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    The First Thanksgiving: A Selection from Mayflower (Penguin Tracks)
    The First Thanksgiving: A Selection from Mayflower (Penguin Tracks)
    The First Thanksgiving: A Selection from Mayflower (Penguin Tracks)
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    The First Thanksgiving: A Selection from Mayflower (Penguin Tracks)

    By Nathaniel Philbrick

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    About this ebook

    The real story of the First Thanksgiving from the New York Times bestselling author Nathaniel Philbrick

    One of America’s most acclaimed historians takes on the nation’s First Thanksgiving, telling us the true story behind the tale we think we know so well. In this selection from the New York Times bestseller Mayflower Nathaniel Philbrick recounts in riveting detail the truth about relations between Plymouth Colony and the British crown and between the colonists and Native American tribes, shining a light on the courage, communities, and conflicts that shaped one of our country’s most celebrated national holidays.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Books
    Release dateNov 12, 2013
    ISBN9781101630914
    The First Thanksgiving: A Selection from Mayflower (Penguin Tracks)
    Author

    Nathaniel Philbrick

    Nathaniel Philbrick is a historian and broadcaster who has writen extensively about sailing. He is Director of the Egan Institute of Maritime Studies on Nantucket Island, and a research fellow at the Nantucket Historical Association. He was a consultant on the movie ‘Moby Dick’. He has lived on Nantucket with his wife and two children since 1986.

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      Book preview

      The First Thanksgiving - Nathaniel Philbrick

      CONTENTS

      About the Author

      Also by Nathaniel Philbrick

      Title Page

      About the Book

      Copyright Page

      THE FIRST THANKSGIVING

      Preface

      CHAPTER ONE

      The Heart of Winter

      CHAPTER TWO

      In a Dark and Dismal Swamp

      CHAPTER THREE

      Thanksgiving

      Notes

      PENGUIN TRACKS

      The First Thanksgiving

      NATHANIEL PHILBRICK is the New York Times bestselling author of Away Off Shore; In the Heart of the Sea, winner of the National Book Award; Sea of Glory, winner of the Theodore and Franklin D. Roosevelt Naval History Prize; Mayflower, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; The Last Stand; Why Read Moby-Dick?; and Bunker Hill. He lives on Nantucket.

      753.jpg

      ALSO BY

      Nathaniel Philbrick

       • • • 

      AWAY OFF SHORE:

      Nantucket Island and Its People, 1602–1890

      IN THE HEART OF THE SEA:

      The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex

      SEA OF GLORY:

      America’s Voyage of Discovery,

      The U.S. Exploring Expedition, 1838–1842

      MAYFLOWER:

      A Story of Courage, Community, and War

      THE LAST STAND:

      Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn

      WHY READ MOBY-DICK?:

      BUNKER HILL:

      A City, A Siege, A Revolution

      ABOUT THE BOOK

      One of America’s most acclaimed historians takes on the nation’s First Thanksgiving, telling us the true story behind the tale we think we know so well. In this selection from the New York Times bestselling Mayflower, Nathaniel Philbrick recounts in riveting detail the truth about relations between Plymouth Colony and the British crown and between the colonists and Native American tribes, and he shines a light on the courage, communities, and conflicts that shaped one of our country’s most celebrated national holidays.

      PENGUIN BOOKS

      Published by the Penguin Group

      Penguin Group (USA) LLC

      375 Hudson Street

      New York, New York 10014

      770.jpg

      USA | Canada | UK | Ireland | Australia | New Zealand | India | South Africa | China

      penguin.com

      A Penguin Random House Company

      Copyright © 2006 by Nathaniel Philbrick

      Map copyright © 2006 Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

      Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

      Map by Jeffrey L. Ward

      The contents of this book first appeared in Nathaniel Philbrick’s Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War (Viking Penguin, 2006; Penguin Books, 2007)

      ISBN 978-1-101-63091-4 (eBook)

      While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers, Internet addresses, and other contact information at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors or for changes that occur after publication. Further, publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

      Preface

      WE ALL WANT TO KNOW how it was in the beginning. From the Big Bang to the Garden of Eden to the circumstances of our own births, we yearn to travel back to that distant time when everything was new and full of promise. Perhaps then, we tell ourselves, we can start to make sense of the convoluted mess we are in today.

      But beginnings are rarely as clear-cut as we would like them to be. Take, for example, the event that most Americans associate with the start of the United States: the voyage of the Mayflower.

      We’ve all heard at least some version of the story: how in 1620 the Pilgrims sailed to the New World in search of religious freedom; how after drawing up the Mayflower Compact, they landed at Plymouth Rock and befriended the local Wampanoags, who taught them how to plant corn and whose leader or sachem, Massasoit, helped them celebrate the First Thanksgiving. From this inspiring inception came the United States.

      Like many Americans, I grew up taking this myth of national origins with a grain of salt. In their wide-brimmed hats and buckled shoes, the Pilgrims were the stuff of holiday parades and bad Victorian poetry. Nothing could be more removed from the ambiguities of modern-day America, I thought, than the Pilgrims and the Mayflower.

      But, as I have since discovered, the story of the Pilgrims does not end with the First Thanksgiving. When we look to how the Pilgrims and their children maintained more than fifty years of peace with the Wampanoags and how that peace suddenly erupted into one of the deadliest wars ever fought on American soil, the history of Plymouth Colony becomes something altogether new, rich, troubling, and complex. Instead of the story we already know, it becomes the story we need to know.

        • • • 

      In 1676, fifty-six years after the sailing of the Mayflower, a similarly named but far less famous ship, the Seaflower, departed from the shores of New England. Like the Mayflower, she carried a human cargo. But instead of 102 potential colonists, the Seaflower was bound for the Caribbean with 180 Native American slaves.

      The governor of Plymouth Colony, Josiah Winslow—son of former Mayflower passengers Edward and Susanna Winslow—had provided the Seaflower ’s captain with the necessary documentation. In a certificate bearing his official seal, Winslow explained that these Native men, women, and children had joined in an uprising against the colony and were guilty of many notorious and execrable murders, killings, and outrages. As a consequence, these heathen malefactors had been condemned to perpetual slavery.

      The Seaflower was one of several New England vessels bound for the West Indies with Native slaves. But by 1676, plantation owners in Barbados and Jamaica had little

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