]
Keisha James
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- [00:57]
Sally Helm
Your DSW store or dsw.com hey everyone, it's Sally here. As we head into the holidays, we just wanted to let you know that History this Week is not going anywhere. Episodes will keep coming every Monday, so when you meet up with friends and family, you will be stocked with plenty of fun stories to share from the past. If you don't already Follow History this week wherever you listen to your podcasts and when you are showing off everything you learned from the show, make sure to tell them you heard it from us.
- [01:25]
David Silverman
The History Channel Original Podcast.
- [01:30]
Sally Helm
History this week, November 26, 1970 I'm Sally Helm. Above the harbor in Plymouth, Massachusetts, at the top of a hill sits a bronze statue. It depicts Massasoit, a great leader of the Wampanoag tribe. If he could see one thing he'd be looking at all day long is a stone monument, a rectangle of austere granite columns surrounding a rock. Plymouth Rock the town of Plymouth, Massachusetts makes a very big deal about Plymouth Rock. Supposedly, it's the place where the Pilgrims first set foot in what is now the United States 350 years ago. The town has already been celebrating this big anniversary for months with speeches, with a parade, with a display at the Plymouth National Wax Museum, featuring a live display of pilgrim crafts and 26 pilgrim tableaux. But today, Thanksgiving Day, there will be a very different sort of gathering. In the past several weeks, flyers went out across the country telling protesters to come to Plymouth for a national day of mourning. The organizers, the United American Indians of New England called for native people from all over the US to join them at Plymouth. They say, may the voice of our people be heard throughout the land. And so on Thanksgiving morning, about 200 people begin to gather at the base of that statue of Massasoit. There are speeches, words of protest, and then some of the activists actually go down the hill to that famous rock and bury it in sand. Others board a bright painted replica of the Mayflower that's anchored in the harbor, climb up the rigging and tear down the flags. Some of them crash a commemoratory Thanksgiving meal and flip over a commemoratory Thanksgiving table. It's a protest against the myth behind this major American holiday, against the oft told sanitized story which covers over decades of brutality and suffering. A story that in many ways just isn't true. Starting with that famous rock.
- [04:13]
Keisha James
The pilgrims did not land on Plymouth Rock because Plymouth Rock did not exist then. They literally just took a rock from town center, dragged it down to the waterfront, built a shrine around it, and sort of sold that as the birthplace of America.
- [04:26]
Sally Helm
Keisha James is the granddaughter of Wamsada Frank James, who is one of the main organizers of that first day of mourning. She now leads the modern version of the protest. And she says for the activists who gathered in 1970 on the top of.
- [04:41]
Keisha James
That hill, that was an electrifying moment because I think it was them feeling like they were beginning to retake their place in this country. And it was starting in Plymouth.
- [04:53]
Sally Helm
Today, the real story of Thanksgiving. What is the forgotten context around that much mythologized meal? And why is it so important to remember? This episode is brought to you by US Cellular. Some things are worth waiting for, like getting your diploma or finding the right partner. You know what's not worth waiting for? The cable guy. Fortunately, US Cellular's home Internet is so simple to install, you can do it yourself. And it's just $39.99 per month when bundled with a wireless plan with a three year price lock guarantee. US Cellular Home Internet made simple without the waiting terms apply. Visit us cellular.com for details. Hello everyone, my name is Wesley Levisay. From the History of the Second World War podcast, Join me on a journey through the most destructive conflict in human history. A journey that will take us not just through the famous campaigns and cataclysmic battles, but also to the lesser, well known corners of the war that touched millions all over the world. As we try and answer not just the questions of what and where, but how and why, you can Find history of the Second World War on all major podcast platforms or@historyofthes.com this episode is brought to you by United Airlines. When you want to make the most of your vacation, book with United. They're an airline that cares about your travels as much as you do. United is transforming the flying experience with Bluetooth connectivity, screens, power at every seat, and bigger overhead bins to help fit everyone's bag. And with their app, you can skip the bag check line, get live updates and more. Change the way you fly. Book your next trip today@united.com Activist Keisha James remembers the first time she learned about the Thanksgiving story.
