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For many Americans, the Thanksgiving meal includes seasonal dishes such as roast turkey with stuffing, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie. Wild—but not domestic—turkey was indeed plentiful in the region and a common food source for both English settlers and Native Americans.
But it is just as likely that the fowling party returned with other birds we know the colonists regularly consumed, such as ducks, geese and swans. Instead of bread-based stuffing, herbs, onions or nuts might have been added to the birds for extra flavor. Winslow wrote that the Wampanoag guests arrived with an offering of five deer.
Culinary historians speculate that the deer was roasted on a spit over a smoldering fire and that the colonists might have used some of the venison to whip up a hearty stew. Local vegetables that likely appeared on the table include onions, beans, lettuce, spinach, cabbage, carrots and perhaps peas.
Corn, which records show was plentiful at the first harvest, might also have been served, but not in the way most people enjoy it now. In those days, the corn would have been removed from the cob and turned into cornmeal, which was then boiled and pounded into a thick corn mush or porridge that was occasionally sweetened with molasses.
Fruits indigenous to the region included blueberries, plums, grapes, gooseberries, raspberries and, of course cranberries, which Native Americans ate and used as a natural dye. Mussels in particular were abundant in New England and could be easily harvested because they clung to rocks along the shoreline. The colonists occasionally served mussels with curds, a dairy product with a similar consistency to cottage cheese.
Future presidents did not continue the Thanksgiving declaration. She wrote letters to five presidents: Abraham Lincoln was the only president to listen and supported legislation making it a national holiday in America was in the middle of its bloody Civil War at the time and Lincoln hoped the new holiday would unify the bitterly divided country.
Thanksgiving, or Thanksgiving Day, is a public holiday celebrated on the fourth Thursday of The event that Americans commonly call the "First Thanksgiving" was celebrated by the Pilgrims after their first harvest in the New World in October . For many Americans, the Thanksgiving meal includes seasonal dishes such as roast turkey with stuffing, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie. The holiday feast dates back to November , when the newly arrived Pilgrims and the Wampanoag Indians gathered at Plymouth.
The holiday was finally a success and Thanksgiving has continued ever since. All Around the Year: Holidays and Celebrations in American Life.
University of Illinois Press, Winslow, Edward and William Bradford. What were the Native-Americans names? Is it no so much easier to find excuses to ease a concionence?
In our divided country it was nice to know that 2 different cultures celebrated together without blaming each other on the current situation. I wish we could get along like they did; too much of the negative today. Your email address will not be published. He was subsequently able to achieve his release and return to his homeland. The Pilgrims' first corn harvest was successful and in November the group's leader, Governor William Bradford, called for a feast to celebrate their good fortune. Hunters were sent into the wilderness to hunt game for the event.
It included 50 persons who were on the Mayflower all who remained of the who had landed and 90 Native Americans. Both the Pilgrims and members of the Wampanoag tribe ate pumpkins and other squashes indigenous to New England—possibly even during the harvest festival—but the fledgling colony lacked the butter and wheat flour necessary for making pie crust. It has since become a tradition on numerous classic rock and classic hits radio stations to play the full, uninterrupted recording to much fanfare each Thanksgiving Day, a tradition that appears to have originated with counterculture radio host Bob Fass , who introduced the song to the public on his radio show. Squanto had learned the English language during his enslavement in England. A national Thanksgiving Day seemed more like a lightning rod for controversy than a unifying force. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Members of the local Native American tribes were invited and brought deer meat to add to the menu. The celebration lasted for three days.
Edward Winslow was among the group of Pilgrims present at the first Thanksgiving. He describes the scene: