On November 8, I was pleased to attend a Zoom workshop coordinated by SMDPA’s Education Chair, Dr. Heather Horton.  It featured an interactive presentation from Plimoth Patuxet Museums entitled, “Giving Thanks:  Reimaging Thanksgiving for the 21st-century Classrooms.”  This 60-minute workshop provided those teachers in attendance with new ways to instruct their students on the layered meanings found within the lone primary source for the first Thanksgiving in 1621:  A Relation or Journal of the Beginning and Proceedings of the English Plantation Settled at Plimoth in New England (referred to as Mourt’s Relation). 

Mourt’s Relation is believed to have been written between November 1620 and November 1621 by Edward Winslow, with contributions from William Bradford.  It was named after its publisher George Morton, sometimes called George Mourt, who would emigrate to Plymouth in 1623.  Mourt’s Relation appears to have had two purposes.  First, it sought to favorably portray the prospects of this fledgling Colony to its investors back in London, perhaps to recruit other immigrants.  But it also intended to reassure fellow religious separatists back in Leyden on the physical, emotional and spiritual health of those “Mayflower” Pilgrims who had survived the dreadful first winter in Plymouth, when half of their Colony perished.  Mourt’s Relation contains the first account of the multicultural harvest feast in the Fall of 1621 held between our Pilgrim ancestors and their Wampanoag allies.

The Educators at Plimoth Patuxet Museums explained how fragile it was for Mourt’s Relation to have survived to present day.  The raw manuscript was given to Robert Cushman in Plymouth to hand-carry back to England on his return journey aboard the “Fortune” in 1621.  According to World History Encyclopedia, this ship “was seized by the French who looted not only the goods in the hold but the passengers' personal items; yet Cushman refused to surrender the manuscript and oversaw its publication once he was back in England.”  Mourt’s Relation was published in 1622 and circulated for as long as 150 years.  However, it was considered lost until a copy surfaced in Philadelphia in 1820.  Mourt’s Relation was republished in 1841, 15 years before the lost manuscript of William Bradford’s Of Plymouth Plantation was also found and republished.  In a footnote, editor Alexander Young was the first person to identify "the first Thanksgiving."

Here is the full passage, which is an excerpt from an even longer sentence that has not survived:

Our harvest being gotten, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might, after a special manner, rejoice together after we had gathered the fruit of our labors; they four in one day killed as much fowl as, with a little help beside, served the company almost a week at which time, amongst other recreations, we exercised our arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and among the rest their greatest king, Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted; and they went out and killed five deer, which they brought to the plantation, and bestowed on our governor, and upon the captain and others and although it be not always so plentiful as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God we are so far from want, that we often wish you partakers of our plenty [emphasis mine].

The last phrase strikes me especially.  Despite the unimaginable personal and communal sufferings that are merely alluded to -- “not always so plentiful” – the author and his fellow Pilgrims nevertheless are grateful for God’s goodness and wish to share this providence generously with their brethren across the sea.  That is a powerful message that should resonate within all of us.  It is also a message that we should feel free to express within our families, our communities, and to those we encounter on this very special day of Thanksgiving:  “God is great, God is good, and we thank Him for our food.”

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Best Regards,

James (Jim) Campbell SMDPA Governor  [email protected]