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Thanksgiving: Local author Glenn Cheney presents The Pilgrims' First Year in America
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Today, Hartford Books Examiner is thankful to be hosting author Glenn Cheney…
A resident of Hanover, CT, Mr. Cheney has written more than 20 books on such varied topics as Brazil, nuclear proliferation, Chernobyl, teens with disabilities, and addiction recovery. In 2007, he released Thanksgiving: The Pilgrims’ First Year in America—a faithful interpretation of the Mayflower story and the settlement at Plymouth. (The book’s web-site can be viewed here.)
Below, you will find an excerpt from that book and a personal introduction from its author.
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Thanksgiving: The Pilgrims’ First Year in America is not about a holiday. It’s about people. It’s about the struggle, the horror, the faith, the goodwill, the survival and thriving of a handful of people. Unlike any ship that had carried colonists to the New World, the Mayflower carried families. There wasn’t a rich guy among them. They brought with them a cross-section of values that would become quintessentially American: the insistence on following the heart rather than the law; the inability to tolerate injustice; the audacity to demand authority over authorities; the courage to pursue happiness no matter how miserable it might make them, and to see a better life no matter how much worse it might be; the wisdom of working together as a society for mutual benefit and personal profit. They believed in the power of the congregation. They would do their own thinking and make their own decisions. They would pray their own prayers. They would dig in their heels. The strong would bury the weak, perhaps suffer a moment of doubt, then remember the mercy of their God, and then get back to work.
Though Thanksgiving isn’t about a holiday, one chapter presents the famous harvest feast.
Chapter Twenty
Tabuttantam
The English came to Plymouth half expecting to meet bloodthirsty savages, and the Wampanoag tribes had every reason to expect the same from English ships. Both peoples expected violence. Both could have justified preemptive strikes. Yet not one word of Mourt’s Relation or Bradford’s Of Plymouth Plantation expressed disrespect for the people whom the English met in America. Granted, their use of the word “savage” implied a certain unconscious assumption that these were a different kind of people, but all judgmental references in these documents are complimentary. They use the words strong, honest, generous, cooperative, valiant, courteous, gentle, fair-conditioned, and personable. In a letter to friends in England, Edward Winslow called them “trusty, quick of apprehension, ripe-witted, just.” Despite the skirmishes in the first few weeks, the two peoples had never really hurt each other. They had held their fears and suspicions in reserve, and accepted risk in the name of not just political exigency but, in short time, an extraordinary friendship.
In the fall of 1621, the settlers and Pokanoket shared a feast. We know about this event from a few sentences in a letter Edward Winslow wrote to friends in England a month later:
“Our harvest being gotten in, our Governor sent four men on fowling that so we might after a more special manner rejoice together, after we had gathered the fruit of our labours. 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 amongst the rest their greatest king, Massasoit with some 90 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.”
The letter did not mention the dates of the event. It did not use the word “thanksgiving,” or even “thanks,” but Winslow’s message to the folks back home all but wallowed in the accomplishment of plentitude. After a winter under murderous conditions, they had food. They had seven houses — not much space for 52 people but certainly better than a damp, leaky, drafty, unheated ship anchored off the coast. They also had four buildings for common use. They had friends. They had their God, and they were at peace with the peoples around them.
It’s doubtful that the settlers intended to establish an annual holiday. They may have conceived the event for a combination of three reasons. For one, they had been in Plymouth for almost a year. November 11 would have been the day, but in all likelihood the feast took place between September 21 (when the shallop returned from the land of the Massachusett) and November 9. Michaelmas, a traditional celebration held on September 29, might have inspired a festival. Or they may have thought of having a feast as part of an ad hoc holy Day of Thanksgiving and Praise, a Puritan and Separatist celebration that was declared whenever God seemed to be cooperating with human endeavors. Or they may have simply decided a good harvest warranted a good meal. The harvest feast was an old English tradition that had little to do with religion beyond standard thanks to God for the harvest and the blessings of each day and each morsel of food.
