People have been rewriting history for a long, long time. Folks like to blame liberals and “the woke.” But really, it’s nothing new. People have been messing with history for a long time.

George Washington, even though a huge rock star of the day, had some character flaws and came across to some as unapproachable and aloof. Due to his huge popularity, there were many people who liked to inflate stories about him.

Mason Weems wrote a lively and entertaining book about Washington, including quite a few believable stories about the great leader. However, it was Weems who first wrote the story of Washington telling the truth about chopping down the cherry tree, which was totally made up but widely accepted as fact for a number of years.

Shoot, I remember coloring a picture in grade school with the cherry tree story. I also remember my teachers focusing more on Washington telling the truth than the actual cutting of the tree. I heard this lady ranting the other day about how some Native American folks are saddened by Thanksgiving and how it symbolizes bloodshed and death to them. Furthermore, she shamed those of us who celebrate (including folks who are Native American) and

just kept ranting and raving.

Naturally, I like to get the facts. Do you know how hard it is to come up with the truth these days? You can’t get a straight answer from people. Maybe they don’t really know. But I dug around for a while and came up with some things I didn’t know before.

There were battles. The ranting lady spoke of the massacre of the Pequot people in 1637, which really did happen. The Pequot Massacre of 1637 was a brutal war in which the English colonists, with help from their allies, the Mohegan and Narragansett, attacked the Pequots over land disputes. It was a cold, brutal war in which the tribe was decimated.

The ranting lady said that the governor of the Massachusetts Bay colony declared a day of thanksgiving the next day, which is probably true as well.

A day of thanksgiving after something that is upsetting and unsettling. But, it’s part of history and even the unpleasant things we don’t understand still exist and can’t be rewritten. Declaring a day of thanksgiving was common and something that was done often. Any time the English people felt the need to thank God for what they considered a gift, including a military conquest, they would declare such a day. However, most days of that sort were not connected to military victories at all, and usually reserved for good weather, the end of widespread sickness, and so on. In addition, such days involved church services, prayer, and, not turkey and dressing, but fasting.

So, the lady who said Thanksgiving is tied to the Pequot War was wrong. The actual story that is said to be “the first Thanksgiving” actually happened in 1621, sometime between September and November. For many years, I told my students about the Pilgrims of Plymouth and how they had a three-day harvest festival to celebrate their great  arvest. I told my students how the harvest festival started with a ceremonial firing of guns into the air, and how that gun firing caused Massosoit to rally his men and prepare for battle. That episode ended with an invitation to join the Plymouth folks, and Massasoit ended up bringing 90 people with him. Some say turkey wasn’t on the menu, but eel was. Squanto was there, and he had been so appalled by how bad the Pilgrims smelled that he had tried, unsuccessfully, to show them how to bathe. They were so modest that they wouldn’t have taken all their clothes off to bathe. Furthermore, they thought baths were unhealthy.

Sorry about the tangent. I just thought that part was funny. Poor Squanto, trying to be a friend and all. Thanksgiving as we know it today really started in the late 1700s, and was celebrated intermittently until 1863 when a magazine editor suggested “a day of thanksgiving” to help with national unity during the Civil War. It is certainly tied to that harvest festival in 1621, but there are a lot of moving parts to the story.

One thing I never quite got to the bottom of was the serving of turkey at that festival in 1621. Some historians say yes, and some say no. Depending on the way you look at it, it may just be safe to say we don’t know.

And some reports say there were only five women at the festival.

Wow.

I still hope the funny bath story is true.

Again, poor Squanto.