Think you know who gave the first Thanksgiving?
Test what you know against Wikipedia’s LIST below:
Spaniards
First:
The first recorded Thanksgiving ceremony took place on September 8, 1565, when 600 Spanish settlers, under the leadership of Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, landed at what is now St. Augustine, Florida, and immediately held a Mass of Thanksgiving for their safe delivery to the New World; there followed a feast and celebration. As the La Florida colony did become part of the United States, this can be classified as the first Thanksgiving.[1]
Second:
El Paso, Texas, has also been said to be the site of the first Thanksgiving to be held in what is now known as the United States, though that was not a harvest festival. Spaniard Don Juan de Oñate ordered his expedition party to rest and conducted a mass in celebration of thanksgiving on April 30, 1598.[2]
1619 thanksgiving, the Virginia colony
Third:
On December 4, 1619, 38 English settlers arrived at Berkeley Hundred, which comprised about 8,000 acres (32 km²) on the north bank of the James River, near Herring Creek, in an area then known as Charles Cittie (sic), about 20 miles (32 km) upstream from Jamestown, where the first permanent settlement of the Colony of Virginia had been established on May 14, 1607…
1621 thanksgiving, the Pilgrims at Plymouth
Fourth:
Squanto, a Patuxet Native American who resided with the Wampanoag tribe, taught the Pilgrims how to catch eel and grow corn and served as an interpreter for them (Squanto had learned English as a slave in Europe and travels in England). The Pilgrims set apart a day to celebrate at Plymouth immediately after their first harvest, in 1621. At the time, this was not regarded as a Thanksgiving observance; harvest festivals were existing parts of English and Wampanoag tradition alike….]
With all those dates above a lot of food was offered. Especially when the harvest festivals got added to the mix. From the beginning it was a North American observance. Consider all those great American foods, without which the world would be a less delicious place.
Common Thanksgiving foods native to the Americas are:
Avocodo
Common Beans, green, snap, and dried. (Broad beans like Fava, are from elsewhere.)
Bell, paprika, and chili peppers
Black Walnuts
Buffalo
Butternuts
Chestnuts (before the blight)
Chocolate
Corn (not the European meaning)
Cranberries
Grapes, Concord, River Bank, Frost and Muscadines
Pecans
Pumpkin
Squash
Sweet Potatos, and the redder ones we call yams
Papaya
PawPaw
Peanuts
Potatos
Turkey
Tomatos
Vanilla
Wild Rice
Plus, there were familar foods also found here but of a different species , like: clams, oysters, shrimp, lobster, quail, berries, deer, pigeon, and fish.
Truly worth giving thanks for! Have a great one!
I Own My Vote, PUMA, The Denver Group, Just Say No Deal
Leave a Reply