The Real First Thanksgiving
by Richard J. Maybury
Each year at this time school children all over
America are taught the official Thanksgiving story, and newspapers, radio, TV,
and magazines devote vast amounts of time and space to it. It is all very
colorful and fascinating.
It is also very deceiving. This official story is
nothing like what really happened. It is a fairy tale, a whitewashed and
sanitized collection of half-truths which divert attention away from
Thanksgiving’s real meaning.
The official story has the pilgrims boarding the
Mayflower, coming to America and establishing the Plymouth colony in the
winter of 1620-21. This first winter is hard, and half the colonists die. But
the survivors are hard working and tenacious, and they learn new farming
techniques from the Indians. The harvest of 1621 is bountiful. The Pilgrims
hold a celebration, and give thanks to God. They are grateful for the wonderful
new abundant land He has given them.
The official story then has the Pilgrims living more
or less happily ever after, each year repeating the first Thanksgiving. Other
early colonies also have hard times at first, but they soon prosper and adopt
the annual tradition of giving thanks for this prosperous new land called
America.
The problem with this official story is that the
harvest of 1621 was not bountiful, nor were the colonists hardworking or
tenacious. 1621 was a famine year and many of the colonists were lazy thieves.
In his History of Plymouth Plantation, the governor of the colony, William Bradford,
reported that the colonists went hungry for years, because they refused to work
in the fields. They preferred instead to steal food. He says the colony was
riddled with “corruption,” and with “confusion and discontent.” The crops were
small because “much was stolen both by night and day, before it became scarce
eatable.”
In the harvest feasts of 1621 and 1622, “all had their
hungry bellies filled,” but only briefly. The prevailing condition during those
years was not the abundance the official story claims, it was famine and death.
The first “Thanksgiving” was not so much a celebration as it was the last meal
of condemned men.
But in subsequent years something changes. The harvest
of 1623 was different. Suddenly, “instead of famine now God gave them plenty,”
Bradford wrote, “and the face of things was changed, to the rejoicing of the
hearts of many, for which they blessed God.” Thereafter, he wrote, “any general
want or famine hath not been amongst them since to this day.” In fact, in 1624,
so much food was produced that the colonists were able to begin exporting corn.
What happened?
After the poor harvest of 1622, writes Bradford, “they
began to think how they might raise as much corn as they could, and obtain a
better crop.” They began to question their form of economic organization.
This had required that “all profits & benefits that
are got by trade, working, fishing, or any other means” were to be placed in
the common stock of the colony, and that, “all such persons as are of this
colony, are to have their meat, drink, apparel, and all provisions out of the
common stock.” A person was to put into the common stock all he could, and take
out only what he needed.
This “from each according to his ability, to each
according to his need” was an early form of socialism, and it is why the
Pilgrims were starving. Bradford writes that “young men that are most able and
fit for labor and service” complained about being forced to “spend their time
and strength to work for other men’s wives and children.” Also, “the strong, or
man of parts, had no more in division of victuals and clothes, than he that was
weak.” So the young and strong refused to work and the total amount of food
produced was never adequate.
To rectify this situation, in 1623 Bradford abolished
socialism. He gave each household a parcel of land and told them they could
keep what they produced, or trade it away as they saw fit. In other words, he
replaced socialism with a free market, and that was the end of famines.
Many early groups of colonists set up socialist
states, all with the same terrible results. At Jamestown, established in 1607,
out of every shipload of settlers that arrived, less than half would survive
their first twelve months in America. Most of the work was being done by only
one-fifth of the men, the other four-fifths choosing to be parasites. In the
winter of 1609-10, called “The Starving Time,” the population fell from
five-hundred to sixty.
Then the Jamestown colony was converted to a free
market, and the results were every bit as dramatic as those at Plymouth. In
1614, Colony Secretary Ralph Hamor wrote that after the switch there was
“plenty of food, which every man by his own industry may easily and doth
procure.” He said that when the socialist system had prevailed, “we reaped not
so much corn from the labors of thirty men as three men have done for themselves
now.”
Before these free markets were established, the
colonists had nothing for which to be thankful. They were in the same situation
as Ethiopians are today, and for the same reasons. But after free markets were
established, the resulting abundance was so dramatic that the annual
Thanksgiving celebrations became common throughout the colonies, and in 1863,
Thanksgiving became a national holiday.
Thus the real reason for Thanksgiving, deleted from
the official story, is: Socialism does not work; the one and only source of
abundance is free markets, and we thank God we live in a country where we can
have them.
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