It’s the only other day of the year besides Christmas that stores close. It’s the day we sit at home surrounded by our families and gorge ourselves while watching football. It’s a day celebrated after a group of townsfolk have returned from a successful quest of slaughtering countless Native Americans. It’s the celebration of angry puritans who scalped the natives, raped their women and put the leaders’ heads on spikes to be proudly displayed for all. What day is this? Thanksgiving, of course!
Thanksgiving has been skewed out of control over history so that the people who stole the resources and land of the Natives could feel good about themselves. The term “Thanksgiving” comes from 1637 in Connecticut. I’ll let Susan Bates, author of “The Real Story of Thanksgiving,” tell it:
“In 1637 near present day Groton, Connecticut, over 700 men, women and children of the Pequot Tribe had gathered for their annual Green Corn Festival which is our Thanksgiving celebration. In the predawn hours the sleeping Indians were surrounded by English and Dutch mercenaries who ordered them to come outside. Those who came out were shot or clubbed to death while the terrified women and children who huddled inside the longhouse were burned alive. The next day the governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony declared ‘A Day of Thanksgiving’ because 700 unarmed men, women and children had been murdered.”
No pilgrims. No buckle shoes. No Squanto. No interracial harmony. The American preconception about the day of Thanksgiving is so far flung that the real story and the truth are being lost. In the day of George Washington the killings were so many that days of “Thanksgiving” were happening too frequently to keep track of.
Washington suggested that only one day be set aside annually to celebrate every successful massacre that had happened during the year in one day of “Thanksgiving.” In 1863 Abraham Lincoln declared Thanksgiving an official government holiday. That decree followed the order of Union soldiers to take out a band of rebel Sioux Indians in Minnesota– another massacre.
Everything we’ve heard and been taught about this holiday is wrong. We’re giving too much credit to fantasy and not enough to reality. Every one of us is here today, in our homes, with our football and turkey, because our ancestors took advantage of a people willing to give everything to help their fellow man. Instead of rewarding them with a correct history, we bastardized the legacy and truth of the real Thanksgiving into a self-indulgent holiday celebrated the nation over with no remorse for how it got there. This year as you sit with your family and eat around a warm table, remember the thousands of corpses that meal has been made upon. n
Finally, an intelligently written opinions piece!
Can you hire her and fire the other one please? Everything I’ve seen written by Jax so far has been awesome and intelligent. She’s bringing the standards of The Torch up a notch. The rest of the staff should follow, especially the opinions section!
I wholeheartedly agree with you. I would love to see Queen Angela the First deposed.
Right on. I don’t think the Pilgrim story b.s. should be referrred to anymore when discussing Thanksgiving. How about we just call it a time when we are thankful for the things we have, and the people we have in our lives? I also would like to see a LOT less emphasis of the Black Friday marketing propaganda when it comes to the holiday as well, but I know that’s wishful thinking. Great article, Ms. Anger!
Thanks to Walmart, it will be soon known as Black Thursday. Target is already on board.
We let government write our history! You are correct indeed. We must be careful not to indoctrinate ourselves in falsehoods taught to us through public schools and public universities such as Ferris… I’m “thankful” for this article.
One source isn’t enough to convince me. This is also from the same book the author cited:
Most of us associate the holiday with happy Pilgrims and Indians sitting down to a big feast. And that did happen – once.
The story began in 1614 when a band of English explorers sailed home to England with a ship full of Patuxet Indians bound for slavery. They left behind smallpox which virtually wiped out those who had escaped. By the time the Pilgrims arrived in Massachusetts Bay they found only one living Patuxet Indian, a man named Squanto who had survived slavery in England and knew their language. He taught them to grow corn and to fish, and negotiated a peace treaty between the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag Nation. At the end of their first year, the Pilgrims held a great feast honoring Squanto and the Wampanoags. “
I read the same thing, from the same source, but the point is Thanksgiving isn’t all its cracked up to be. There is more than one source for this, and anyone with 10 seconds and Google can see that. Thanksgiving in the Native American community is a day of mourning and not celebration. Out of the populace of America, less than 2 percent call themselves Native Americans. Americans have killed off 98% of the Native American race. You could say they were an inspiration for Hitler.
My 14 year old Son asked “Dad, is this true? I replied, “I don’t know, I don’t care, pass the turkey!
aah.. that hurt!!