Many Many Thanksgivings

So now that we know that the so-called first thanksgiving wasn't a thanksgiving at all, but was a 3 day festival of entertainment and feasting because of the political and military alliance between Massasoit and the Wampanoags, and Myles Standish and the Pilgrims, as well as a land deal where the Wampanoags gave the Pilgrims permission to stay on their land, now, let's talk about Thanksgiving in general

Thanksgiving is a Christian celebration, a Christian celebration where there's praying and fasting, and while that first so-called Thanksgiving wasn't a Thanksgiving at all, there were many Thanksgivings declared and celebrated before that so-called first Thanksgiving meal, and afterwards.

Spanish explorers in the Texas panhandle held the firstThanksgiving back in 1541; in Texas there is a marker that says, "Feast of the First Thanksgiving – 1541.

Spanish explorer, Francisco Vasquez de Coronado, led 1,500 men in a thanksgiving celebration at the Palo Duro Canyon. Coronado's expedition traveled north from Mexico City in 1540 in search of gold. The group camped alongside the canyon, in the modern-day Texas Panhandle, for two weeks in the spring of 1541. The Texas Society Daughters of the American Colonists commemorated the event as the "first Thanksgiving" in 1959.

Robyn Gioia andMichael Gannon of the University of Florida argue that the earliest Thanksgiving service in what is now the United States was celebrated by the Spanish on September 8, 1565, in what is now Saint Augustine, Florida. September 8, 1565. Pedro Menendez de Avile in St Augustine Florida and his Spaniards had a Thanksgiving. De Avile invited the Timucua tribe to dine with them on that Thanksgiving.

In 1564, some French Huguenots celebrated their own thanksgiving for safe landing, even if it was in Florida.

Juan de Onate on the banks of the Rio Grande held a Thanksgiving festival after they successfully crossed 350 miles of Mexican desert. These claims include an earlier religious service by Spanish explorers in Texas at San Elizario in 1598, as well as thanksgiving feasts in the Virginia Colony.

Thanksgiving services were routine in what was to become the Commonwealth of Virginia as early as 1607, with the first permanent settlement of Jamestown, Virginia holding a thanksgiving in 1610.

December 4, 1619. 38 settlers landed on James River on a ship called the Margaret, 20 miles away from Jamestown. Their Thanksgiving Day was to commemorate their landing, but that tradition died out after the Indian Massacre of 1622 killed most of them, and they had to abandon the colony.

In 1619, 38 English settlers arrived at Berkeley Hundred. The group's charter required "that the day of our ships arrival at the place assigned for plantacon in the land of Virginia shall be yearly and perpetually kept holy as a day of thanksgiving to Almighty God." Three years later, after the Indian massacre of 1622, the Berkeley Hundred site and other outlying locations were abandoned. According to Baker, "the American holiday's true origin was the New England Calvinist Thanksgiving. Never coupled with a Sabbath meeting, the Puritan observances were special days set aside during the week for thanksgiving and praise in response to God's providence."

A day for Thanksgiving services was codified in the founding charter of Berkeley Hundred in Charles City County, Virginia in 1619.

At the Berkeley Plantation on the James River they claim the first Thanksgiving in America was held there on December 4th, 1619....two years before the Pilgrims' festival....and every year since 1958 they have reenacted the event. In their view it's not the Mayflower we should remember, it's the Margaret, the little ship which brought 38 English settlers to the plantation in 1619. The story is that the settlers had been ordered by the London company that sponsored them to commemorate the ship's arrival with an annual day of Thanksgiving. Hardly anybody outside Virginia has ever heard of this Thanksgiving, but in 1963 President Kennedy officially recognized the plantation's claim. http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/406#sthash.RBNIMuWG.dpuf

AFTER 1621:

The Massachusetts Bay Colony (consisting mainly of Puritan Christians) celebrated Thanksgiving in 1623, and in 1630, and frequently thereafter until about 1680, when it became an annual festival in that colony; and Connecticut as early as 1639 and annually after 1647, except in 1675. The Dutch in New Netherland appointed a day for giving thanks in 1644 and occasionally thereafter.

thanksgivings all over the place;

in 1623. That year the pilgrims were living through a terrible drought that continued from May through July. The pilgrims decided to spend an entire day in July fasting and praying for rain. The next day, a light rain occurred. Further, additional settlers and supplies arrived from the Netherlands. At that point, Governor Bradford proclaimed a day of Thanksgiving to offer prayers and thanks to God. However, this was by no means a yearly occurrence.