Most likely the event started as a Pilgrim celebration, and when Massasoit’s people came along, they were invited to join in. The presence of almost a hundred non-Christians at the feast, and Winslow’s reference to “entertainment,” would imply that the event was not the strictly religious Day of Thanksgiving and Prayer. Such entertainment may have included games, dance, songs, speeches, and revelry. The absence of any reference to November 11 or the end of a successful twelve months in America would hint that the celebration was not oriented around that fact or held that late in the fall. The traditional harvest feast is the most likely reason the settlers decided to do some extra hunting, break out the stored food, and invite the neighbors over.
Only by conjecture can we imagine that first feast of thanksgiving. Mrs. Hopkins, Mrs. Billington, Mrs. Brewster and Mrs. Winslow — the only adult English women north of Jamestown —served up a three-day meal for a hundred and forty people, ninety of whom had table manners different from those of Europeans. But the bare chests, the cultural differences, and the language barrier most certainly did not disguise the obvious: that these “savages” were good people who knew, without being told, the do-unto-others love that Jesus had spoken of. Though the Pokanoket had no word for “please,” they did have one for “thanks” — tabuttantam. Tabuttantamauaa meant “he gives thanks.” Taubotenananawayean meant “I thank you.” Tabutantamoonk would be the closest known word to thanksgiving. It derived from tampu- (sufficient) and –antam (the mental sensation of being satisfied). In the small-talk of a three-day feast, the native and new Americans may well have taught each other these words. Then they probably used them a lot.
The four women had help — seven teenage girls and four family servants who could be put to fetching wood, drawing water, dressing game, building and setting tables, and generally helping to pull together an impossible feast for an improbable gathering. They put out the fixin’s in a help-yourself buffet, with meats on wooden platters and stews in clay pots. The five deer brought by the guests were probably butchered into manageable pieces and either boiled or barbecued. Duck, turkey, wild goose, swan, cod, and sea bass were boiled in pots or roasted on skewers. The English would have eaten from their trenchers. As they could not have had enough trenchers for ninety guests, Indians may have been trencher mates with the English. Or the guests may have brought their own carved bowls, or, like the English, they may have just reached and grabbed a hunk of food and delivered straight to the mouth. Eating utensils included personal knives and wooden spoons, but not forks, which had been invented but not yet adopted by commoners. The English used large linen napkins, as often over the shoulder as in the lap, not only to mop the face and wipe the hands but to pick up hot food or secure a turkey or large piece of venison while carving it.
If the tables included the meat of domesticated animals, they would have been the excess males not needed for reproduction and not worth feeding all winter. The females would have been too precious for the litters they would produce in the spring. Apparently the hunters killed enough wild fowl that they would have no reason to kill their own chickens. They had plenty of corn to feed the fowl, so they might have let the roosters live until they needed them. Or they might have tired of the crowing and boiled the worst offenders until they were tender enough to eat.
The Pokanoket may have brought baskets of mussels, lobsters, oysters and clams. They may have brought a cod or a sea bass, gutted it, stuffed it with wild onions and wild garlic, run a stick from mouth to tail and roasted it over coals of hickory or sassafras. The Pokanoket may not have had a word for gourmand, but they knew how to eat. They may have brought wild grapes, walnuts, chestnuts, hickory nuts, ground-nuts, watercress, wild onions, crab apples, corn meal, and succotash. It was not the season of fresh berries, but the guests may have brought dried strawberries, gooseberries, raspberries, blueberries, and currants. They may have dried grapes into raisins. Without sugar, cranberries would have been too bitter to eat, though maybe a few, finely chopped, found their way into stuffings and porridges. We can only wonder whether the Pokanoket and English women shared recipes in a language that could not involve words. Maybe spontaneous culinary combinations brought forth dishes never before tasted in either culture. Canada goose rubbed with wild garlic seed and stuffed with cranberry-onion corn meal, watercress and walnuts? Why not?
The English women may have been familiar with turkeys because earlier explorers had brought some back to England for breeding. The women may have known a version of a recipe that would be published in England in 1623:
“Take faire water and set it over the fire, then slice good store of Onions and put into it, and also Pepper and Salt, and good store of the gravy that comes from the Turkie, and boyle them very well together; then put to it a few fine crummes of grated bread to thicken it; a very little Sugar and some Vinegar, and so serve it up with the Turkey.”
