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Think you know everything about the history of Thanksgiving? Here’s 21 facts that will prove you wrong
From tales of pumpkin-pie panics to the story of the president who turned his dinner into a pet, Jonny Wilkes uncovers the surprising history behind Thanksgiving: America’s turkey-tastic holiday
There are only two accounts of the first Thanksgiving The story of the first Thanksgiving has been highly mythologised in American history. In 1621, the so-called Pilgrims who travelled on the Mayflower and formed the settlement of Plymouth, in Massachusetts, came together with the local indigenous peoples, the Wampanoag, for a feast to celebrate a good harvest and the growing friendship of settler and Native American in the New World. That is the version long told in schools. In truth, the Pilgrims threw themselves a harvest festival and around 90 of the Wampanoag showed up. Without their help, especially a man named Squanto, the European settlers would have likely perished in their brutal first winter. The only sources for the three-day feast are sparse mentions in writings by two of the Pilgrims, Edward Winslow and William Bradford. Neither actually used the word ‘thanksgiving’, however, and since they gave few details of what happened, the mythologising took over. They may not have eaten turkey at the first Thanksgiving For many Americans, no modern Thanksgiving meal is complete without a turkey as the centrepiece of the table. It’s unclear, however, whether this tradition began in 1621. The Pilgrims cooked up a selection of fowl – which may have included turkey, but could just as easily been duck and goose – while the Wampanoag killed a number of deer, meaning venison was on the menu. They might have had seafood, too, including eels, clams, mussels and lobster. Yes, William Bradford mentioned a “great store of wild Turkies” in the region, but the bird did not become a staple of the Thanksgiving meal until the 19th century. The first Thanksgiving may have happened earlier than 1621 While the 1621 feast became the foundation for the Thanksgiving holiday, perhaps Americans should celebrate a different year. Other acts of thanksgiving, based in the tradition of Christian harvest festivals, took place earlier in the short-lived Popham Colony in Maine and Jamestown in Virginia, both founded in 1607. Two years before the Pilgrims and Wampanoag, the Berkeley Hundred settlement, also in Virginia, held a celebration and decreed that the same day should be “perpetually kept holy as a day of thanksgiving to Almighty God”. The true first Thanksgiving, however, was not English, but Spanish. On 8 September 1565, in what is now St Augustine, Florida, hundreds of Spaniards held a religious ceremony and shared a meal with the local people to mark their safe arrival. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/3C5BDJ6-54ff763-e1764176698213.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A painting depicts a large crowd of men kneeling on the ground, holding up spears. In front of them, a priest stands in cream and yellow robes and holds a cross" title="A painting depicts Spanish settlers arriving in what is now the city of St Augustine, Florida, in 1565. Their meal with the local indigenous population has been described as the first true Thanksgiving (Image by Alamy)" /> Americans eat around 46 million turkeys every year A major reason why turkey became the meat of choice for Thanksgiving is that the birds are both abundant and large (meaning a lot of meat), and it’s a good thing, too. There’s a reason the holiday is also referred to as Turkey Day. With apologies to the non-meat eaters out there, it is estimated that around 46 million birds are killed for the holiday every year in the US alone, according to the Department of Agriculture. That’s one turkey for every seven or eight Americans. The fastest time to carve a turkey is under four minutes Without wanting to dismay all the Americans who take immense pride in serving up the meal every Thanksgiving, the Guinness World Record for the fastest time to carve a turkey is currently held by a British person. The UK does eat its fair share of turkeys at Christmas, after all. In 2009, Paul Kelly, a turkey farmer in Essex, managed the feat in just three minutes and 19.47 seconds. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/4GettyImages-530209391-de2c182-e1764176657592.jpg" width="1500" height="1002" alt="An illustration of a colourful turkey. It has a red and blue spotted head, with yellow and dark orange feathers across it's front, and blue wings, with a red and black tail" title="A mid-19th century illustration of a turkey. An apocryphal quote attributed to Founding Father Alexander Hamilton states that no “citizen of the United States should refrain from turkey on Thanksgiving Day” (Image by Getty Images)" /> The author of Mary Had a Little Lamb is known as the ‘Mother of Thanksgiving’ Sarah Josepha Hale was a writer, the first American woman to be editor of a magazine and, in 1830, she published the nursery rhyme, Mary Had a Little Lamb (originally titled Mary's Lamb). One of her biggest passions, though, would always be Thanksgiving. Born in 1788 in New England, she grew up with the local celebrations and customs that took place every year, and wanted Thanksgiving to become a national holiday. For years, she embarked on this campaign, writing editorials for her magazine, Godey’s Lady’s Book, which had a peak circulation of 150,000, as well as countless letters to presidents asking for their help. Finally getting somewhere with Abraham Lincoln, she is now heralded as the ‘Mother of Thanksgiving’. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/6GettyImages-3245390-8ee41b9-e1764176761138.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A black and white illustration of a woman sitting in a high backed chair. She is wearing a dark dress with a white lace collar and has ringlets in her hair" title="Sarah Josepha Hale is best known as the ‘Mother of Thanksgiving’ – and for writing a much-loved nursery rhyme (Image by Getty Images)" /> In 1705, a town postponed Thanksgiving because of pumpkin pie Until Sarah Josepha Hale’s campaign, it was up to each town and state to determine how to mark Thanksgiving, with most of the events taking place only in the US northeast. For the people of Colchester, Connecticut, the celebrations must include pumpkin pie. The dessert had become a symbol of the bounty of the New World. In 1705, however, they faced a problem: bad weather prevented supplies from reaching them, including the molasses that they needed to make their pies. Rather than have a Thanksgiving without them, the townsfolk elected to postpone the festivities for a week until the molasses could be delivered. