With Thanksgiving weekend upon us, Big Sandy prepares for a short week followed by visits with family, sleepy afternoons after eating turkey, pumpkin pie, and ideally a day of grateful hearts for the gifts and blessings God has provided to us in the past year. Growing up, I remember learning about the Puritans, though they were always called Pilgrims, having their first harvest meal with the natives in the new world while making “hand turkey” crafts for my mom to hang on the fridge. When I got older, I heard all manner of other tales, myths, representations, controversies, and deconstructions regarding Turkey Day. This year, I thought it might be fun to research it and serve up a heaping helping of history regarding the original harvest festival meal that has launched so many craft projects, parades, and family gatherings.
Thanksgiving celebrations as a practice long preceded the Pilgrims’ settling in Plymouth. For the Puritans, it was a liturgical observation that served as an alternative to what they saw as excess in the more mainstream church’s observations. That history will be the subject of a future article. This year, I thought I would look at the 1621 event a little more in depth. Starting with the English Puritan settlers seems appropriate given their association with the American observance of the holiday. Incidentally, the meal itself actually preceded them being named “Pilgrims” as a group, except in an informal manner referring to their pilgrimage. According to the Plimoth Patuxet Museums Website, there was, in fact, only one “pilgrim” at the 1621 Thanksgiving meal: the first baby born after the landing of the Mayflower. His parents named him “Peregrine,” which means traveling far away from home or pilgrim. The word “pilgrim” is first seen applied to the Puritans in Plymouth by an author in 1622. In Mourt’s Relation (1622): “They knew they were pilgrims, and looked not much on those things, but lifted up their eyes to the heavens, their dearest country; and quieted their spirits.” Their governor also refers to them as pilgrims when describing their journey from Europe in a poem. However, in neither instance did the author intend to apply the term as a permanent label. The name “pilgrim” didn’t become a commonly accepted title for the settlers who came over on the Mayflower until around the 1800s.
In regards to the first meal eaten at Plymouth in the fall of 1621, the colonists held their traditional Thanksgiving observations, which it seems most Puritans had adopted as a liturgical calendar fixture. The three-day celebration was joined by Pokanoket Wampanoag leader, Ousamequin (know as Massasoit to the Puritans) along with 90 of his men. The English settlers and the Pokanoket Wampanoag had signed a mutual protection treaty in march of that year. The gathering became the basis for the story that is told as the “first Thanksgiving celebration.”
The Smithsonian Magazine cites historians who are certain that the meal was quite a bit “slimmer” than our current practices. Wild birds were part of the meal along with corn in grain form for bread and porridge, and venison. These are the only foods specifically mentioned by surviving primary source materials from people who were present and reference the meal. In other articles I read, arguments were made against turkey having been served at all, suggesting instead that goose or duck were more likely because they were far easier to hunt. My pet theory is that turkeys were adopted because hand turkeys are a much easier project for kindergarteners than any kind of ducks, geese, or porridge. Also none of those would look quite right in a Pilgrim hat. The tradition of turkey being served likely comes from Governor Winslow who wrote: “And besides waterfowl there was great store of wild turkeys, of which they took many, besides venison, etc. Besides, they had about a peck a meal a week to a person, or now since harvest, Indian corn to that proportion.”
Regardless of the type of bird served, an English teacher named Edward Winslow recorded:
“Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a special manner rejoice together after we had gathered the fruit of our labors. They four in one day killed as much fowl as, with a little help beside, served the company almost a week. At which time, amongst other recreations, we exercised our arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and among the rest their greatest king Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five deer, which they brought to the plantation and bestowed on our governor, and upon the captain and others.”
The Smithsonian article further suggested that passenger pigeons were very common in the wild at the time, were easily tracked, and according to
contemporary accounts “a man could shoot at the birds in flight and bring down 200.” Swans are another common choice for wild birds that were easily acquired and abundant.
Examination of cookbooks from the time informs us that smaller birds would have been spit roasted, while larger ones (like turkeys if they were served) were boiled. Though some were boiled then roasted or roasted then boiled in order to acquire caramelization. One bit of positive news is that Thanksgiving stuffing may have been on the original menu, as the Puritans did stuff their birds before cooking. Sadly, they did not use bread, instead stuffing their Thanksgiving bird with chunks of onion and herbs. For many years, this was a traditional stuff and was later embellished with chestnuts and other odds and ends. The bread that was likely served at Thanksgiving was a sort of cornbread, as that was more or less the only available grain at the time.
Historians are quick to point out that on top of deer and waterfowl, the Wampanoag tribe diets included quite a bit of seafood, including fish, lobster, eels, clams, and mussels. They had long been preserving fish and shellfish through smoking and drying methods. Many historians argue that these seafood items would have found their way into the 1621 Thanksgiving menu. Personally, I like this idea and would love to see lobster served at Thanksgiving again. Also, if anyone can get their kid to make a hand lobster craft and send me a picture, I would be grateful.
Other staples in the Wampanoag diet included a wide variety of foraged and harvested foods that could just as easily have been part of the fare, including chestnuts, walnuts, beechnuts, beans, pumpkins, and other types of squashes. The Puritan settlers had been taught how to plant and forage native crops and the colonists had planted gardens starting in 1620, but it is unclear if any of these food items were a part of their gardens or made it into the celebration.
It is worth noting that since the Wampanoag had pumpkins, some might jump to the conclusion that pumpkin pie or even pumpkin spice latte could have been a part of the first Thanksgiving meal. I am happy to inform you that even though pumpkin pie was invented in France in the same century as the Plymouth Thanksgiving meal, by a French chef named François Pierre La Varenne. This first version of a pumpkin pie, specifically called ‘pompion torte’ came complete with a pastry crust. However, the invention did not happen until the 1850s, missing the first Thanksgiving by several decades. That miss is just as well because the first cows did not arrive in the colony until a few years later, meaning there would have been no whipped cream to serve with the pie anyway. I can also say definitively that Pumpkin spice lattes weren’t a part of the first Thanksgiving, because coffee didn’t arrive in America until 1723, lattes weren’t invented in Italy until the early 1900s, and the first Pumpkin Spice recipe didn’t appear until it showed up in an American cookbook in 1796. The pumpkin spice latte itself wasn’t invented until 2003, when the mad scientists at Starbucks concocted it in their secret underground labs and unleashed it on an unsuspecting world. Though, again the lack of cows would have been a major setback for the drink in 1621. There were goats on the Mayflower, but I urge you not to imagine that scenario.
One very positive thing I learned was that the tradition of Thanksgiving leftovers began right away, as the first Thanksgiving was a three day celebration. The Smithsonian Magazine article pointed out that leftover roasted birds and vegetables were likely thrown into pot for boiling to make a broth. Then grains (likely corn) was added to thicken it up and make pottage. I had to look this up (pottage) to learn that it is a thick soup made from boiling grains and vegetables. It was a staple food for peasants for millennia. Unfortunately, humanity would have to wait until 1953 for the technology of Thanksgiving leftovers turkey sandwiches to finally be developed. That was when the Boston Globe first mentioned the idea in an article entitled “Man’s Special Turkey Sandwich” giving birth to a glorious age in American history. Though, to be fair it is likely that people were making leftover turkey sandwiches long beforehand.
