Dreams & Swords
November 2005
This is the first of an on-going library column in the Gargoyle. We'll be using this column to share news of interest from your library - the new, the old, the interesting, and perhaps even the just plain odd. We'll also on occasion include news and commentaries on issues related to libraries such as those on intellectual freedom, what's happening with digitization of library resources, and copyright.
Since this first column is for the Gargoyle that is scheduled for publication the week of Thanksgiving, let's see what we can learn from our library resources about this decidedly American holiday.
First, it isn't - just American that is - as our Canadian friends and many others would graciously point out. To read about the observance of a thanksgiving holiday you could try We Are What We Celebrate edited by Amitai Etzioni and Jared Bloom, We Gather Together: the Story of Thanksgiving by Ralph and Adelin Linton, or The Business of Holidays edited by Maud Lavin.
Second, here is a trivia question for you: When was the country we now know as the United States of America first settled? Warning: The question is more complex than it may seem.
In the provocatively titled Lies My Teacher Told Me author James Loewen asks his students this very question (and should someone take offense at the main title, Loewen subtitles his book Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong and dedicates the book to "… all the American history teachers who teach against their textbooks"). Loewen points out that the way this question is phrased is important. Qualifying the question with we now know as "… implies that the original settlement antedated the founding of the United States." Loewen's hope when he asked his students this question was that it would lead them to respond with a date that was pre-Columbian. It didn't. His students provided him the answer of 1620, which is the date of the founding of Plymouth (as an aside, it's interesting to note that in the online Encyclopedia Britannica, the entry for our Pilgrims is "Pilgrim Fathers").
Historically, we have used the verb "settle" when speaking of the Pilgrims landing in North America and Loewen among others takes exception here. The Americas were already "settled" when the Pilgrims arrived, primarily by the Indians, but also by earlier Europeans (Spanish Jews in the late 1500s in what is now New Mexico, the early French inhabitants of St. Augustine, and the Dutch in modern day New York, as a few examples). Yet we never seem to view indigenous peoples as settlers. Why?
Loewen gives us a quick history lesson on the collision of two worlds in the Americas - European and native. There is the devastation imposed on native inhabitants by early European arrivals who carried more than a bad attitude toward these "savages" they encountered - they also carried a variety of diseases for which native Americans had no immunity. Loewen states, "(t)he scarcity of disease in the Americas was also partly attributable to the basic hygiene practiced by the region's inhabitants. Residents of northern Europe and England rarely bathed, believing it unhealthy, and rarely removed all of their clothing at one time, believing it immodest. The Pilgrims smelled bad to the Indians. Squanto 'tried, without success, to teach them to bathe.' According to Feenie Ziner, his biographer."
Loewen contends that it was disease and the resulting drastic decline in the native populations that more than anything allowed the Americas to be "settled" by Europeans, and it is native population size that helps explain why Europeans were never able to "settle" other locales such as India, the Middle East, other parts of Asia and a considerable portion of Africa. In the former instance there simply weren't enough natives (Indians) left to put up a good fight. In the latter cases there were far too many native inhabitants and the Europeans had to be satisfied with occupying rather than "settling" (followed by them eventually being kicked out).
But in the minds of most Europeans it was not so much the disease that gave them their destiny, as it was God. The Europeans exhibited a rather dangerous habit of explaining and celebrating disease and plagues as literal godsends sent to clear the way for His more preferred children. What better way to justify your actions than to claim you are doing God's work and He likes you better (an attitude we've seen similarly displayed in the wake of 9-11 and Katrina).
With specific regard to Plymouth itself, it wasn't "founded" in the sense that it was carved out of the dense wilderness. Indeed, there was very little wilderness in this part of the northeast by the time the Pilgrims disembarked from the Mayflower - the Indians had already cleared the land. Plymouth was/is none other than the deserted Indian village Patuxet (Squanto's village).
Loewen quotes from primary source material to illustrate just how dependent the Pilgrims were on the kindness of these strangers … the Pilgrims would never have survived if the Indians had not taken care of them (and there are documented cases of the Pilgrims stealing from the Indians, including robbing Indian graves).
The First Thanksgiving, as we have so often been taught, was the occasion when the Pilgrims thanked God for their salvation (rather than the Indians) and invited the Indians to share in their feast - a feast beyond the Indians' imagination. Loewen points out several problems with this bit of lore: The foods served at this first Thanksgiving were native foods unknown to the Pilgrims before being introduced to them by the Indians, and the Pilgrims were more the guests than were the Indians. The idea of a thanksgiving feast wasn't new. As Loewen shares, "Eastern Indians had observed autumnal harvest celebrations for centuries." In our American Thanksgiving (not proclaimed a national holiday until Lincoln did so during the Civil War) the Pilgrims didn't even get a notice until the 1890s (and these folk weren't referred to as the "Pilgrims" until two decades earlier).
So, what does all this mean? Must we now yank the Pilgrims out of our table centerpieces? No more buckled shoes and hats? Not necessarily. As Loewen says, of the Pilgrims' courage there is no doubt. They too suffered from disease and lost many of their comrades. "There was nothing immoral of the Pilgrims to have taken over Patuxet. They did not cause the plague and were as baffled as to its origin as the stricken Indian villagers. … Pilgrim-Indian relations started reasonably positively. Plymouth, unlike many other colonies, usually paid the Indians for the land it took. In some instances Europeans settled in Indian towns because Indians had invited them, as protection against another tribe or a nearby competing European power. In sum, U.S. history is no more violent and oppressive than the history of England, Russia, Indonesia, or Burundi - but neither is it exceptionally less violent."
"The antidote to feel-good history is not feel-bad history but honest and inclusive history." Discussing the historical record of the First Thanksgiving "…could help Americans grow more thoughtful and more tolerant, rather than more ethnocentric." The trouble comes when we objectify the Native American, or any other group, for to do so, intentionally or not, makes them less than ourselves and that only opens the door to marginalization. So leave the Pilgrims in the centerpiece, but be sure to add the Indians. And let's take time to learn and appreciate the contributions they and other groups outside the majority have made and continue to make toward helping America fulfill its promise. Thanksgiving tends to get lost between the two most commercial holidays on our calendar - Halloween and Christmas. We should take the time to not only be thankful for what we have, but also for who we have and for the opportunity we are given to love that neighbor.
Eric A. Kidwell
Director of the Library