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/7GettyImages-509616436-453ca45-e1764177624580.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A photograph of a bright orange pumpkin pie with small dollops of cream on the top of each slice" title="Can you really have Thanksgiving without pumpkin pie? Well, one town in Connecticut decided to postpone their festivities when they were unable to source the correct ingredients in 1705 (Image by Getty Images)" /> Thomas Jefferson was opposed to Thanksgiving (sort of) In 1789, George Washington issued a presidential proclamation naming Thursday 26 November as a “day of public thanksgiving and prayer”. This did not make the holiday official, as each president had to issue their own proclamations every year. While John Adams followed Washington’s example, the third president, Thomas Jefferson, did not. He did not oppose families coming together for a nice meal – in fact, he encouraged it as governor of Virgina – but he felt that the religious significance of Thanksgiving meant the president could not endorse it. Otherwise, he would undermine the separation of church and state as established by the first amendment of the Constitution, which he had helped get written. Benjamin Franklin preferred turkey to bald eagles The bald eagle has been a national emblem since being chosen to adorn the Great Seal of the United States in 1782. However, the decision did not meet the approval of the great polymath and Founding Father, Benjamin Franklin. He thought the bald eagle had “bad moral character”, “generally poor”, “often very lousy” and a “rank coward”, as he wrote in a letter to his daughter. The turkey, on the other hand, was a “much more respectable bird and withal a true, original native of America,” in his opinion. Read more | Benjamin Franklin's greatest inventions Franklin was effusive in his praise, describing the turkey as “though a little vain & silly, a Bird of Courage, and would not hesitate to attack a Grenadier of the British Guards who should presume to invade his Farm Yard with a red Coat on.” The cornucopia has ancient origins A horn-shaped basket overflowing with the fruits of the harvest, the cornucopia is a symbol of abundance. As such, it has come to be associated with Thanksgiving and is a common feature of the decorations. The origins of the horn of plenty have nothing to do with the Pilgrims or Wampanoag in 1621, or with Sarah Josepha Hale and Lincoln: it goes back much further. According to ancient Greek mythology, the god Zeus was raised by Amalthea, either an enchanted goat or a water nymph with an enchanted goat. Either way, one day the baby deity broke off one of the horns and it began pouring forth fruits, seeds and nuts. To the Romans, however, Hercules created the horn by snapping it off a river god. Thanksgiving became a national holiday during the American Civil War Sarah Josepha Hale tried for years to get Thanksgiving recognised as a national holiday, but it was with the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861 that the circumstances finally came together. In 1863, she wrote to President Abraham Lincoln arguing that Thanksgiving could heal the divided and hurting country, and he agreed. Less than a week later, he issued a proclamation declaring a holiday on the last Thursday of November – and so Thanksgiving has been celebrated ever since, with a few exceptions. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/11GettyImages-515449646-0a00406-e1764176933734.jpg" width="1501" height="1002" alt="a black and white photograph of a large group of soldiers standing around a tall man in a long coat and top hat. Behind them is a series of large tents" title="Abraham Lincoln meets Union troops near Sharpsburg, Maryland, in October 1862. A year later, the Civil War president issued a proclamation declaring Thanksgiving to be a national holiday (Image by Getty Images)" /> A small Pacific island has celebrated Thanksgiving since the 1800s Thanksgiving is not celebrated only in the US: Canada marks it in October, while festivities can be seen in countries around the world. A contender for the most unlikely place has to be Norfolk Island, a tiny Australian territory in the Pacific Ocean home to just over 2,000 people. Yes, Thanksgiving comes on a Wednesday, not Thursday, and there are a lot of local dishes alongside the pumpkin pie, but the holiday is firmly rooted in American traditions. It began in the 1800s when American sailors and whalers made regular stops there. One American, Isaac Robinson, settled on Norfolk Island and made a big deal of celebrating Thanksgiving. After he died, the islanders just kept it going. The inaugural Turkey Trot had only six runners Every year on or around Thanksgiving, around a million people put on their running shoes – and maybe a turkey costume – and take part in their local Turkey Trot, one of many races held all over the US. If nothing else, the run will help counter all the calories about to be consumed. The Turkey Trot began in Buffalo, New York, in 1896, on a much smaller scale. Just six runners started the five-mile course, with four finishing. One pulled out after two miles, while another had to stop when his “late breakfast refused to keep in its proper place”. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/13GettyImages-1444263993-f9f153a-e1764176982360.jpg" width="1500" height="1002" alt="A photograph of several people running along a road, each with a number pinned to their front. In the front of the image is a man running dressed as a turkey" title="Thousands of Americans attempt to offset their Thanksgiving calorie intake by taking part in a Turkey Trot – such as this annual event in Dana Point, California, photographed in 2022 (Image by Getty Images)" /> The first Macy’s Parade featured live animals, not balloons Another constant of Thanksgiving television is the Macy’s Parade. Best known today for the storeys-high balloons in the shapes of beloved characters, when the department store first planned a parade through the streets of New York in 1924, the main attraction was a bit livelier – literally. They borrowed animals from Central Park Zoo, including elephants, tigers, bears, camels and monkeys. Some 10,000 people attended the Macy’s Christmas Parade, so-called as it launched shopping season for Christmas, preferably at Macy’s at Herald Square, rather than celebrated Thanksgiving. Read more | The history of Christmas, plus 10 festive facts you might not know Snoopy has the most appearances in the Macy’s Parade The famous Macy’s Parade balloons made their debut in 1927, with the honour of the first character going to Felix the Cat. It is a dog, however, who has been flown through the streets of Manhattan on Thanksgiving more than any other. Since 1968, Snoopy, Charlie Brown’s loyal companion from the beloved Peanuts comics by Charles M Schulz, has clocked up more than 40 appearances with eight different balloons. