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Default The First Vegetarian Thanksgiving - Article by Ryan Berry

The First Vegetarian Thanksgiving

[ Subject: The First Vegetarian Thanksgiving
[ From:
[ Date: Sunday, November 28, 2004

The First Vegetarian Thanksgiving

By Rynn Berry

http://all-creatures.org/articles/tgveg-rb.html

[Ed.] "But it's tradition," is the cry when vegetarians
wonder why killing an animal should make Thanksgiving
special. Vegetarian historian Rynn Berry begs to differ.

The story of the Pilgrim's First Thanksgiving -- and
turkey's place in it -- has been shown to be largely a
myth. It was only in 1863 that Abraham Lincoln declared
Thanksgiving to be a national holiday -- mainly as a
public relations ploy to whip up a sense of patriotism
and national unity during the Civil War. Pilgrims
themselves didn't become a part of the national
celebration until the 1890s.

The legend that one hundred odd English men and women who
landed at Plymouth Harbor feasted on turkey and all the
trimmings is a myth. When they first arrived, on November
11 1620, the settlers had so little food that they raised
the houses of the Native American inhabitants and made
off with stores of beans and corn. There was simply no
animal flesh to be had. It is likely that the first
Thanksgiving would have had to have been a vegan one,
consisting of corn and beans served on pottery that the
so-called Pilgrim Fathers stole from the so-called
Indians. If, instead of the Plymouth Pilgrims, we go back
a decade or so and look to the Jamestown colonists to
provide us with role models for Thanksgiving, we will be
even more scandalized. In her book Settling with the
Indians, Karen Kupperman tells us that the Jamestown
colonists were so lacking in farming skills (they spent
most of the time digging random holes in the hope of
finding gold) that they sank so low as to feed on corpses
that they dug up from Native American gravesites. By
rights we should be commemorating Thanksgiving by eating
corpses. On second thoughts, isn't that exactly what
we're doing?

Equal Exchange?

To be sure, the Plymouth Pilgrims were given a friendly
reception by the Native Americans: Massassoit, chief of
the Wapanoags, Samoset, chief of the Pemaquids, and the
ever faithful Squanto. Indeed, the peoples of the region
overlooked the Pilgrims' depredations and taught them how
to farm, fish, and eventually how to set up trading
posts. The reason why the Indians were so receptive to
the newcomers is that most of New England had been
depopulated by epidemics from prior contacts with
European traders and settlers. Europeans had introduced
such diseases as diphtheria, TB, streptococcus, scurvy,
cholera, typhus measles and chicken pox and smallpox.
It's estimated that, before the invasion of Europeans and
their diseases, northern America was home to as many as
20 million inhabitants from coast to coast. The diseases
ravaged the native populations from south to north
America, reducing them by as much as 90 percent.

Europeans were not very unhygienic. While Squanto tried
to get the settlers to bathe, he met with little success
because the settlers considered it un-Christian to bathe.
In cities such as London and Paris, raw sewage ran in the
streets. By contrast, most Native Americans were highly
skilled agriculturists. When Europeans arrived they found
a country that was already cleared and farmed. The
settlers simply walked into the indigenous communities
that had been depopulated by plague and took over. This
is why so many of the early New England towns have the
name attached to them-Deerfield, Richfield, and so on.
The colonists started their communities in the middle of
fields that had been cleared by the indigenous peoples

The Real First Thanksgiving?

The folklore taught in schools has it that the Pilgrims
originated the Thanksgiving festival and that they
provided the Native Americans with a feast they had never
seen. In fact, the opposite is true. In November 1621,
one year after the Pilgrims arrived in Plymouth, the
Pilgrims celebrated harvest festival jointly with the
Native Americans-a harvest festival that the native
inhabitants had been celebrating for hundreds, perhaps
thousands of years. Most of the food at this festival was
supplied by Native Americans. It was a meal that the
Pilgrims had never witnessed, consisting of native
American foodstuffs. The main meal was a sort of corn
meal mush along with nuts and fruits such as
gooseberries, strawberries, plums, cherries, cranberries
and a groundnut known as the bogg bean. Popcorn and
popcorn balls made by the Indians with maple syrup were
served as a sweet. There was a variety of breadstuffs
such as cornpone, ashcakes, and hoe cakes, made by Native
Americans from their own recipes. It is also possible
that other native foods such as pumpkin and squash were
served. In his Food Encyclopedia, James Trager tells us
that there is a live possibility that turkey wasn't even
served. It's true that the Indians provided some deer
meat, and game birds, but they were side dishes and not
the focus of the meal. So the 1620 Thanksgiving dinner
proper in 1620 was probably a totally vegetarian one,
because the Pilgrims were unable to find animal flesh.
The second Thanksgiving in 1621 was also catered by the
Native Americans. Not only was it probably turkeyless,
but it was mainly vegetarian. Doesn't it make more sense,
therefore, that instead of celebrating Thanksgiving as an
orgy of Turkey slaughter, Americans should celebrate a
vegetarian harvest festival?

Rynn Berry is the historical advisor to the North
American Vegetarian Society. He is the author of Famous
Vegetarians and Their Favorite Recipes ($15.95) and Food
for the Gods: Vegetarianism and the World's Religions
($19.95). Copies may be ordered from the author at 159
Eastern Parkway, Suite 2H, Brooklyn, NY 11238.

http://www.all-creatures.org/articles/tgveg-rb.html

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Om Shanti

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