[Volokh] Jim Lindgren: The 1621 Thanksgiving Remembered.--

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Posted by Jim Lindgren:
The 1621 Thanksgiving Remembered.--
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2007_11_18-2007_11_24.shtml#1195748415


   On Thanksgiving, I thought I would link to two posts from earlier
   years on the [1]1621 Thanksgiving and the [2]Pilgrims' attitudes
   toward food in the New World.

   In 2004, I [3]posted an account of the Massachusetts Pilgrimsâ
   [4]first Thanksgiving in 1621.

     We set the last spring some twenty acres of Indian corn, and sowed
     some six acres of barley and peas, and according to the manner of
     the Indians, we manured our ground with herrings or rather shads,
     which we have in great abundance, and take with great ease at our
     doors. Our corn [i.e., wheat] did prove well, and God be praised,
     we had a good increase of Indian corn, and our barley indifferent
     good, but our peas not worth the gathering, for we feared they were
     too late sown, they came up very well, and blossomed, but the sun
     parched them in the blossom.

     Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling,
     that so we might after have a special manner rejoice together after
     we had gathered the fruit of our labors; they four in one day
     killed as much fowl, as with a little help beside, served the
     company almost a week, at which time amongst other recreations, we
     exercised our arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and
     among the rest their greatest King Massasoit, with some ninety men,
     whom for three days we entertained and feasted, and they went out
     and killed five deer, which they brought to the plantation and
     bestowed on our governor, and upon the captain, and others. And
     although it be not always so plentiful as it was at this time with
     us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want that we
     often wish you partakers of our plenty.

   Last Thanksgiving (2006), I pointed out the gross misinformation in a
   [5]2005 New York Times op-ed on our anachronistic views of the food
   served at the first Thanksgiving.

   Professor [6]James McWilliams in the 2005 New York Times:

     They Held Their Noses, and Ate

     No contemporary American holiday is as deeply steeped in culinary
     tradition as Thanksgiving. Not only is the day centered on a feast,
     but it's also a feast with a narrowly proscribed list of foods -
     usually some combination of turkey, corn, cranberries, squash and
     pumpkin pie. Decorated with these dishes, the Thanksgiving table
     has become a secular altar upon which we worship America's
     pioneering character, a place to show reverence for the rugged
     Pilgrims who came to Plymouth in peace, sat with the Indians as
     equals and indulged in the New World's cornucopia with gusto.

     But you might call this comfort food for a comfort myth.

     The native American food that the Pilgrims supposedly enjoyed would
     have offended the palate of any self-respecting English colonist â
     the colonial minister Charles Woodmason called it "exceedingly
     filthy and most execrable." Our comfort food, in short, was the
     bane of the settlers' culinary existence.

   But the colonial minister Charles Woodmason quoted by McWilliams was
   not a Pilgrim writing in the 1620s. Woodmason was a [7]famously
   prejudiced Anglican missionary to backcountry Carolina, describing the
   habits of Irish and Scots-Irish settlers in his diary during 1766-68,
   over 140 years after the Pilgrimâs Thanksgiving. Woodmason was not
   complaining about the food the Pilgrims ate, but rather the very
   different foods favored in rural Carolina.

   For much more detail on both issues, you can read the [8]original
   [9]posts.

   My favorites Thanksgiving food is a sage sausage dressing that my
   mother`and sisters make. And then there is the wine . . . .

References

   1. http://volokh.com/posts/1101406398.shtml
   2. http://volokh.com/posts/1164302863.shtml
   3. http://volokh.com/posts/1101406398.shtml
   4. http://members.aol.com/calebj/mourt6.html
   5. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/24/opinion/24mcwilliams.html?ex=1290488400&en=cebb5beccf240954&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
   6. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/24/opinion/24mcwilliams.html?ex=1290488400&en=cebb5beccf240954&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
   7. http://volokh.com/posts/1164302863.shtml
   8. http://volokh.com/posts/1101406398.shtml
   9. http://volokh.com/posts/1164302863.shtml