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/152DB0047-3e97b86-e1764177046383.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A photograph of a large balloon depicting Snoopy the dog. He is all white with black nose and ears, and has a yellow bird on his head" title="Snoopy has long been a fixture of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade, notching up more than 40 appearances. This particular incarnation of the beagle, photographed in 2013, featured his bird friend Woodstock perched on his head (Image by Alamy)" /> Calvin Coolidge was sent a raccoon for his Thanksgiving meal In 1926, President Calvin Coolidge received an unusual present from one of his supporters: a live raccoon, along with a note suggesting that it would make a delicious Thanksgiving meal. Rather than send the animal to the oven, though, Coolidge decided to keep it as a pet. Named Rebecca, she had free rein of the White House and its grounds, and at the end of his presidency Coolidge and his wife, Grace, sent the raccoon into retirement at a zoo in Washington, DC. Read more | 10 famous people in history and their bizarre pets <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/16FFWH1F-8ddae15-e1764177100383.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A black and white photograph of a woman in a dress and large hat, holding a raccoon in her arms" title="President Calvin Coolidge’s wife, Grace, seen with the couple’s pet raccoon in 1927. The procyonid – which was given the name Rebecca – was originally intended to have been eaten as part of Thanksgiving dinner (Image by Alamy)" /> The Detroit Lions always play Thanksgiving football American football is as much a part of Thanksgiving as turkey, with millions tuning in to the blockbuster matches that afternoon. It’s a big day for the sport, but especially for fans of the Detroit Lions since they play every year. This custom goes back to 1934. When radio executive George Richards bought an Ohio-based team and moved them to Detroit, Michigan, he had the idea to drum up excitement by putting on a game on Thanksgiving, when everyone was off work. It was inspired: the game between the Lions and the champion Chicago Bears sold out, and became an instant annual tradition. In 1966, the Dallas Cowboys got in on the act and now they have their own game too. There were two Thanksgivings in 1939, 1940 and 1941 President Franklin D Roosevelt made a bold decision in 1939 to go against precedent and move Thanksgiving up a week. The issue was that the traditional date for the holiday fell on the last day of November that year, leading retailers to warn FDR about the economic damage a late Thanksgiving would have on Christmas shopping. Not everyone was happy with the date change, dubbed ‘Franksgiving’, with Time magazine even comparing FDR to Adolf Hitler. With many states ignoring it and celebrating on the usual day, the US had two Thanksgivings. Read more | “We analysed Hitler’s DNA – and what we discovered made us gasp” Despite the criticism, the president doubled down and did the same thing the following year. Congress got involved in late 1941, passing a resolution to set the date for Thanksgiving once and for all – but not before that year's festivities had already been impacted too. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/18GettyImages-535083952-ee1697d-e1764177144853.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A black and white photograph of a smiling couple sitting next to each other at a dining table. The man is carving a turkey while the woman looks on" title="Franklin D Roosevelt carves a turkey during his first Thanksgiving as president, 1933. Six years later, his decision to move the date of the holiday would spark national controversy (Image by Getty Images)" /> The day after Thanksgiving is the busiest day of the year for plumbers Perhaps this should not be all that surprising: with large groups gathering under a single roof to eat a huge meal, clogging up the kitchen drainage and – ahem – bathroom pipes, the pressure on America’s plumbing peaks at Thanksgiving. The day after the celebrations, therefore, proves to be an extremely busy time for plumbers. One national company claims they see a 50 per cent increase in calls from the average Friday. While everyone else is calling it ‘Black Friday’, the plumbers of America have come to refer to it as ‘Brown Friday’. Presidents have the power to pardon turkeys Every Thanksgiving, the president performs one of their stranger duties: the pardon of one or two turkeys. Freed from the dinner table, they are sent for a long life on a farm or petting zoo (or, in some cases, Disneyland). The custom officially began with George HW Bush in 1989, although its roots go back further. When a turkey was sent to the White House for the Thanksgiving meal, JFK, Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter all chose to let them live. Ronald Reagan did the same, although he went so far as to use the word “pardon”. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/19-WIKIPresidentRonaldReaganreceivesthe40thWhiteHouseThanksgivingTurkey1987-68d3e64-e1764177226575.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A group of people stand around a white turkey as it tries to take flight" title="Ronald Reagan pardons Charlie the turkey in 1987. As well as having to deal with a very flappy bird, the president also had to field questions from the press regarding the Iran-Contra affair" /> The same day also marks the National Day of Mourning For many Americans, Thanksgiving is not a cause for celebration, but a stark reminder of the oppression of the Native American population. The image of the first Thanksgiving – where European settler and indigenous people sat side-by-side in peace – is a myth that glosses over the centuries of brutality and persecution that followed. The last Thursday in November, therefore, is a time of protest. It began in 1970 when Wamsutta Frank James, an elder of the Aquinnah Wampanoag, was refused the chance to give a speech he had written for the 350th anniversary of the arrival of the Mayflower, which spoke of the painful legacy of colonisation and governmental subjugation. Instead, he led a group of protesters in Plymouth and declared the first National Day of Mourning. Today, the United American Indians of New England (UAINE) organise a march and rally to honour their ancestors and educate the public about why Thanksgiving should be about more than giving thanks.
