Good day after thanksgiving day!! Hope everyone had a good day yesterday. I did. Wife's brother and sister came over and we all just seriously overate!
So, when I sent an e-mail to our lost brother, OD, he sent me some interesting history of thanksgiving, and I would like to share it with y'all now.
From OD;
Philboy, I'm happy you had the opportunity to over eat and feel like crap. I watched a documentary the other night about the Pilgrims and the hardships they faced before leaving England; where they were forced to practice the King's religion and had to pay a fine if they didn't. No outside religious meetings were allowed by the King and imprisonment could be a penalty (the pilgrims were a hard core religious order that preferred a more strict Puritan belief). A small group of Puritans actually fled England to practice their belief's and Bible interpretation to Holland several years before heading out to the new America's to join up with the John Smith colony at Jamestown. A fact mostly overlooked by history but the Jamestown colony had arrived in America several years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth rock (mostly because the Jamestown colony mysteriously vanished after some time). In fact the Pilgrims set sail in the late spring of 1620 but had to turn around due to the larger ship leaking and falling apart. It took them months to find another ship but when they did; it was much smaller and they had to leave some of their group behind, and sell off most of their possessions to afford another voyage attempt. The smaller ship was a former cargo ship called the Mayflower.
The Mayflower was not as big and had very little head room in the storage deck below the main deck. The passengers were cramped and many became ill and some died from the stench of buckets that held their waste and vomit. They were off course when they approached the dangers waters and rocky shoreline of the Cap Cod area; but navigated a little North to enter the head waters of the bay area. The captain of the Mayflower wanted them off his boat and refused to sail them South toward the Jamestown settlement, so they had just a short time to explore the shores for suitable shelter.
It was now late in the year (December) and they began building a community building but didn't get it finished before the harsh New England winter set in. Many more died and the survivors were left to work in frigid temperatures while running out of food and supplies, so they sent out groups to survey the area. They talked about the exploration party coming across deserted Indian villages and finding their corn crops buried in the ground. They also mentioned how many of the Indian villages were wiped out by disease Portuguese sailors had brought along the Eastern coastline when they arrived a few years earlier. S.O.B. How did anyone survive??? I know I would not have been tough enough to live through that.
So the story we know about Thanksgiving is partially true. The Pilgrims were saved by the local Indian tribes that survived a plague brought on by the Portuguese. Why the local Indians bothered to help the Pilgrims after so many of them were wiped out from disease brought on by earlier visitors is beyond me. The story of Thanksgiving comes from the Pilgrims showing their Indian friends some gratitude by inviting them for a feast at the end of a harvest season the Indians helped them plant and care for.
phi g.
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