The Indians had eaten turkeys, of course, not to mention the eggs of turkeys, as well as the eggs of ducks, geese and swans — but never the egg of a chicken. They had never drunk the milk of a goat or any other animal. They did not know the tang of cheese or the sweet fat of butter. They had never tasted cinnamon, nutmeg, mace, ginger, cloves, or black pepper. They had probably never experienced the effects of gravy enlightened with parsley, sage, marjoram or thyme, and thickened with bread crumbs or egg yolk.
The English women may have made breads from their corn meal and, if they had any, wheat or barley flour. They may have raised the dough with whatever natural yeasts floated along — sourdough, in other words — then baked loaves in small domed ovens of clay. Or they may have cooked unleavened breads in skillets right over the coals. They may have baked berries or grapes into tarts.
They did not use the word “vegetable.” They referred to sallet herbs, potherbs, and roots. The herbs and roots brought from England may have included parsnip, carrot, turnip, onion, cabbage, melon, radish, beets, and lettuce. These English herbs may have found themselves in stew pots with such American potherbs as pumpkin, squash, beans, purslane leaves, and wild plums. They may have brought from England the spices of India —cinnamon, nutmeg, mace, ginger, cloves, and black pepper.
Indian corn was of the flint variety, not the sweet kind that tastes good on the cob. It was best pounded and ground into meal, though the kernels could also be roasted until it puffed into something chewable.
Some or all the tables had tablecloths. Some of the people sat on benches. The more important men probably had chairs. The majority sat or squatted on rocks, logs, stoops, the ground, wherever they found space. Children and servants fetched food from other tables or passed bowls around. Beverages — probably just water, maybe beer if they managed to make any from their harvest of barley — went from hand to hand, lips to lips, around the table in wooden bowls. They did not drink coffee or tea, neither of which had been introduced to England. If they drank milk, it was goat milk, and only the watery whey left from the making of cheese. Maybe they still had a little aquavitae left.
They most certainly said grace. We can only imagine what the Pokanokets thought as their absurdly over-dressed hosts closed their eyes, tilted their heads over their trenchers, perhaps held hands, as the old sachem named Brewster uttered unintelligible grunts and sighs toward the sky. Those pious syllables undoubtedly recognized God as Lord and Heavenly Father. They thanked Him for his mercies, for the meat on the tables, for the nourishment of life. They thanked him for letting none among them die since spring. The thanks may have extended to include the peace among peoples, the warmth of the summer, the beauty of the fall, the bounty of the harvest, the increase in the general well-being, and the strength that had followed the winter of starvation and mortality. They may have mentioned the people who had not lived to partake of this hard-earned bounty. They probably pleaded the humility of those still doing God’s work on Earth. Certainly they mentioned Jesus Christ, their Savior, and surely they must have mentioned the other saviors, the ones who had come out of the woods to save them. Maybe Squanto translated. If they said something along the lines of the Lord’s Prayer, Squanto may have translated with something that sounded like “Nooshun kesukqut wunneetupantamuch koowesuounk. Peyaumooutch kukkeitassootamoonk. Toh anantaman ne n-naj okheit, neane kesukqut. Asekesukokish petukqunnegash assaminnean yeu kesukok. Ahquontamaiinnean nummatcheseongash, neane matchenehikqueagig nutahquontamanóunonog. Ahque sagkompaguninnean en qutchhuaonganit, webe pohquohwussinnan wutch matchitut. Newutche keitassootamoonk, kutahtauun, menuhkesuonk, sohsumoonk micheme kah micheme. Amen.” Maybe Planters and Pokanokets all said “Amen” together, as if agreeing on something. And then, by God, most certainly, they ate.
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Signed copies of Thanksgiving: The Pilgrims’ First Year in America are available at NLLibrarium.com/thanksgiving.
With gratitude to Mr. Cheney for his contribution…
Hartford Books Examiner wishes you all a very happy Thanksgiving!
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