Why is the shopping day after Thanksgiving called ‘Black Friday’?
On the shopping day known as 'Black Friday', millions descend on the shops to spy out the best bargains. How did the day get its name?
Black Friday has been adopted as the unofficial opening to the Christmas shopping period. It all began in the United States as a day of ‘doorbuster’ sales the day after Thanksgiving but increasingly, Britain is getting into the swing of things – sometimes literally, as brawls and all-out fights are quite common among scrapping shoppers. Retailers love the day of discounts as billions are spent within a matter of hours, but there is one organisation for whom the day brings nothing but despair: the police. Read more | A brief history of shopping In 1966, the Philadelphia Police Department grew so frustrated by the congested streets, traffic jams and regular tussles that, it's believed, they coined the name ‘Black Friday’ in the hope of dissuading people from heading to the shops. It completely failed, but the name stuck. Understandably, retailers weren’t keen on the name – it had strong associations with the Great Depression of the 1930s, signalled by Black Thursday – so they tried to reinvent the image of the Black Friday frenzy. The ‘black’, it was argued, referred to the ledgers used by retailers. For the majority of the year, shops would be ‘in the red’ (losing money) but Black Friday indicated the moment when most retailers would start making a profit, or going ‘in the black’. So that is how Black Friday got its name. There is no evidence to the regularly espoused theory that it went back to a 19th century tradition when slave owners would sell their weak or elderly slaves at low prices. Fortunately, that story is purely apocryphal. This article was taken from BBC History Revealed magazine
A brief history of turkeys, plus why we eat a turkey dinner at Christmas
How did turkeys come to Britain and when did we first start eating them? As 10 million homes across Britain prepare to tuck into one over the festive period, Julian Humphrys looks at the history of the bird that will never vote for Christmas
Where do turkeys come from? They’re native to the Americas. They got the name because when Europeans first came across them they incorrectly thought they were a form of African guinea fowl which, because they were imported into Europe from Turkey, were commonly known as turkey fowl. How did turkeys come to Britain? Britain probably obtained its first turkeys from the Spanish, who had brought the birds back to Europe after encountering them in the Aztec empire. However it’s possible that they were introduced by William Strickland, a Yorkshire merchant and MP who travelled to the New World in the 16th century. He certainly seems to have wanted to promote a link with the bird, as the family coat of arms, which was granted in about 1550, has a turkey as a crest. Read more | 6 Christmas party tips from the past When did Brits start eating them? Henry VIII is the first known English king to have eaten turkey. At that time the bird was seen as something of an exotic delicacy and would have been just one of a variety of fowl to be placed before the hungry monarch. One of the reasons for turkey’s appeal was that it was not only large enough to make a fine display on the table but also had tastier and less stringy flesh than that other exotic royal favourite, the peacock. For centuries the turkey was the preserve of the well-to-do and middle classes and it was only after the Second World War, when it became cheaper to rear, that the turkey became the population’s Christmas bird of choice. They're also the food of choice for Thanksgiving dinners in the USA. What was eaten before turkey? If a working-class family in the 19th century ate a bird, it was more likely to have been a goose, and Christmas ‘goose clubs’ were established to help them save up for it. Note how the poverty-stricken Swans, peacocks and boars’ heads graced aristocrats’ tables; more modest households made do with whatever seasonal fare they could find – chicken or goose, perhaps, or the odd pigeon. Bob Cratchit in Dickens’s A Christmas Carol scrapes enough money together to buy a goose before the reformed Scrooge presents his family with a massive turkey. Why do we eat a turkey dinner at Christmas? Geese and turkeys were, and still are, extensively reared in East Anglia. In the 18th century, before the introduction of the railways, thousands were walked to London in large flocks along what is now the A12. Norfolk farmers would dip turkeys’ feet in tar and sand to make ‘wellies’ for the walk to London, which could take up to two months. Like so many traditions, roasted turkey became synonymous with Christmas when immortalised by Charles Dickens. At the end of the classic A Christmas Carol, the humbled Scrooge sends a boy to buy the biggest turkey in the shop. But it wasn’t until the 20th century that Hollywood movies popularised the dish in the UK, and prices fell thanks to new farming methods. Read more of our articles about the history of Christmas.
