Most Americans have been taught that American Indians attended a harvest feast the Pilgrims held in 1621 at Plymouth Plantation, Mass.
But they may not be aware of the leading role the Indians played in the settlers' survival in the new land, said Edwin Schupman, of the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.
Not only did Native Americans bring deer, corn and perhaps freshly caught fowl to the feast, they also ensured the Puritan settlers would survive through the first year in America by acclimating them to a habitat they had lived in for thousands of years.
"It's well documented that the first Europeans who settled in the New World could not have made it through the first few winters without the assistance and knowledge of American Indians," said Dick Ropp, of Edinboro, chairman of the French Creek Living History Association, a group formed in 2003 to research and disseminate information about the French and American Indian presence in Western Pennsylvania.
"The Wampanoag who lived in the area taught the Pilgrims how to smoke and dry indigenous meat and fish and how to plant the three sisters -- corn, beans and squash -- in mounds fertilized by fish and blessed by powdered tobacco, which is also a natural insect repellent," said Kinorea "Two Feather" Tigri, a cultural practitioner and educator from Chippewa.
"They also taught how to navigate from place to place by water and over land, how to tan hides used for clothing, how to identify toxic plants and berries and explained the medicinal and culinary use of indigenous herbs."
American Indians didn't have a special day to offer thanks for their harvest and good fortune, but they offered thanks as part of their daily lives, said Dr. Tigri, whose mother was a 13th generation Cherokee medicine woman and whose father's ancestors were Oglala Sioux and Creek.
"Today, most American Indians I know celebrate Thanksgiving along with the rest of the nation," she said. "Through assimilation, we've adopted much of the holiday practices of the mainstream culture. However, it's no coincidence that President Bush named November Native American Heritage Month, which coincides with Thanksgiving."
John Adams, senior historian for the museum, said New World Thanksgiving ceremonies date as far back as 1598 when Spanish explorers celebrated a thanksgiving Mass after crossing the Rio Grande into New Mexico.
Robyn Gioia and Michael Gannon of the University of Florida have argued that the earliest thanksgiving in what is now the United States was celebrated by the Spanish on Sept. 8, 1565, in what is now St. Augustine, Fla. In Virginia, a day of thanksgiving was codified in the founding charter of Berkeley Hundred in Charles City County in 1619.
"The reason Thanksgiving has come to be associated with Plymouth Rock and the Pilgrims is that [Sarah] Josepha Hale, the person who lobbied to make Thanksgiving a national holiday, was from Massachusetts and the editor of the influential 'Godey's Lady's Book,' one of the most widely circulated magazines of its day," Mr. Adams said.
Notwithstanding the relatively mild winter the Pilgrims encountered the first year in the New World, the early settlers had a mortality rate of 50 percent and survived partly by trading with the American Indians for corn. In March 1621, the settlers and Wampanoag signed a mutual defense treaty.
"In mid-October 1621, after the treaty had been observed in good faith for several months, the Pilgrims staged their traditional English harvest home celebration and invited the Indians, who showed up 90 strong," Mr. Adams said. "The event went on for three days and included games, an exhibition of shooting skills and hunting more game and fowl to keep the feast going."
In a 1622 publication of the accumulated letters sent back home to England titled "Mourt's Relation," the settlers wrote about the historic occasion, but it wasn't until 200 years later, when the letters were republished, that the event was called The First Thanksgiving.
First Published: November 24, 2010, 11:00 a.m.
