The First Thanksgiving
Atlanta, GA
We are blessed.
Our house is in a reclusive spot, away from the noise. Not that we’re entirely immune. Periodically…like fumes from a waste dump…daily news seeps in.
But unlike in many cities during this horrible year, our location allows us (when better judgment lapses) the luxury of watching our ambient idiocy unfold on the TV rather than out our front window.
From our back window, calm prevails. We are in a forest, a fortress of foliage preserving our fragile peace. All summer, it’s as if we are in the wilderness, virtually isolated and veritably alone.
In October, the leaves dry up, assume new hues, and begin to drop. By the end of the following month they are gone. In the distance, nearby houses then come to view, and remind us that other settlers inhabit these woods.
Those who stepped on American shores off English ships must’ve had a similar sensation when indigenous neighbors appeared amid the trees. We know the familiar story.
The persecuted Pilgrims separated from the Church of England, fled first to Holland, then crossed the Atlantic. They landed on Plymouth Rock, made a compact, and got quickly down to Yankee business of collectivizing assets and bossing each other around. After a long winter of starvation, disease, and death, they wised up, privatized plots, and reaped their bounty.
Of necessity, they interacted with the locals, who understood some English after prior contact with settlers in New Foundland. The aborigines helped the newcomers grow, hunt, and prepare meals, one of which they hosted to bless their harvest and thank their Lord. It lasted three days…and continued for four centuries.
Their tradition endures. But they didn’t start it.
These emigrants were brave, strict, stubborn, and strong. They also had the good fortune to land in New England, where self-righteous writers would infest Boston like scurvy on the Mayflower.
By these scribes, who buy ink by the barrel and sell propaganda by the page, the Pilgrims had their posthumous PR. They get the Charlie Brown special, the grade school plays, and the annual editorial in the Wall Street Journal. And they should. It is a great story, and worth telling. But as often happened in early American history, the South took the lead, and the North claimed the credit.
A year before the Mayflower hit Cape Cod, the Margaret sailed into Chesapeake Bay, and up the James River. Twelve months later, the Pilgrims sought the same place. But currents carried them to Massachusetts, where diminished provisions kept them from proceeding. Based on what befell their predecessors, it was probably just as well.
The Berkeley Company of London had offered thirty-five settlers 8,000 acres along the James, to plant crops, shops, homes, and farms. But when they arrived, the first thing to dent the soil was their knees, in grateful homage for the voyage they’d survived.
The Company gave orders that the successful landing must be “yearly and perpetually kept holy as a day of Thanksgiving to Almighty God”. The colonists started the custom the moment they disembarked at Berkeley Plantation.
But it was early December. As would be the case with the Plymouth colonists to the north, their arrival was not seasonally propitious. Food wasn’t readily available on shore, and supplies on ship were dwindling. They probably scrounged rations from the vessel, plus a smattering of oysters and a scrap of ham.
Of necessity, theirs was less feast than fast…more spirit than flesh…invocation rather than ingestion. This excessive deprivation and devotion may be another reason the Virginia version of Thanksgiving had less legs than the Massachusetts meal. The occasion wasn’t as festive, the story not as fun.
It also could be because the Indians around Berkeley Plantation were more inclined to go off script. Even had they learned their lines, they wouldn’t have understood them. Unlike the tribes to the north, the Powhatan spoke no English. For three years the paleface settlers celebrated their humble day of thanks. Not once did they invite the neighboring natives to join their annual devotion.
In 1622, feeling put out (or that they would soon be put upon), the Powhatans crashed the pious party. They carved up the colony, and polished off the white meat. Few leftovers remained. Berkeley Plantation, site of the first annually recurring Thanksgiving, was lost.
Three centuries later, it was found.
Lyon G Tyler, son of President John Tyler, discovered proof of the settlement, and evidence for the first Thanksgiving. The Plantation had since been home to Benjamin Harrison, signer of the Declaration of Independence and father of William Henry Harrison, who was born at Berkeley, and to whom, for a month, Lyon Tyler’s father had been Vice President.
In 1931, Tyler relayed his discovery to the contemporary Berkeley owner, who had revived the storied home and now had another reason to preserve its legacy. Lyon Tyler died a few years later. His namesake son…John Tyler’s grandson…died just two months ago.
Remarkably, another of Lyon Tyler’s sons still survives. Somewhere, on this day, a man whose grandfather was tenth president of the United States and whose great-grandfather was Thomas Jefferson’s college roommate, is asking someone to pass the stuffing. Maybe that’s why so little is written about that first Thanksgiving. There’s still someone walking around who can tell us about it!
That’s good. Because this year, in many places and in many families, this Thanksgiving may resemble the muted veracity of Virginia more than the merry myth of Massachusetts. Gatherings today may be smaller, feel less festive, and hide their petals of gratitude in thickets of angst. But, like the precarious settlers on the James, we must retrieve those tender flowers from their tenacious thorns.
In our home, we will celebrate Thanksgiving quietly, by ourselves. Last year I wrote a tongue-in-cheek catalogue of pet peeves and petty annoyances. How quaint most of them now seem! At this point, after this year, I’d take almost all of them. Those trifling inconveniences, like a bad meal on a luxury liner, retrospectively reinforce how good we had it…nostalgic reminders of a world that once was.
A lot has happened since the last time a turkey was stuffed in our oven. The big picture is an incorrigible mess. But we still have our small canvas. Against the bleak backdrop of a somber year…like glittering jewels on black fabric…the essential blessings sparkle, and shine more brightly.
We have been warned by our political charlatans to expect a “dark winter”. Maybe so, particularly if they keep extinguishing candles and drawing the curtains. But, on this day, in this house…despite rain outside and chill in the air… it is sunny, and warm.
Our humble hut nestles among benevolent neighbors rather than pugnacious Powhatans. Our sons are home, and our health is good. Our beds are soft, and our board is full. Amid the vinegar, we have plenty of wine.
Besides, we can affect only what we can control. And, with each passing year, we become more patently aware, and serenely relieved, that it ain’t much. As Confucius said, it is hard to find a black cat in a dark room, especially if there is no cat. To put it in more familiar fashion: if there’s no solution, there’s no problem.
Today, as we approach the table, we will be grateful to God, thankful for family, and appreciative that a day returns each year to remind us what pilgrims on the Mayflower and passengers on the Margaret were forced to know, but that we have had the luxury to forget.
The room is rarely as dark as we think. Most of the time, there is no cat…and no problem. And if one arises, it usually derives not from what, in our accustomed abundance, we fail to receive; but rather, in our conventional complacency, from what we neglect to recall.
More often than not, that is but one thing. That we are blessed.
JD