- [06:50]
Keisha James
In school, I was given a picture book. Everyone in my class was, James said.
- [06:57]
Sally Helm
It told a simple story. The Pilgrims came to the New World seeking religious freedom. They landed on Plymouth Rock.
- [07:05]
Keisha James
They were greeted with open arms by the Native American population. The Pilgrims and the Native Americans sat down to a Thanksgiving feast. They had a wonderful time. They became best friends. And then, conveniently, the Native Americans faded into the background. America was founded. The end.
- [07:24]
Sally Helm
Even as a five or six year old, James knew something was off. For one thing, the Native American population.
- [07:32]
Keisha James
Of course, was never specified by tribe. It was just sort of this blob of various different Native cultures.
- [07:39]
Sally Helm
But James knew that these were the Wampanoag, her own ancestors, who had been living on that land for thousands of years.
- [07:47]
Keisha James
I've been attending nationality of mourning every single year since I was born. So 22 years at this point. So by the time I encountered the Thanksgiving myth, I was aware that things did not go the way that the book was telling me. And I think I was a little baffled as to why we were taught this very sanitized and false version of the Thanksgiving story.
- [08:13]
Sally Helm
Historian David Silverman was taught that same version as a white kid growing up in Massachusetts.
- [08:19]
David Silverman
Yeah, I distinctly recall participating in a Thanksgiving pageant. So, you know, the Pilgrims have these obscenely large buckles on every conceivable article of clothing, and the Native people look like caricatures of Plains Indians from Hollywood.
- [08:34]
Sally Helm
So regionally wrong to start with. We're not in the Plains in this story.
- [08:38]
David Silverman
Oh, right. This has nothing to do with what Native people in southern New England looked like in the 17th century. For that matter, it has nothing to do with what Pilgrims looked like in the 17th century.
- [08:48]
Sally Helm
Not so many buckles as we remember now.
- [08:50]
David Silverman
That's exactly right.
- [08:52]
Sally Helm
Silverman went on to become a professor at George Washington University, specializing in Native American history, and his most recent book is an attempt to add context to that overly Simplified story, a story that ignores the many decades that came before Thanksgiving.
- [09:09]
David Silverman
And the story also eliminates what happens after the dessert is served. And you know, that story is not a feel good, patriotic story. It's a horror story.
- [09:22]
Sally Helm
The important context for that story begins decades earlier. The early 1600s are a time of change for the people of what is now southern New England. The Wampanoag and the Narragansett and the Mohegan and the Pequot corn, bean and squash horticulture had already spread to this region from Mexico. As a result, people are living in more centralized communities, which has led to some more intertribal rivalries and to bigger populations. The land that is now Plymouth was once the Wampanoag town of Patuxent.
- [09:56]
David Silverman
Cornfields lining the harbor, native weetoos, or wigwams. We see native machoons or dugout canoes crisscrossing the harbor as the people are going fishing or visiting other communities. So, you know, it was a vibrant place thronging with indigenous people and also.
- [10:17]
Sally Helm
Some Europeans who had begun to arrive in this region for trade and for a more violent slave raids.
- [10:28]
David Silverman
The best estimates we have right now are that Native American slavery afflicted upwards of 3 to 5 million people over the course of the colonial era. And, you know, that higher number is 40% of the volume of the transatlantic African slave trade.
- [10:42]
Sally Helm
For people living in southern New England in the early 1600s, that slavery took.
- [10:48]
David Silverman
The form of these explorers going up and down the coast and luring them into trade and then seizing upon them out of nowhere and then sending them off to some unknown phase.
- [10:59]
Sally Helm
One person who lived in Patuxet during this time was a young man who would become known as Tisquantum or Squanto. His name comes down through the years. As part of the Thanksgiving story, we talked about him with Paula Peterson, a Wampanoag writer and researcher who has studied her people's history extensively. She told us, in early 1600s, Patuxet Tiskwantam had a fateful encounter with an English captain named Thomas Hunt.