The next recorded day of Thanksgiving occurred in 1631 when a ship full of supplies that was feared to be lost at sea actually pulled into Boston Harbor. Governor Bradford again ordered a day of Thanksgiving and prayer

But it's also true that by 1637, Massachusetts Gov. John Winthrop was proclaiming a thanksgiving for the successful massacre of hundreds of Pequot Indian men, women and children, part of the long and bloody process of opening up additional land to the English invaders. The pattern would repeat itself across the continent until between 95 and 99 percent of American Indians had been exterminated and the rest were left to assimilate into white society or die off on reservations, out of the view of polite society.

Later in the 18th century, individual colonies would periodically designate a day of thanksgiving in honor of a military victory, an adoption of a state constitution or an exceptionally bountiful crop.

During the 18th century, individual colonies commonly observed days of thanksgiving at different times of the year.

After British General John Burgoyne surrendered to the Americans at Saratoga, New York, in October 1777, the Continental Congress suggested that a national day be set aside to recognize the victory. Commander of the Continental Army, General George Washington agreed, proclaiming December 18, 1777 as the first national thanksgiving day. The Continental Congress supported similar thanksgiving proclamations through 1784.

The first proclamation was issued by John Hanson as President of the United Colonies Continental Congress on March 16, 1776

National Thanksgiving Day Proclamations in 1777, 1779, 1780, 1781, and 1782

So many Thanksgivings:

Washington on October 3, 1789 and entitled “General Thanksgiving,” the decree appointed the day “to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God.”

Following a resolution of Congress, President George Washington proclaimed Thursday the 26th of November 1789 a day of “public thanksgiving and prayer” devoted to “the service of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be.”

The 1789 Thanksgiving Proclamation, however, did not establish a permanent federal holiday. Washington issued another proclamation in February 1795 to recognize the defeat of a taxation rebellion in Pennsylvania. Later presidents, including John Adams andJames Madison, declared days of thanksgiving.

 In 1817 New York State adopted Thanksgiving Day as an annual custom, and by the middle of the 19th century many other states had done the same.

But it was not until the Civil War of the 1860s that President Lincoln initiated a regular observance of Thanksgiving in the United States.

Many Thanksgivings during the Civil War too. On both sides.

in 1861 Jefferson Davis proclaimed a thanksgiving, but his was a day of fasting and humiliation.

In 1863 President Abraham Lincolnappointed a day of thanksgiving as the last Thursday in November, which he may have correlated it with the November 21, 1621, anchoring of the Mayflower at Cape Cod. Since then, each president has issued a Thanksgiving Day proclamation. President Franklin D. Roosevelt set the date for Thanksgiving to the fourth Thursday of November in 1939 (approved by Congress in 1941.)

George Washington genocided the Iroquois during the American Revolution, and then he attacked Miami and Shawnee in Ohio.

Lincoln hung 38 Dakotas, who were fighting to keep their land.

Lincoln passed the Homestead Act, which opened up native Americans out west to anybody who applied for them. 160 acres per application.

The first president, George Washington, in 1783 said he preferred buying Indians' land rather than driving them off it because that was like driving "wild beasts" from the forest. He compared Indians to wolves, "both being beasts of prey, tho' they differ in shape."

Thomas Jefferson ― president No. 3 and author of the Declaration of Independence, which refers to Indians as the "merciless Indian Savages" ― was known to romanticize Indians and their culture, but that didn't stop him in 1807 from writing to his secretary of war that in a coming conflict with certain tribes, "[W]e shall destroy all of them."

As the genocide was winding down in the early 20th century, Theodore Roosevelt (president No. 26) defended the expansion of whites across the continent as an inevitable process "due solely to the power of the mighty civilized races which have not lost the fighting instinct, and which by their expansion are gradually bringing peace into the red wastes where the barbarian peoples of the world hold sway."

Roosevelt also once said, "I don't go so far as to think that the only good Indians are dead Indians, but I believe nine out of 10 are, and I shouldn't like to inquire too closely into the case of the 10th."