“Inasmuch as the great Father has given us this year an abundant harvest of Indian corn, wheat, peas, beans, squashes, and garden vegetables, and has made the forests to abound with game and the sea with fish and clams, and inasmuch as He has protected us from the ravages of the savages, has spared us from pestilence and disease, has granted us freedom to worship God according to the dictates of our own conscience.

“Now I, your magistrate, do proclaim that all ye Pilgrims, with your wives and ye little ones, do gather at ye meeting house, on ye hill, between the hours of 9 and 12 in the daytime, on Thursday, November 29th, of the year of our Lord one thousand six hundred and twenty three and the third year since ye Pilgrims landed on ye Pilgrim Rock, there to listen to ye pastor and render thanksgiving to ye Almighty God for all His blessings.”

William Bradford

Ye Governor of Ye Colony

That first formal declaration was three years after their arrival, when practices and habits had begun to solidify. However, the very first Thanksgiving was in 1621, most likely in November, a year after their arrival. In that year’s winter, their first, about half their company perished, including their first governor, John Carver, who died in April:

“He was buried in the best manner they could, with some vollies of shott by all that bore arms; and his wife, being weak, dyed within five or six weeks after him.”

All previous burials had been done in secret because they did not want the Indians to know how alarmingly depleted their number was becoming. This was the first burial done openly.

During that year they made a treaty with the Indians, the Wampanoag, which treaty was honored by both parties for decades, until Plymouth Colony had ceased to exist, having been folded into the Massachusetts colony. 

From Bradford’s journal:

“Our harvest being gotten in, our governor [he always wrote in the third person] sent four men on fowling, that 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 served the company almost a week. At which time, amongst other recreations, we exercised our arms. King Massasoit, with some ninety men, we entertained and feasted with for three days. 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 goodness of God, we are so far from want.”

The words of our Lord Jesus Christ certainly apply to the Pilgrims: “Ye are the light of the world”.

Bradford seemed to sense the portentousness of their voyage, their survival, and their prosperity, when he wrote: 

“Thus out of smalle beginnings greater things have been produced by His hand [Who] made all things that are; and as one small candle may light a thousands, so ye light here kindled hath shone to many, yea in some sorte to our whole nation; let ye glorious name of Jehova have all ye praise.”

The character of the Pilgrims is worthy of emulation by us all today, 400 years after their arrival.

Most of all, the attitude of gratitude. Entire families had died; many survivors had lost loved ones and friends. But they knew, they sincerely knew, to be grateful. 

They honored God and God honored them.

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

P.S. If you’d like to read about Squanto, please see my 2019 Thanksgiving post (Squanto).