- [11:28]
Paula Peters
Thomas Hunt was kind of a rogue pirate, as I call him. He decided that he would lure a group of Wampanoag men aboard his ship and then capture them and take them off to be sold as slaves. He took them to Malaga, Spain, and he attempted to sell them all into slavery. Some were actually sold, some were rescued by a group of monks.
- [11:53]
Sally Helm
One of the people rescued by these Spanish friars is Tisquantum.
- [11:58]
David Silverman
And then he manages to make his way back to New England through a series of events that are almost impossible to fathom.
- [12:07]
Sally Helm
Tisquantum somehow makes contact with English merchants in Spain and winds up in London in the household of a merchant and shipbuilder named John Slaney. Not a lot is written about Tisquantum's experience there.
- [12:21]
Paula Peters
By all appearances, he was probably somewhat of a houseboy. But it was also the experiences of those who had been captured, living in England, to be treated like a curiosity. They might be trotted out into parties.
- [12:36]
Sally Helm
During this time, Tisquantum learns English and learns a lot about English society in general. He travels, makes his way to Newfoundland and back. All that time presumably thinking about home, imagining his return, and then finally, the.
- [12:54]
David Silverman
Year before, the Mayflower arrived, hitched a ride on a ship going back to New England and made his way there.
- [13:02]
Sally Helm
But he returns to a world that's very different from the one he left.
- [13:11]
Paula Peters
By the time Squanto came back, his entire village was wiped out.
- [13:17]
Sally Helm
That thriving town of Patuxent has been decimated. The Wampanoag had experienced what they called the great dying, a plague brought by Europeans that killed thousands of people. We don't know exactly what disease this was. It may have been smallpox, and it has completely upended Tantum's world.
- [13:40]
Paula Peters
Of course, he must have been absolutely devastated, but no one writes about that. We have to apply that knowledge of what we know about grief and say he absolutely was heartbroken, he absolutely was devastated.
- [13:59]
Sally Helm
Silverman told us he believes Squanto probably took the name Tisquantum after his return from Europe. Tisquantum was the name of the Wampanog, God of the dead.
- [14:09]
David Silverman
The God of the dead lived in the underworld. The threshold to this underworld was the ocean or caves or swamps. And what it suggests is that his experience having crisscrossed the ocean and experienced the horrors of being enslaved. But then the dangers and spiritual power of a far off foreign society meant that he was a transitional figure and a figure of potentially enormous power within Wampanoag society.
- [14:45]
Sally Helm
Desquantum's life has already been vastly impacted and shaped by contact with Europeans. And then, a year after his return home, another ship bearing Europeans arrives in southern New England, the Mayflower. On board are a group of separatists from the Church of England, the Pilgrims. They were looking for freedom to practice their religion, though they didn't necessarily want everyone else to have that freedom.
- [15:15]
David Silverman
The lesson that most of us are taught are not just that these folks are fleeing persecution, but that they sought to establish a society of religious freedom that is badly false. These folks believed that they were practicing the true faith and their tolerance for people who dissented from their beliefs. It was very slim.
- [15:39]
Sally Helm
The Mayflower doesn't actually first land in what is now Plymouth. It anchors in modern day Provincetown.
- [15:47]
David Silverman
If you can imagine Cape Cod like a curled arm, this would be the tips of your fingers.
- [15:54]
Sally Helm
It's a pretty bare, exposed landscape. And so the Wampanoag tend to abandon it in the winter.
- [16:01]
David Silverman
The English don't see any people, but even though they fear native people, they would style them savages. And, you know, they thought they were driven by bloodlust. Nevertheless, they need to make contact with these folks in order to get some fresh food and to get the lay of the land.
- [16:18]
Sally Helm
They start searching and stumble upon some Wampanoag summer camps left empty during the winter. They dig up some caches of seed.
- [16:26]
David Silverman
Corn, and also, quite insultingly, they desecrate some Wampanoag graves. And they dig them up to see what's inside. And you can imagine how the Wampanoags thought of this behavior.
- [16:40]
Sally Helm
Eventually, the Pilgrims do spot some people.
