Everything you know about the “first” Thanksgiving is wrong.
Plymouth Rock.
Pilgrims.
Perseverance.
Big feast.
Happy Indians sharing in the bounty.
It’s all bunk, except maybe the part about eating turkey. Early settlers were so hungry they ate about anything with fur or feathers.
Otherwise, there is little connection between reality and the version of Thanksgiving events still taught in most schools.
That point was hammered home Sunday by award-winning filmmaker Patty Loew.
A member of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe, Loew was the keynote speaker at the third annual “Interfaith Thanksgiving Celebration” held at Lakeview Lutheran Church on Madison’s north side.
Loew said the problem with the traditional Thanksgiving story is that it plays to the American version of history where peace loving English settlers tame the wilderness and survive attacks from the bloodthirsty Indians.
“It’s the quintessential American holiday,” she said. “It involves escaping danger, surviving in a harsh environment, carving out a new life.”
Unfortunately, Loew says, the whole Thanksgiving story is nothing but myth.
In reality, the Indian tribes living along the Eastern seaboard had been decimated by disease in the years preceding the storied landing at Plymouth Rock in 1620.
An epidemic of bubonic plague, most likely brought to the New World by European fishermen in 1617, had killed an estimated 90 percent of the Native population by the time the Pilgrims landed in Massachusetts.
“What the settlers found were empty villages with crops still in the field because the Indians had either died or left,” Loew said, quoting a version of event laid out by author James Loewen
http://www.trinicenter.com/his…..giving.htm.
The more religious of the settlers — only 32 of the 102 who landed at Plymouth were actually Pilgrims — thought the existing villages and cleared fields were a sign that God was providing for them.
Other settlers took to digging up the graves of Indians, picking through the housewares, blankets or weapons buried with the dead.
“So the first Thanksgiving in America was actually held by grave robbers,” Loew told the crowd of more than 200.
Loew challenged the audience to tell the correct version of events and think about what it means when they celebrate this Thursday with family or friends.
“We’re not just talking about feel good history, but history that reflects the truth,” said Loew, a longtime local TV anchor who serves as associate professor of life sciences communications at UW-Madison…
If the crops were still standing in the fields and they were robbing graves, why didn’t the Pilgrims get the bubonic plague?
What would we ever do without associate professors of life science like Ms. Loew and “authors” like Mr. Lowen?
For the record, here are some other titles from this “author”:
Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, Revised and Updated Edition by James W. Loewen (Hardcover - April 1, 2008)
Lies Across America: What American Historic Sites Get Wrong by James W. Loewen (Paperback - Oct 16, 2007)
Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism by James W. Loewen (Paperback - Oct 3, 2006)
We Are the People: Voices from the Other Side of American History by Nathaniel May, Clint Willis, and James W. Loewen (Paperback - Oct 27, 2003)
The Mississippi Chinese : Between Black and White, Second Edition by James W. Loewen (Paperback - Jan 1988)
Lies My Teacher Told Me About Christopher Columbus: What Your History Books Got Wrong by James W. Loewen (Paperback - Jun 19, 1992)
Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong by James W. Loewen (Paperback - Nov 14, 2000)
Everything You’ve Been Taught is Wrong (Portable Professor) by James W. Loewen (Audio CD - 2005) - Unabridged
One begins to detect a pattern...
