The Origin of Thanksgiving in Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick - Essay Example

The book describes the first Thanksgiving and about the brave pilgrims who were in search of religious liberty. The description of Mayflower is a new kind of telling a story that goes up through King Philip's War in 1675-76. The bloody war was fought between the English and the Native Americans that resulted in the death of hundreds of English and thousands of Native Americans. The Native Americans were the Indians and most of them were killed and the remaining were starved to death or deported or sold as slaves.

After the war independence of native New England was broken. The next 250 years was a repetition of the history between the English (white Americans too) and the Native Americans. The Indians weren't in a mood to accept the new visitors or white Americans. As the number of white settlements increased the insecurity among the Indians also increased. Each day passing the whites were moving closer to the natives and were more powerful than the Indians. The whites were growing in number and stature.

Since the two sides need different things and respect different values, grievances build up. They weren't in a mood to understand each other and stopped trying to understand each other's values, the result was bloodshed and finally, the Indians lose. The Indians were illiterates and didn't make any effort to write their side of the story and their own history. The Thanksgiving Day was declared a national holiday by the then president Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln describes the Pilgrims as national heroes who remind the Americans of their roots.

Squanto was the Pilgrim's trusty English speaking interpreter; to take Massasoit's place he made every effort to turn the English against him. The result was a bloody preemptive attack on a Massachusetts band that was led by Miles Standish and was sanctioned by William Bradford. The Raiders came back with the head of a warrior as a trophy to commemorate their victory and hanged it over the fort. This resulted in a shocking wave of fear amongst the natives that made them flee their fields and villages.

When the Rev John Robinson, Pilgrim's spiritual leader came to about the raid he condemned this kind of shocking and terrorized act and denounced it in a letter to William Bradford. The natives of different tribal groups and always had complexities amongst them. They were the Pokanokets, the Nausets of Cape Cod, the Rhode Island Narragansetts, Massachusetts near Boston and several others. These tribal groups were collectively called as Wamponoags. The English and the Wampanoags were complicated in terms of psychologically and morally and were always under various pressures.

The Pilgrim village museum in Plymouth contains description and artifacts of both cultures and represents a bicultural institution. It not only represents or tells the stories of European immigration but also the encounter between them that happened centuries ago. Mostly the Whites described the Mayflower by their writings and scriptures though both cultures were involved in the arrival of the Mayflower. Since the natives were not literate as the Whites they fell behind and little was known from them.