- [16:44]
David Silverman
They stumble upon a couple of Wampanoags along the coast walking their dog.
- [16:50]
Sally Helm
Really? Literally.
- [16:51]
David Silverman
Yeah. They're walking a dog along the beach, as people do today, and these Wampanoags take off. You know, the pattern of Europeans along the coast suggests that this is not going to lead to anything good.
- [17:05]
Sally Helm
Soon after, the Pilgrims come under attack by the Wampanoag. There aren't any casualties, but the Pilgrims decide they need to move. That's how they end up in Plymouth. When they land in the village, it's nearly empty, and they think, perfect.
- [17:23]
David Silverman
Look, this place is fertile. The planting grounds are cleared and the human beings are cleared because there was this epidemic.
- [17:32]
Paula Peters
The Pilgrims had to sweep away the bleached bones of the dead to build their houses in Patuxent and call it Plymouth.
- [17:40]
Sally Helm
The Pilgrims do struggle through a tough winter. That part of the Thanksgiving myth is true. Many die of disease, which gives the local Wampanoag a good reason not to approach. These diseases have been devastating to them in the past. But eventually, their leader, Massasoit, he does send an emissary to these new arrivals. That man walks into the colony, he says, welcome.
- [18:05]
David Silverman
Their jaws nearly hit the ground. You know, here's a native guy who speaks English.
- [18:11]
Sally Helm
He had learned it through years of contact with English fishermen on the coast of Maine. Now, the Thanksgiving myth would have it that the native people made this foray out of some kind of inherent friendliness and desire to help the struggling Pilgrims. But that's not the case. Massasoyet already existed in a political context with inter tribal competition and rivalries. He wanted the Pilgrims as military allies to strengthen the Wampanoag's position in the region. And he needed these allies, in part because of the Europeans, because of the great dying.
- [18:45]
Paula Peters
He had lost so many warriors from so many villages, which made the Wampanoag territory vulnerable. So to strengthen his territory, he actually needed to ally himself with people who were very much like those who brought the sickness and diseases that wiped out his people to begin with.
- [19:09]
Sally Helm
He's also interested in trade, especially for.
- [19:12]
David Silverman
Metal goods, swords, knives, hatchets, and for that matter, kettles, which are invaluable. And any leader who could corner this trade stood to benefit politically.
- [19:28]
Sally Helm
On April 1, 1621, Massasoit signs a treaty with the Pilgrims. Squanto helps translate, but David Silverman emphasizes the way the British interpreted this treaty is probably not the way the Wampanoag did.
- [19:43]
David Silverman
These people are working through the strained translations of untrained interpreters.
- [19:49]
Sally Helm
Agreeing to have King James as a friend and ally doesn't really have any meaning in the Wampanoag context. But the treaty is signed. Afterwards, Massasoit sends Squanto to live with the Pilgrims, these new allies, to teach them to survive how to plant corn.
- [20:09]
Paula Peters
By using fish to fertilize the earth, and how they planted with squash at the bottom and beans climbing around the stalks of the corn. That stuff really did happen. And I think that I have to imagine, and I know it's written about, that there were genuine friendships that were formed around that.
- [20:31]
Sally Helm
By autumn, relations between the two groups are uneasy, but peaceful. The Pilgrims have completed their first corn.
- [20:39]
David Silverman
Harvest and they can actually see a future here. They think this colony might very well survive, and so they take a few days off and decide to celebrate.
- [20:50]
Sally Helm
This celebration will become the basis for the idea of the first Thanksgiving.
- [20:57]
David Silverman
They're going to gorge themselves on food. They're going to engage in sporting events and such, and probably drink to access.
- [21:05]
Sally Helm
Thanksgivings in general were already deeply rooted in the English tradition. They'd happen when a good harvest came or when a drought ended. The Wampanoag actually had their own version of this tradition, festive meals that celebrated good fortune. But surely they'd never celebrated the way the pilgrimage pilgrims did that day, by shooting guns into the air.
- [21:28]
David Silverman
So while they're celebrating, they start firing their guns.
