Tachquoak - Fall
Due
to space limitations, the following links will be available September
through November only.
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"The First Thanksgiving"
On Thanksgiving, you hear a lot of stories about first contact between Europeans and Native Americans on the East Coast. Most of the stories are from a non-native perspective and gloss over details that don't fit in to the mainstream narrative.
You have probably learned to call it "The First
Thanksgiving."
But that is not the right name.
First, the event wasn't a "first" at all. Native People had been giving thanks in this land for thousands of years before 1621.
Second, as far as the word "Thanksgiving" goes, people in 1621 never called it a "Thanksgiving." It was simply a harvest celebration.
So visit the links below.
November
as Native American Indian History Month -
An Introduction
(start here)This Month in History -
November in History
Links about the:
Wampanoag People
-
who met the Pilgrims
The First "Thanksgiving" Feast &
Foods
Clothing &
Food
for
Natives & Europeans at that time
ABC's of Native Heritage
Month
Celebrate
Native Foods!
Contemporary -
Native Women
Warriors in the Military
Issues to Consider
Thanksgiving
Day Background & Native Points of View
You Are the Historian – Investigating the
First Thanksgiving!
Visit this link http://www.plimoth.org/education/olc/index_js2.html# to reach Pilmoth Plantation for an interactive learning experience! Teacher Resource Guide.
The names of our traditional Thanksgiving bird reflect utter confusion about this Native American fowl.
First, of course,
it is not from Turkey — it wasn't known outside the Americas until Spanish explorers brought some from the New World to Spain in the early 1500s.A variety of stories explain the origin of the
name. One is that Europeans believed it came from Asia—the French
name is dinde, from the phrase coq d'Inde meaning cock from India.
Another is that Europeans sometimes referred to anything exotic as
coming from Turkey, and many exotic things did, given its position at
the crossroads of Europe and Asia. Another story claims that the
Portuguese took the bird to their Asian colonies after discovering it in
the New World, and from there it was spread east to Europe along
traditional trade routes, appearing, therefore, to have actually hailed
from Asia via Turkey. More prosaically, several large birds,
including grouse, pheasants, and peafowl, were known generically in
English as turkeys, making it an obvious appellation for a similar large
bird. Or, people may have confused turkeys with peacocks, just as
they sometimes confused guinea fowl with turkeys. The bird's
scientific name—Meleagris gallopavo—compounds the confusion: Gallo is
Latin for jungle fowl, or chicken; pavo is Latin for peacock; and
meleagris is Greek for guinea fowl, making the turkey a “guinea fowl
chicken peacock.”
From Smithsonian National Zoological Park,
Wash, DC