Turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie…these are the images that spring to mind when Thanksgiving Day is discussed, along with football, football, and more football. We like to pause on this day and remember our humble beginnings in this country and give thought to the things we have to be thankful for. Some of our readers and contributors have shared some of those thoughts with us on page 10 of this issue.

The stories from which the idea of today’s Thanksgiving celebrations arose—about smiling Pilgrims at Plimouth Plantation sharing a bountiful harvest of turkey and all the trimmings with friendly Indians—are myths that belie some of the harsh facts about those early days in old Plimoth and the ramifications that have been felt down through the centuries.

The Pilgrims were sick, cold, and hungry that first year. Many died, and their crops failed. The Indians shared food with them, and taught them how to grow their own. According to historical accounts written about an early meal the two cultures may have shared, venison and wild fowl were probably on the menu. Cranberry sauce was not—in those early years the Pilgrims had cranberries, but no sugar. Lobster, seals, and swans may have been on the menu as well, along with “mussels seeth’d in beer” or a “sallet of herbes.” And since the fork had not yet been invented, the diners ate using knives, spoons, and fingers. My husband and I discovered that last inconvenient fact in 1999 when we took part in Plimoth Plantation’s reenactment of the primitive 1621 Thanksgiving meal. Afterward we wandered down to the center of Plymouth to explore the Mayflower, and as we approached the center we heard somber drumming and saw a crowd dispersing. We had just missed a speech by Moonanum James, co-leader of the United American Indians of New England, in honor of the Indians’ National Day of Mourning.

Native Americans do not share our belief in the mythical Thanksgiving their ancestors were supposed to have shared with the Pilgrims. They consider Thanksgiving a day of mourning, since it marks the beginning of the end for their culture, which was decimated by diseases brought by white settlers, and by the settlers themselves, who thought anything they saw in the New World was theirs for the taking.

The Indians’ National Day of Mourning was started in Plymouth in 1970—350 years after the Pilgrims’ arrival—by Wampanoag leader Frank B. Wamsutta James. Mourners in Plymouth gather on Cole’s Hill, where there is a plaque that reads: “Many Native Americans do not celebrate the arrival of the Pilgrims and other European settlers. To them, Thanksgiving Day is a reminder of the genocide of millions of their people, the theft of their lands, and the relentless assault on their culture.”