- [21:32]
Sally Helm
Why did they start shooting guns off? Were they just, like, drunk and having fun?
- [21:35]
David Silverman
Yeah, they were drunk and having fun, and the Wampanoags hear this gunfire. And let's keep in mind they have a mutual defense pact with the colony, and they think that the colony is under attack.
- [21:49]
Paula Peters
And so 90 to 100 warriors came with Massasoit to see really what the hell was all that noise about? You know, is there a threat? So they came armed.
- [22:03]
David Silverman
Now, this is a critical moment. If the English overreacted to a large band of Wampanoag warriors showing up, this could have become a bloodbath and the colony would have been wiped out. But they don't. They had created enough mutual trust with Massasoit that they didn't overreact, and rather than firing on him and his men, invited them in.
- [22:27]
Sally Helm
And so this is how the Pilgrims and the Native Americans end up sharing a feast.
- [22:33]
David Silverman
The Wampanoags contribute several deer to the feast. They engage in target practice with the English, with the English firing their guns and the Natives firing their arrows. You know, this is a deep, deeply kind of masculine affair. It is not the domestic affair that we normally associate with Thanksgiving dinner.
- [22:54]
Sally Helm
There's plenty of food, but no butter, flour, sugar, potatoes.
- [23:00]
David Silverman
Although they likely were eating turkey, they would have been eating copious amounts of fish, eels, clams, lobsters, oysters. If there was dessert, and I doubt there was, it would involve berries and honey and nothing more. And again, quite a bit of drinking.
- [23:21]
Sally Helm
This is the only event of its kind on record, a peaceful celebration between the Native Americans and the colonists. And although relations were relatively stable at this point, there was always a fear that could change.
- [23:36]
David Silverman
The English did not want Wampanoag people showing up uninvited to their colony because they feared that they were plotting, trying to figure out the weaknesses of the colony and that they would use casual interaction as an opportunity to turn treacherous and wipe out the colony.
- [23:57]
Sally Helm
But in reality, it's the English who will all but wipe out the Wampanoag. Want to shop Walmart? Black Friday deals first Walmart plus members get early access to our hottest deals. Join now and get 50% off a one year annual membership. Shop Black Friday deals first with Walmart Plus. See terms@walmartplus.com with Uber.
- [24:27]
Keisha James
Reserve good things come to those who plan ahead.
- [24:30]
Sally Helm
Family vacay. Reserve your ride as soon as you book your flights to all the planners. Now you can reserve your Uber ride up to 90 days in advance. See Uber app for details. The holiday season officially starts when you get that first card in the mail. Shutterfly makes it easy to add more meaning to the everyday with hundreds of holiday card designs that can be personalized in seconds with your favorite photos from this year. Select your greeting, customize the color, and even add little extras like personalized foil to make a holiday card that really shines. Enjoy. 40% off with code smile40shutterfly.com and send something meaningful this year. See site for more details in the decades after this Thanksgiving meal, the population of English settlers in this region rapidly expands. Ten years after the Pilgrim's Land, the English found the Massachusetts Bay Colony, which begins with a migration of 15,000 people. That's more than any tribe in the area. And the Wampanoag are watching warily as all these new settlers arrive.
- [25:38]
Paula Peters
These are not the people that they made a treaty with. These are people who don't even give a rat's ass about that treaty, and they just want to get more and more of the Wampanoag's land.
- [25:48]
Sally Helm
Within a few decades, the pact that Massasoit and the Pilgrims signed had become truly meaningless. In 1675, war finally breaks out.
- [26:01]
David Silverman
The precipitating event in this war was Plymouth Colony arresting and executing three Wampanoags for the supposed murder of another Wampanoag in Wampanoag territory. That is raising the stakes in a way that Native people could not accept. If they can march into Wampanoag country, seize people, and then execute them, well, there's no sanctity to Wampanoag sovereignty or Wampanoag life.
- [26:35]
Sally Helm
It is Massasoit's son who goes to war. Metacom. He had adopted the English name Philip, and this became known as King Philip's War. It is considered the deadliest war in the history of colonial America.
