No, this is not snark. At least not entirely. After hearing President Barak Obama's Thanksgiving Day Address many in the conservative noise machine were displeased. Obama had omitted any mention of a Judeo-Christian God. He had mentioned being our sister's and brother's keepers and talked about Christian charity and love, but never referenced the Big G directly. As Fox News columnist Todd Starnes complained "the president's remarks were void of any religious references although Thanksgiving is a holiday traditionally steeped in giving thanks and praise to God."
I know most here will disagree, but historically, if you go faaaar enough back, Todd Starnes is actually right-but not in a way that he'll appreciate. In fact, Starnes I think will be deeply disappointed once he realizes the reason those settlers were told to give Thanks to God on what we now celebrate as Thanksgiving day....
In 1621, Pilgrims did have a feast but it was not repeated years thereafter. Nor was that Thanksgiving about religion. Had it been, “the Pilgrims never would have invited the Indians to join them. Besides, the Pilgrims would never have tolerated festivities at a true religious event. Indeed, what we think of as Thanksgiving was really a harvest festival. Actual ‘Thanksgivings’ were religious affairs; everybody spent the day praying..."
So, it wasn't the beginning of a Thanksgiving tradition nor did Pilgrims call it a Thanksgiving feast. Pilgrims perceived Indians in relation to the Devil (in Governor William Bradford's words, they --the Indians -- were "savage people, who are cruel, barbarous, and most treacherous.") and the more probable reason they were invited to the feast was for the purpose of eventually negotiating a treaty that would secure the lands for the Pilgrims. Perhaps one reason we have so many myths about Thanksgiving is that it is more an invented tradition, than an historically specific one, an amalgam of the first tense meeting in 1621 for primarily political purposes and a more horrific event that took place nearly 16 year later in 1637: The Pequot Massacre.
From Colonial Times down to the present, the story of the "Pequot Massacre" has been told and retold. Virtually every text on North American Indian wars or colonization covers it in the first or second chapter. As the story goes:
In 1636 ninety armed settlers went to raid Block Island, off the coast, because a white man had been found killed on his boat nearby Whet the armed party landed, they found that the Indians of Block Island had gone into hiding; they burned the villages and crops and returned to the mainland, where for good measure they burned down some Pequot villages. The English went after these Pequots and told them that they were held responsible for the murder. The Pequots had to hand over 'the remaining murderers' and provide assurances about future behavior. The Pequots 'obstinately' refused (in the words of an English eyewitness) and in the resulting fight several Pequots were killed and wounded, and their belongings destroyed or carried off. Thus started the Pequot War.
But the incident that might have begun our Thanksgiving festivities was much less a war than a massacre.
The historian Francis Jennings writes: Mason proposed to avoid attacking Pequot warriors which would have overtaxed his unseasoned, unreliable troops. Battle, as such, was not his purpose. Battle is only one of the ways to destroy an enemy's will to fight. Massacre can accomplish the same end with less risk, and Mason had determined that massacre would be his objective.
The colonist army surrounded a fortified Pequot village on the Mystic River. At sunrise, as the inhabitants slept, the Puritan soldiers set the village on fire.
'We must burn them!' Mason is reported to have shouted, running around with a firebrand and lighting the wigwams. 'Such a dreadful terror let the Almighty fall upon their spirits that they would flee from us and run into the very flames. Thus did the Lord judge the heathen, filling the place with dead bodies, ' he reported afterward:
"The surviving Pequots were hunted but could make little haste because of their children, Mason wrote, They were literally-run to ground, tramped into the mud and buried in the swamp. ' The last of them were shipped to the West Indies as slaves. Governor John Winthrop forty pounds sterling for the scalp of an Indian man, twenty for the scalps of women and children. The name 'Pequot' was officially erased from the map. The Pequot River became the Thames and their town became New London."
(7 History Manners and Customs of the Indian Nations, (1876), Heckewelder, John, p. 53.)
William Bradford, Governor of Plymouth, wrote:
"Those that escaped the fire were slain with the sword; some hewed to pieces, others run through with their rapiers, so that they were quickly dispatched and very few escaped. It was conceived they thus destroyed about 400 at this time. It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fire...horrible was the stink and scent thereof, but the victory seemed a sweet sacrifice, and they gave the prayers thereof to God, who had wrought so wonderfully for them."
(http://www.thepeoplespaths.net/...)
With perhaps a bit of defensiveness, Mason himself wrote:
"It may be demanded, should not Christians have more mercy and compassion? But sometimes the Scripture declareth women and children must perish with their parents. We had sufficient light from the word of God for our proceedings."
The next day, the Governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony declared:
"A day of Thanksgiving, thanking God that they had eliminated over 700 men, women and children." It was signed into law that, "This day forth shall be a day of celebration and thanksgiving for subduing the Pequots."
So the next time you hear someone complaining about not giving it up to their Judeo Christian God on Thanksgiving, you might mention that the tradition harks back to a slaughter of native Americans that just doesn't seem fitting somehow, in our more 'civilized' time.
Not that Republicans will get that, either, necessarily.
As one of the leading theologians of his day, Dr. Cotton Mather put it succinctly: "It was supposed that no less than 600 Pequot souls were brought down to hell that day."
Almost sounds like Pat Robertson, doesn't he?
As an historical note, in 1975, the official number of Pequot living in Connecticut was 21.