THROUGH
MOUNTAIN MISTS
Early Settlers of
Their
Descendants...Their Stories...Their Achievements
Lifting the
Mists of History on Their Way of Life
By: Ethelene Dyer Jones
Thanksgiving
in perspective
Thursday, November 27 is the day
in 2008
designated Thanksgiving Day. We gather with family and friends to give
thanks
for the blessings of the year and to feast on turkey and all the
trimmings that
make for a royal dinner.
"A truly American holiday," we
think. With visions of the Pilgrims at Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts
coming
together in 1621 to celebrate one year of survival in the New World,
their
Wampanoag Indian neighbors gathering with them, with a three-day feast
and
festival, we consider that event to be the first American Thanksgiving.
But was it? More investigation
into history
will show us that the Plymouth Colony celebration was not the first
Thanksgiving, even in America.
The celebration predates 1621 by
thousands
of years in other parts of the world. Many cultures had days of
thanksgiving at
harvest time, to celebrate victories in battles, to recognize the hand
of God
in the affairs of men. We have but to read ancient psalms to see that
giving
thanks lay at the heart of worship and recognition of Diety. But in
America, was
there a time before 1621 and the Plymouth Colony gathering that could
be termed
America's "First Thanksgiving"?
Florida explorer Juan Ponce de
Leon arrived
in America in 1513. He claimed the land he had found for Spain. He led
his
entourage to solemnly give thanks for safe passage and for the land
they would
explore for the King of Spain. He was followed by other conquistadores
who did
likewise in succeeding years. Some of these days of Thanksgiving were
led by
Hernando de Soto in 1529, by Father Louis Cancer de Barbastro in 1549,
and by
Tristan de Luna in 1599. These periods of Thanksgiving were along the
coasts of
Florida, that land of waving palms and tropical sunshine.
Add to the Florida celebrations
another
early Thanksgiving Feast by Spanish explorers, this one held in Texas
as
Francisco Vasquez de Coronado and about 1500 of his men held a day of
Thanksgiving in May, 1541. In fact, so positive was the Texas Daughters
of the
American Revolution (
France got into the battle for
exploration
of the New World. In 1564, a group of French Huguenots landed along the
St.
Johns River in Florida and began a settlement there. Like others who
had braved
the ocean voyage and had arrived intact in the new land, a Thanksgiving
Day
marked their feat in 1564.
In September, 1565, Pedro
Menendez de
Aviles, an experienced admiral from Spain, settled St. Augustine,
Florida and
called the people together for a mass of thanksgiving. Joining the
settlers
were the nearby Seloy Indians. The feast for that occasion was garbanzo
beans,
garlic-flavored pork, hardtack biscuits and red wine.
This festival, coming at the
first
permanent settlement in America, is considered by many historians to be
the
first and most continuing Thanksgiving on American soil by foreign
settlers. In
fact, there has been a quarrel between those who hold to the St.
Augustine
theory and the Plymouth Colony theory of "first Thanksgiving" site.
Then came the claim of the
Jamestown
settlement in Virginia, and the 1610 date for its Thanksgiving
celebration. Why
did this one not hold as the first of the English colony Thanksgivings
in
America? Settled in 1607, Jamestown had a hard time existing. Disease
and
starvation were rampant. When Lord De La Warr came in 1610 with
supplies, the
remaining colonists took heart. The Jamestown Colony did not list the
word
"Thanksgiving" as the intent of the celebration led by the Rev.
Richard Buck and Ensign Anthony Scott as this colony took on new life.
But
Thanksgiving was implied in the gathering and determination to make
Jamestown a
permanent settlement.
A painting commemorates another
English
colony Thanksgiving held in 1619 at Berkeley Plantation in Virginia,
about
thirty miles north of Jamestown. Captain John Woodleefe had this
written
declaration which began the first Thanksgiving there: "Wee ordaine that
the day of our ships arrival at the place assigned for plantacon in the
land of
Virginia shall be yearly and perpetualy kept holy as a day of
thanksgiving to
Almighty god." It is believed that Thanksgiving Day was held in
November
when the ship arrived from England. The painting, "The First
Thanksgiving," by Sydney King, shows the ship in the James River and
the
thirty-five men kneeling on shore.
It is interesting that
regardless of the
country from which the early settlers came, whether from Spain, France
or
England, they recognized the providence of Almighty God in guiding them
through
treacherous seas to a land, not necessarily "flowing with milk and
honey," but with challenges, hardships, disease and enemies to be
overcome.
Sarah Josepha Hale, editor of Godey’s Lady’s Book, lobbied for
and wrote numerous articles and pamphlets calling for a national day of
Thanksgiving from 1846 until 1863. President Lincoln, during the Civil
War,
decreed that a day of Thanksgiving be held on the second Thursday in
November.
The day was changed a bit but finally came to rest on the fourth
Thursday of
each November by decree of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, signed
into law
in 1941. It is held on a Thursday from the English tradition of
Calvinistic
"lecture-days" and harvest festival days. For over six decades now we
have held Thanksgiving Day on the fourth Thursday of November.
c2008 by
Ethelene Dyer
Jones; published November 27, 2008 in The Union Sentinel, Blairsville,
GA. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
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