Many Americans would be surprised to learn that the first Thanksgiving, celebrated in a region claimed by what would be the United States, was held not by Pilgrims and Plains Tribe members but between Spaniards and the native Timucuans. There are a few variations of who did what first but it is recorded that the first Thanksgiving occurred around 1564, about 57 years before the famous and extremely mythologized celebration at Plymouth Rock.
I read either in NiallFergusson or Simon Schama that the holiday dates back to the British being grateful for the natives being good enough to die lik flies around them, ceding their resources through what appeared to be Divine Providence
ReplyDeleteYou saw that in later settler's application of Manifest Destiny
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