- [26:50]
David Silverman
The fact of the matter is that these European colonial societies can fight a losing war longer against Native people than Native people can fight a winning war against them. They have more resources. They have more population. Leaders can send poor people to die in these wars in ways that Native leaders cannot do with their own people.
- [27:13]
Sally Helm
The war has devastating consequences for the Native population.
- [27:17]
David Silverman
It's not just the Wampanoags. It's the Narragansetts and the Nipmucs. The English and their allies have shattered these people.
- [27:27]
Sally Helm
Here's Keisha James.
- [27:29]
Keisha James
All of the members of the tribes who had supported King Philip faced horrific consequences. Men were slaughtered. Women and children were sold into slavery. Men were sold into slavery. Certain tribes were placed in internment camps on Deer island and left to starve. We start seeing what will become very common bounties out for Native scalps, including the scalps of infants. So it very much was sort of full on Europeans massacring native peoples at that point.
- [28:07]
Sally Helm
The Thanksgiving story as we now know it stops well before the horrific outcomes of King Philip's war. It takes time for that story to emerge. Centuries. During those years, New Englanders keep celebrating their traditional days of Thanksgiving. And then in 1841, a primary source document from back in the 1600s is published. It describes this feast between the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag.
- [28:36]
David Silverman
It's widely read and commented on, and the editor included a footnote in this account which said, this is the first Thanksgiving, you know, the famous harvest festival of New England. And the idea sticks.
- [28:51]
Sally Helm
Wow. From a footnote.
- [28:53]
David Silverman
From a footnote. It's one of the only famous footnotes I can think of. And I'm a historian. I read a lot of footnotes.
- [28:59]
Sally Helm
People start to repeat this idea that the first Thanksgiving was a meal between the Pilgrims and the Native Americans. The town of Plymouth, which is kind.
- [29:09]
David Silverman
Of down on its luck in the 19th century, trumpets this idea as a means of boosting tourism. And then Abraham Lincoln declares Thanksgiving to be a national holiday during the Civil War.
- [29:26]
Sally Helm
It was a small act to create unity in a time of disunity, Silverman told us. Later, in the 1800s, the Thanksgiving myth comes to serve another purpose. That's a time when immigration to the US Is on the rise, and many of the immigrants are Catholic or Jewish or Orthodox Christian. Silverman said the Thanksgiving myth became a way for Protestants to tell this story about their own importance in the founding of the nation.
- [29:54]
David Silverman
So it gives them cultural authority at a time in which their authority is slipping.
- [29:59]
Sally Helm
And at the same time, this peaceful scene of white settlers and Native Americans sitting down to dinner, it stands in stark contrast to the reality of relations between those two groups.
- [30:13]
David Silverman
It is a way of diminishing the bloodiness of American expansion at a time when the United States wars against the Plains tribes are taking on genocidal form, as much of the public is reading about on a on a regular basis. It is a national embarrassment. And this myth serves to paper over the bloodiness of colonialism and US national expansion.
- [30:43]
Sally Helm
As we get into the 20th century, the Thanksgiving myth has solidified. It's taught in nearly all public schools. And in almost every version, the Wampanoag get erased, turned into that blob of nameless tribes that Keisha James learned about in school. Keisha's grandfather, Wamsetta Frank James, grew up not far from Plymouth on Cape Cod. At the end of high school, he gets a full academic scholarship to Dartmouth, but his sister convinces him to audition for the New England Conservatory of Music.
- [31:16]
Keisha James
Because he was very talented at music. He would steal his older brother's trumpet, which was a big no, no, and play it. He had never received a formal lesson. He was just prodigiously talented at the trumpet and at music.
- [31:31]
Sally Helm
James got in and became the first male Native American graduate of the school.
- [31:36]
Keisha James
But he was told by his instructor that no symphony orchestra would ever hire him because of the color of his skin. And unfortunately, his instructor turned out to be right.
- [31:46]
Sally Helm
Keisha said this was a turning point in her grandfather's life.
- [31:51]
Keisha James
Some anger began to boil up, some political tendencies began to boil up because he had essentially played the white man's game, is what he would call it. He had studied Western classical music. You know, you can't get more assimilated than that, more European than that, you know. And he played this game and was still rejected because of the color of his skin. And so I think he fully decided then that he wasn't going to try to assimilate anymore or play the white man's game anymore. He was just going to be.
- [32:24]
Sally Helm
Wampanoag, Wamsara. Frank James becomes a part of the fight for indigenous rights that sweeps the country in the 1960s, inspired in part by black civil rights activism. In 1969, Native American activists famously take control of Alcatraz Island.
- [32:42]
Keisha James
It was very much a continuation of one of the demands of the Red Power movement, which is native self determination and sovereignty. So essentially, Alcatraz island for two years was turned into a sovereign native nation.
- [32:56]
Sally Helm
Her grandfather's big moment comes the year after the Alcatraz protest began.
- [33:03]
Keisha James
1970 is the 350th anniversary of the landing of the Mayflower.
- [33:08]
Sally Helm
In September of that year, Massachusetts hosts a grand fancy banquet to celebrate. And they invite Wamsada Frank James to speak. He's at this point a prominent native leader, and he writes a speech with a bunch of material about the devastating effects that the arrival of Europeans had on the Wampanoag. He writes about atrocities and broken promises. And when the state organizers see this, they say, essentially, that's not what we had in mind. They ask James to make changes to the speech. He says, no.
- [33:44]
Keisha James
My grandfather refused to have words put into his mouth and declined to give the speech.
- [33:50]
Sally Helm
He later told a local newspaper that in his opinion, quote, they just couldn't stand to be told the truth. In the wake of this whole episode, James and a friend hatch a plan. They send a flyer out to Native American communities across the country.
- [34:08]
Keisha James
And this is 1970, so I don't even know how they got this flyer everywhere across the country, but they did. Essentially, it says, we are declaring a national day of Mourning. Be there.
- [34:21]
Sally Helm
On Thanksgiving morning, 1970, about 200 people show up on Coles Hill in Plymouth beneath that bronze statue of Massasoit. Since then, the protest has continued every year, but not without pushback. In 1997, police brutality against the protesters made national news.
- [34:45]
Keisha James
Pictures of elders being pepper sprayed. One police officer broke his leg kicking a man. He was kicking him so hard. Nevertheless, my grandfather and later my dad and my mom every year would continue to show up to Plymouth and speak truth to power. You know, every single year, regardless of how many people were there or how violent the cops got or how many times they were spat on or yelled at because they felt that this was just an important narrative to continuously challenge.
- [35:13]
Sally Helm
Now, Keisha herself helps to organize the day of Mourning to continue to challenge that narrative and to make good on the words her grandfather would have said back in 1970. In that speech the organizers didn't want him to give, he wrote, our presence.
- [35:31]
Keisha James
Here this evening is living testimony that this is only the beginning of the American Indian, particularly the Wampanoag, to regain the position in this country that is rightfully ours.
- [35:49]
Sally Helm
Thanks for listening to History this week. For more moments throughout history that are also worth watching, check your local TV listings to find out what's on the History Channel today. If you want to get in touch, please shoot us an email at our email address, historythisweekistory.com or you can leave us a voicemail 212-351-0410. We really love to hear from you. Special thanks today to Keisha James, Paula Peters and David Silverman, author of this Land Is Their the Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving. It's a great book. This episode was produced by Ben Dickstein. History this Week is also produced by Julie Magruder, Julia Press and me, Sally Helm. Our editor and sound designer is Brian Flood. Our researcher is Emma Fredericks. Our executive producers are McKamey, Lynn, Jesse Katz and Ted Butler. Don't forget to subscribe, rate and review History this Week, wherever you get your podcasts and we will see you next week. Hey listeners, we just wanted to let you know that as we head into the holidays, History this Week is not going anywhere. You will have plenty of new stories to share with family and friends. So when you're showing off everything you learned, make sure to tell them you got it from History this Week.