1. As always, copy the entire poem in your post and add your line.
2. Place yourself in THAT FIRST THANKSGIVING environment... Here's some background, straight from Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Thanksgiving -- the links below are NOT live, so if interested, you need to go to the original article.
-------------------
The Virginia colony
A collective prayer of thanksgiving was led by Captain John Woodlief in the Virginia Colony on December 4, 1619 near the current site of Berkeley Plantation,
where celebrations are still held each year in November. Woodleif
addressed the 38 men with: "We ordaine that the day of our ships
arrival at the place assigned for plantation in the land of Virginia
shall be yearly and perpetually kept holy as a day of Thanksgiving to
Almighty God." [1]
[edit] The Pilgrims
The Pilgrims were particularly thankful to Squanto,
the Native American who taught them how to catch eel, grow corn and who
served as an interpreter for them (Squanto had learned English as a
slave in Europe and travels in England). Without Squanto's help the
Pilgrims might not have survived in the New World.[citation needed] The explorers who later came to be called 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. Several American colonists have personal accounts of the 1621 feast in Plymouth, Massachusetts:
William Bradford, in Of Plymouth Plantation:
| “ |
They began now to gather in
the small harvest they had, and to fit up their house and dwelling
against winter, being all well recovered in health and strength and had
all things in good plenty. For as some were thus employed in affairs
abroad, others were exercised in fishing, about cod and bass and other
fish, of which they took good store, of which every family had their
portion. All the summer there was no want; and now began to come in
store of fowl, as winter approached, of which this place did abound
when they came first (but afterward decreased by degrees). And besides
waterfowl there was great store of wild turkeys, of which they took
many, besides venison, etc. Besides, they had about a peck of meal a
week to a person, or now since harvest, Indian corn to that proportion.
Which made many afterwards write so largely of their plenty here to
their friends in England, which were not feigned by true reports. |
” |
Edward Winslow, in Mourt's Relation:
| “ |
Our harvest being gotten
in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a
special manner rejoice together after we had gathered the fruits of our
labor. 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 we 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. |
” |
The mention of ninety men in the Winslow account is of interest, as
the Native People present would have outnumbered the 50 surviving
English at that point. The two preceding passages are the only records
of the event, but historians presume that both groups were exposed to
unfamiliar forms of celebration.
The Pilgrims did not hold a true Thanksgiving until 1623, when it
followed a drought, prayers for rain, and a subsequent rain shower.
Irregular Thanksgivings continued after favorable events and days of
fasting after unfavorable ones. In the Plymouth tradition, a
thanksgiving day was a church observance, rather than a feast day.
Gradually, an annual Thanksgiving after the harvest developed in the
mid-17th century. This did not occur on any set day or necessarily on
the same day in different colonies in America.
The Massachusetts Bay Colony (consisting mainly of Puritan
Christians) celebrated Thanksgiving for the first time in 1630, and
frequently thereafter until about 1680, when it became an annual
festival in that colony; and Connecticut as early as 1639 and annually
after 1647, except in 1675. The Dutch in New Netherland appointed a day for giving thanks in 1644 and occasionally thereafter. Charlestown, Massachusetts held the first recorded Thanksgiving observance June 29, 1671 by proclamation of the town's governing council.