The 1621 gathering of Pilgrims and Wampanoags near the desolate harbor that was to become the town of Plymouth in the Massachusetts Bay colony was a celebration of survival, hope, and, historians tell us, diplomacy.
During their first year of settlement in a harsh new world, more than half of the estimated 102 Pilgrims and “strangers” who had boarded the Mayflower at Plymouth, England, had died. But in early 1621 the survivors had forged a fateful alliance with Ousamequin—Massasoit, in many American texts—a powerful local leader of the Cape Cod and southeastern Massachusetts Wampanoags, whose people had been decimated by an epidemic shortly before the Pilgrims’ arrival.
The Wampanoag had shown the settlers how to hunt, gather, and grow the food they needed to sustain themselves. And both parties had demonstrated their commitment to defending the other in disputes with other Native groups and their leaders, or sachems, that spring, an alliance that lasted more than 50 years.
So after a good harvest, Gov. William Bradford later wrote, Plymouth’s leaders decided to set aside time to “rejoice together.” The thanksgiving feast that followed lasted three days and was unexpectedly joined by Ousamequin “with some 90 men,” the event we remember as the first Thanksgiving.
Today, Thanksgiving occupies a special place on the American calendar as a mostly nonsectarian, noncommercial holiday that brings families and strangers together for food and fellowship, just as that original celebration had done.
It’s a time to recall the struggles of New England’s first settlers and the sacrifices of the Native people who helped them survive, at great cost to their future. And it’s a good time to reflect on the circumstances that brought our own families to these shores. Whether motivated by religion, politics, or a simple desire for a better life, whether they came here willingly or in bondage, it can be said that nearly all of us are the sons and daughters of immigrants.
And yet as we “rejoice together” in the bounty of the land in which we live, grateful for our good fortune, we might be mindful of the inequities in its distribution and the hunger that persists too often within our communities. In a letter home, Edward Winslow wrote of the 1621 gathering, “[W]e are so far from want, that we often wish you [to be] partakers of our plenty.” We should wish no less for our fellow Americans in 2024.