the Real Story of the First Thanksgiving

**Chris** · 11-21-2015, 09:11 AM

This is mostly a book review but backed up by a curious little known fact.

Ditch the Fake Lovefest and Learn the Real Story of the First Thanksgiving

...Saints & Strangers takes its title from a fact rarely mentioned in standard Thanksgiving mythology: Only about a third of the 102 passengers aboard the Mayflower—a converted cargo ship that one of the ship's officers refers to as "a filthy stinking kennel"—were religious pilgrims fleeing persecution in Europe. Another third or so—the "strangers," as the pilgrims smugly referred to them—were adventurers and refugees seeking escape from the nether regions of the British economy, recruited by the trading company that underwrote the voyage. (The rest were indentured servants.) The passage of the Mayflower was at least as much an economic venture as quest for religious liberty.

The differing agendas of the Mayflower voyagers quickly create schisms when the ship and its starving, scurvy-ridden passengers are forced to land in an uncharted region hundreds of miles north of its intended destination in Virginia. "They came for fortune," observes William Bradford (Vincent Kartheiser, Mad Men), the introspective pilgrim who will become the colony's first governor. "We came for God."

They clash constantly, over everything from whether the priority should be building a church or planting fields to the practical conundrums created at the intersection of predestination and free will: We wouldn't have found the hiding place of the local Indians' seed corn if God hadn't intended it. But does that mean God intended us to steal it? And does theology matter when we're starving? "There were some things God neglected to mention," concedes Bradford.

Chief among them are those Indians, whose presence cuts across all economic and religious divides to split the pilgrims into hawks and doves. The same is true on the other side of the forest, where the Pokanoket leader Massasoit (Raoul Trujillo, Salem) convenes a tribal counsel. "What should I do?" he asks. "Slaughter them," counsels one Cheney-esque lieutenant....

And the fact: THE PILGRIMS WOULD’VE LANDED IN VIRGINIA—BUT THEY RAN OUT OF BEER

...The Mayflower landed on Plymouth Rock in late 1620. They’d actually landed on Cape Cod in November and tried to sail south to their originally intended destination—The Virginia Colony, a fairly monstrous 220 miles south—eventually ending up in Plymouth Rock (despite the name, more of a stone than a rock). The choice to land was due in part to treacherous shoals and breakers facing Mayflower Captain Christopher Jones off the coast of Cape Cod—but it was also due in large part to a dangerous shortage of beer.

Dangerous not because the Pilgrims loved to party and things in the New World would be, like, a total bummer. Beer was vital at the time, an essential staple to the stationary and seafaring alike, since sources of fresh water were untrustworthy—often reliably fatal—and scarce. Beer, on the other hand, was always boiled prior to fermentation, making it safe to drink. What wasn’t quite safe was running out of it when you’d hit land with a bunch of thirsty Separatists and an entire, slightly less god-fearing crew that also needed beer to make it back to England....

**Mister D** · 11-21-2015, 09:32 AM

Yikes. A beer shortage in my house causes stress and anxiety.

There were no turkeys in New England either from what I understand. I just looked at the distribution of wild turkeys and live in New England so now I'm not sure. They were a very common protein in Mexico. Cortes and his men lived off them.