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Thanksgiving Research Paper

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Starting as early as preschool, American children are taught about the national American holiday of Thanksgiving. These small, impressionable humans are taught that the Pilgrims and the Native Americans worked together to produce plentiful crops, then celebrated the completed harvest and friendship with turkey and various pies. As the children grow older they learn that those who attend the first Thanksgiving did not eat “traditional” modern Thanksgiving meal, but more likely ate mussels with curds, deer, and a bowl of thick corn mush. The idea that is feast was in honor of the pilgrim’s friendship with the Natives still sticks around. Many people never question this fact or think about the hardships that the Natives had to go through once people had colonized America. Today there are many …show more content…

Squanto, a Native who had survived and escaped slavery in England and spoke that language, taught the saving Pilgrims how to grow corn, how to fish, and he created a peace treaty between the Pilgrims and the Wampanoags (a Native tribe). At the end of the year the Pilgrims hosted a feast to honor Squanto and the Wampanoags. This feast is what we now call Thanksgiving. This is basically what is taught today as the “correct” version of how Thanksgiving went. Another version of the first Thanksgiving story is that near Groton, Connecticut in 1637 the Pequot Tribe had gathered. They gathered to celebrate their annual Green Corn Festival— our Thanksgiving. Before dawn the sleeping Natives were surrounded by English and Dutch settlers. The settlers ordered the tribe to come out of their longhouses. Those that came out were shot or clubbed to death and those that remained inside were burned alive. The next day a “Day of Thanksgiving” was declared by the governor of the Massachusetts Bay Area in celebration of the

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