Thanksgiving is a holiday about food – but, argues Professor Rachel B Herrmann, it is more specifically a holiday about food’s absence. From starvation to cannibalism, here she charts the history of Thanksgiving in America and considers the significance of the nation’s beloved turkey dinners and cranberry sauce…
In September 1620, after panicking about leaking ships and provisioning problems that had necessitated stops in Southampton, Dartmouth and Plymouth, the Pilgrims bid a final farewell to England. By November they had become grave-robbers. William Bradford, the future governor of the English colony of Plymouth on the east coast of North America, wrote one of the few surviving accounts of the voyage and life in present-day Massachusetts. It was published in the mid-19th century. Bradford was part of a group of families who believed that the Anglican Church could only be reformed from abroad, and had lived for over a decade in Leiden, Netherlands, before their voyage on the Mayflower to North America. Bradford described colonists’ anxieties before departure: the people worried that in this new situation, “they should be liable to famine and nakedness and the want, in a manner, of all things.” Their worries were coloured by history. The first permanent English colony in North America – in Jamestown, Virginia – had experienced a Starving Time from 1609–10, and as accusations and denials swirled in the early 1620s, it became clear that some Starving Time colonists had cannibalised Native Americans, and eaten each other. Read more | 7 facts you might not know about the history of Thanksgiving Perhaps these fears were why, during their first few weeks in the region that has come to be known as New England, colonists stole whatever edible items they could find. Historian Christopher Heaney explains that upon arrival in New England, English colonists found mounds of sand filled with mats, pots and Wampanoag weaponry, but said that they stopped digging once they realised that they had unearthed a Native American grave. This admission was a half-truth, because in fact the colonists kept digging once they discovered that some of the graves were filled with maize. For this bounty of “Indian baskets filled with corn”, Bradford thanked the“special providence of God”. The Christians’ theft of this “seed to plant them corn the next year” meant they would be able to avoid starvation. The colonists needed all the help they could get. Having arrived too late to plant crops, cut down trees and build sufficient housing, they spent the winter on board the Mayflower. Several weeks after they anchored, Bradford’s wife, Dorothy, “fell overboard” and drowned. Most historians think that she took her own life rather than live to face the rigors of the future. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2018/11/GettyImages-71081921-85c6c78-e1669200340788.jpg" width="620" height="414" alt="'Mayflower in Plymouth Harbor' (1882), oil painting by William Halsall of the ship that in December 1620 brought Pilgrims from Plymouth, England, to New England, where they established the Massachusetts colony, 1882. (Photo by Stock Montage/Getty Images)" title="Mayflower In Plymouth Harbor" /> About half of the 102 colonists died. The ensuing years remained difficult. In 1623, for example, one unfortunate fellow who set out to gather shellfish during the cold months was “so weak” that “he stuck fast in the mud and was found dead in the place”. Did some Native Americans offer aid to the first English pilgrims? Important assistance finally arrived in March 1621 in the form of Native American aid. Colonists and Native Americans had seen each other at various points throughout the winter – and in some cases even exchanged shots – but had avoided closer contact up until this point. Bradford explained that “about the 16th of March, a certain Indian came boldly amongst them and spoke to them in broken English”. This man, Samoset, had met transient English arrivals to North American – fishermen – from “whom he had got his language”. He told them about a Patuxet man named Tisquantum (better known as Squanto), who had been kidnapped by an earlier English colonist and sold into slavery in Spain, and who spoke a better level of English. Tisquantum had escaped to England and made his way back to North America where, finding that the rest of the Patuxets had died from disease, he sought the protection of more powerful men. Samoset explained that the two of them were keen to make an introduction between the colonists and “their great Sachem”, or leader, named Massasoit. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2018/11/GettyImages-145891693-b5a97ed-e1669200304596.jpg" width="620" height="412" alt="Engraving depicts Native American Samoset (1590 - 1653), from the Wompanoag tribe, as he visits the Pilgrims in Plymouth Colony, Massachusetts, March 1621. Samoset, the first native to meet the colonists, was able to speak some English and famously introduced them to Squanto, who knew more English and was able to provide much needed assistance to them. (Photo by Stock Montage/Getty Images)" title="Samoset Meets The Pilgrims" /> Thus in March 1621, the English signed a treaty with Massasoit, sachem of the Pokanoket Wampanoags. The two groups agreed to mutually aid each other, setting the English on a crash course for conflict with Massasoit’s rivals, the Narragansetts, and Massachusetts. This was a region in which Native Americans outmanoeuvred the English; the weakened colonists were newcomers to this confusing new world of native geopolitics. What was eaten at the first ‘Thanksgiving’? It was with Wampanoag help that colonists raised enough corn to feed themselves in 1621, and finally, to harvest their first crops. Tisquantum had spent a planting season showing the Pilgrims how to use fish to fertilise their cornfields, though it is possible that he learned this strategy in England. In late 1621 the Pilgrims gathered what Bradford described as “a small harvest” of maize. They laid a table with salted and smoked cod and bass, wild turkeys, and perhaps some venison. Bradford did not describe this as a thanksgiving meal, though one of his contemporaries, Edward Winslow, did. At this possible ‘thanksgiving’, then, the Pilgrims discharged their guns (as was common at the time) to announce their celebration. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2018/11/GettyImages-566417501-4f54f10-e1669200271197.jpg" width="619" height="413" alt="The First Thanksgiving in 1621, after a painting by Jean Leon Gerome; screen print, 1932. (Photo by GraphicaArtis/Getty Images)" title="The First Thanksgiving in 1621, after a painting by Jean Leon Gerome; screen print, 1932. (Photo by GraphicaArtis/Getty Images)" /> The gunshots drew the attention of Massasoit, who arrived with several dozen others. Seeing the Pilgrims’ sparse table, the native men disappeared and returned with five freshly killed deer. Historian Michael LaCombe has convincingly argued that the venison undermined Governor William Bradford’s authority, because Massasoit gave the meat to each of the colony’s leading members, rather than to Bradford himself, for redistribution; the act signified Indians’ control of the country’s edible resources and their propensity for ignoring Bradford’s rule. With native assistance, the colony began to thrive. By 1630, there were 1,500 English colonists in Plymouth. That year John Winthrop led what is known as the Great Migration to North America, and by 1640 there were 14,000 English in Massachusetts. As Native Americans learned that the colonists intended not only to stay, but also to take indigenous land, conflicts became more and more common. The English waged war against the Pequots between 1636 and 1637/38, killing and enslaving some 700 men, women and children. Several decades later, in 1675, King Philip’s War broke out as English colonists pressed for more land. Massasoit’s son, Philip (alias Metacom or Metacomet), gathered Wampanoags, Nipmucks, Podunks, Narragansetts and Nashaways to fight the English alongside their Pequot and Mohegan allies. In the face of permanent English colonisation, old native enemies became allies. They would fight the colonists in what has been called the deadliest war in American history, in proportion to population. Read more | Why does the United States of America celebrate Independence Day on 4 July? A century later, English colonists blamed Great Britain for privileging native interests over those of colonists. In the 1776 Declaration of Independence – one of the key documents that sparked the Revolutionary War between Great Britain and its mainland British colonies – colonists accused King George III of allowing “the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions” to attack “the inhabitants of our frontiers”. In reality, these proto-Americans had spent more than a century crossing established colonial boundaries to take native territory that did not belong to them. The War for Independence ended with the American defeat of Great Britain and its Native American allies, and the swift seisure of more indigenous territory. The question of how to divide so much land between a growing slave interest and northerners (who disliked slavery because it gave the south greater representation in the House of Representatives) ultimately sparked the American Civil War (1861–5). <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2018/11/GettyImages-113494983-de84195-e1669200239979.jpg" width="620" height="412" alt="John Trumbull's painting of the signatories of the Declaration of Independence, 4 July, 1776. (Image by Bettmann/Getty Images)(Photo by Universal History Archive/Getty Images)" title="John Trumbull's painting of the signatories of the Declaration of Independence, 4 July, 1776. (Image by Bettmann/Getty Images)(Photo by Universal History Archive/Getty Images)" /> When did Thanksgiving become a national holiday? Which brings us back to Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving did not become a national holiday until 1863, when novelist and magazine editor Sarah Josepha Hale succeeded in convincing Abraham Lincoln to make Thanksgiving a national holiday on the last Thursday in November – after nearly 20 years spent advocating for the cause. She had started her campaign in the 1840s, when she observed a nation whose disagreement about slavery was fracturing it into pieces; she hoped that a national day of celebration would help to prevent the Civil War. She was up against no small amount of resistance from the southern states, as well as inconsistencies in the way thanksgiving was celebrated. Read more | American history myths: 7 things people get wrong Since the colonial period, the meaning of thanksgiving days has varied quite a lot. Thanksgiving events occurred throughout the year and could involve religious days of fasting as well as feast celebrations to mark significant events. In 1777, the Continental Congress proclaimed a day of thanksgiving for all 13 states in celebration of American soldiers’ success against the British at Saratoga. By contrast, the Connecticut private Joseph Plumb Martin, who wrote a retrospective narrative of the war, recalled a thanksgiving meal in which soldiers were in such dire straights that their feast consisted of rice and a tablespoon of vinegar (he may have exaggerated somewhat, because his personal bugbear at the time of publication was the fact that so many soldiers had yet to receive their war pensions). The meaning and significance of the holiday continued to change. In her book on the history of Thanksgiving, Diana Carter Applebaum writes that during the 1850s Pennsylvanians debated whether the governor should make the holiday a statewide one. Matthew Dennis observes that by this point every northern state, and several southern, Midwestern and far western states (including Arkansas, California, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Wisconsin) had officially celebrated Thanksgiving, at least occasionally. Read more | The history of turkeys Sarah Josepha Hale thought that an official date would give the states more in common with each other than they had differences. In 1854, as editor of Godey’s Lady’s Book, she wrote:“The last Thursday in Novemberhas been selected as the day best suited to the general convenience, when the people from Maine to Mexico, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, might sit down together, as it were, and enjoy in national union their feast of gladness.” In the south, however, slaveholders viewed the holiday as an opportunity for Yankee preachers to make sermons speaking out against slavery, and in their eyes to push the country closer to war. In 1853, governor Joseph Johnson of Virginia refused to declare Thanksgiving a holiday, and in 1859, governor Stewart of Missouri proclaimed 8 December instead of 24 November a day of Thanksgiving in a deliberate act of defiance. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2018/11/GettyImages-525363577-886f325-e1669200203585.jpg" width="620" height="412" alt="Since the colonial period, the meaning of thanksgiving days has varied quite a lot. In this 1940s illustration, a husband and wife pull a wishbone of a turkey for good luck at Thanksgiving dinner. (Photo by GraphicaArtis/Getty Images)" title="Since the colonial period, the meaning of thanksgiving days has varied quite a lot. In this 1940s illustration, a husband and wife pull a wishbone of a turkey for good luck at Thanksgiving dinner. (Photo by GraphicaArtis/Getty Images)" /> Despite Hale’s efforts, war broke out, and Lincoln’s decision to make the holiday a national one was as much an effort to support the north’s cause as it was to invent a tradition that lent stability to the nation’s history. Thanksgiving did not prevent the Civil War, but it was used to help bolster the Union’s cause – partially through food. Mentions of turkey, sweet potatoes, pumpkin pie and cranberry sauce appear in association with Thanksgiving in 1860s editions of Godey’s Lady’s Book. Why do Americans traditionally eat turkey on Thanksgiving? That the turkey features so prominently has a bit to do with Benjamin Franklin, 18th-century printer, statesman, and one of America’s first autobiographers. Around the time of the War for Independence, Franklin was keen on the turkey for several reasons: although it’s not true that he pushed to make the turkey rather than the bald eagle the national bird of the new United States, he did think that the turkey was the superior bird. The turkey was important because it was indigenous to North America. Turkeys, according to Franklin, cared about their appearance, and were likelier “to attack a Grenadier of the British Guards who should presume to invade his Farm Yard with a red Coat on”. Ordinary readers would have grasped the significance of Franklin’s symbolism immediately. Having waged a war against Great Britain – and won it – Americans could be proud of the bird’s imagined bravery in the face of British attack. At the end of the 18th century, Benjamin Franklin used the turkey to highlight Americans’ military might against the British; in the mid-19th century, the turkey might have symbolised the Union’s prowess over a starving South. Read more | Biscuit tins, rolling pins and pastry jiggers: a brief history of baking utensils After the Civil War, Thanksgiving remained a contested holiday. It was only in 1865 that Sarah Josepha Hale linked Thanksgiving to a peaceful meal between Pilgrims and Native Americans. On the one hand, this myth was popular enough to appear in school textbooks by 1870. On the other hand, Texan governor Oran Milo Roberts refused to have a Thanksgiving Day at all from 1879 to 1883, calling it “a damned Yankee institution”. For the most part the southern states waited until the end of Reconstruction [the 1865–77 reconstructive period that followed the American Civil War] to celebrate Thanksgiving. White southerners’ celebrations coincided with the appearance of popular magazine depictions in the 1870s and 1880s of African-Americans either serving Thanksgiving dinner to white families, sitting down to a paltry Thanksgiving meal, or even stealing turkeys. Today, a majority of Americans celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday, but regional food preferences remain; a few years ago, The New York Times produced a map of the most-Googled Thanksgiving recipes by state. It concluded that most Americans sit down to a roast turkey, though more and more people are choosing to spatchcock (or butterfly) the bird to reduce cooking time and maximise crispiness, which results in a tastier but less visually striking centrepiece. Many will opt to skip brining or go for a dry brine, as wet-brining has fallen from favour. Vegetarians and vegans may enjoy a tofurkey, and gluttons might buy or attempt to cook a ‘turducken’ (a chicken stuffed inside of a duck, all stuffed inside of a turkey, with layers of sausage between each bird). Stuffing is another staple (though it will be called ‘stuffing’ in some places and ‘dressing’ in others), and nowhere will it be served in moulds or muffin tins as it is in Britain. Cranberry sauce is a divisive but ever-present chutney-like condiment, either slipped straight from a can onto a plate (if no one likes it), or made fresh with cranberries, lots of sugar, oranges (rinds and all), walnuts and raisins. Sweet potatoes are often topped with marshmallows, but some families prefer mashed potatoes. You can also expect to see green bean casserole with fried onions, soft dinner rolls, biscuits and cornbread. And pie; lots of pie: pumpkin, pecan, key lime, lemon meringue, and apple. Thanksgiving, then, is an unmistakably delicious holiday. But for many historians, it is also a holiday of ambivalence that recalls both American and British history. Celebrating the day as one of European triumph or even peacefulness is an act that erases centuries of Native American deaths at non-native hands. The Pilgrims arrived in North America so afraid of starvation that they turned to grave-robbing. Those men and women depended on Wampanoags to survive. Wampanoag hospitality, in turn, set colonists on a crash course that facilitated the land-grabs of English colonists in the 1630s, 1670s, 1780s and beyond; several centuries of warfare against Native Americans; and the territorial expansion of slavery that caused the Civil War. In the wake of that conflict, it was only a misremembered history of 17th-century self-sufficient Englishmen that helped heal the country. Thanksgiving is a holiday about food. But it is a holiday about food’s absence, and the regional battles over Thanksgiving celebrations that symbolise a larger conflict over the course of nations and peoples. Rachel B Herrmann is assistant professor in modern American history at Cardiff University. She specialises in colonial, Revolutionary and Atlantic history, with particular focus on food and hunger in the Atlantic World. To find out more, visit www.rachelbherrmann.com or follow her on Twitter @Raherrmann
Far from being a bold project to create a nation, early settlers to the US wanted nothing more than to survive – and to recreate England, according to Malcolm Gaskill...
Just before dawn on 29 February 1704, the Reverend John Williams was awoken by the sound of splintering wood and smashing glass. He was barely out of bed when 20 Native American warriors with painted faces and tomahawks appeared in his house. Williams aimed his pistol at the leading intruder, but it misfired and he was apprehended. The raid, a joint Franco-Native Indian operation, left 56 residents of Deerfield, a small township in north-western Massachusetts, dead in the snow. Among them were two of Williams’s eight children. Five of the others (one was away at school), together with Williams and his wife, were gathered into a group of more than 100 people and marched off into the freezing wastes, heading for Canada. Fear and privation, courage and fortitude framed lives and shaped identity on the New England frontier. Queen Anne’s War, a European conflict fought between France and England and transposed to North America, had been raging since 1702; it had been preceded by King William’s War in the 1690s and, 20 years earlier, Metacom’s War, which had threatened to wipe New England off the map. Captives, taken by the Native Americans to be enslaved or ransomed, survived almost unbelievable ordeals. John Williams’s wife was killed (for stumbling on the march), but he and his children were finally freed in November 1706 – though his 10-year-old daughter Eunice was forced to remain as the surrogate child of a Mohawk family. The following year, Williams published a book, The Redeemed Captive, one of numerous such accounts that made captivity a familiar trope in colonial history. Your guide to Alexander Hamilton, plus 6 fascinating facts about the founding father This story, and others like it, is well known. But we might ask a question that seems obvious but too often goes unasked: who were these frontiers folk, and what on Earth were they were doing there? How was their identity shaped and defined? At one level, the answer is simple: they were English migrants, and the children and grandchildren of English migrants. Yet theirs is an amazing story. Some 350,000 English people emigrated in the 17th century, making the most lasting contribution to white culture in North America before 1700. It was no easy transition. Behind every departure lay an extraordinary tale of logistical difficulty and emotional upheaval, often ending in homesickness and hardship or premature death. Many arrived in Massachusetts in the 1630s, part of the so-called ‘great migration’, among them John Williams’s father, aged six, whose family had momentously decided to forsake Norwich for an uncertain existence outside Boston. What did people expect to gain from their sacrifice? Most were fleeing political, religious and economic problems. Many felt England had hit the skids. After the American Revolutionary War (1775–83), the Old World was painted as a redundant ancien régime where corrupt kings, bishops and aristocrats denied honest labourers land and rights. If one accepts this view, it’s natural to assume that migrants craved transformation. In 1782 a French settler defined the ‘American’ as one who “leaving behind all his ancient prejudices and manners, receives new ones from the new mode of life he has embraced”. ‘Exceptionalism’ – the sense that America is special – has coloured modern memory, too. The 20th-century historian Daniel Boorstin encouraged the notion that, from the start, colonisation forged a unique civilisation. Colonists had turned their backs on England, a place distant in space and time that, in histories of the US at least, provided at best a sketchy backstory of little relevance and less interest. But this is a story that needs to be told forwards from the past, not backwards from the present – and from England, then the world’s most powerful country, looking towards a colonial America as yet unborn. Emigrants did not, for the most part, want to reinvent themselves: they were desperate to stay the same, and merely craved a better environment in which to defend fortune and freedom. American presidents: 9 things you (probably) didn’t know Many, of course, never intended to stay; many who did ended up returning home anyway. Expectations were diverse – personal and national, religious and commercial – but all colonists wanted to inspire and revitalise England, or to restore their own sense of themselves as English. Their aims were nostalgic, founded on the hope of recreating a social world that was vanishing, or recovering a better one from the past. Accordingly, the founding generations remained essentially English – indeed, they called themselves ‘the English’ – and they remained tied to memories of the motherland and to their relatives at home. Colonial history, then, is prone to distortions and false perspectives. Puritans dominate the memory of New England, even though covenanted church members were the minority, and New England dominates the memory of 17th-century America even though this was the destination for only 21,000 (6 per cent) of the 350,000. Far more English migrants went to Chesapeake Bay, and most went to the West Indies. A vision of the Pilgrim Fathers disembarking from the Mayflower at Plymouth Rock in 1620 may be more appealing than one of godless tobacco farmers or slave-owning sugar barons. Yet emphasis on the Pilgrims – not least with the annual celebration of the first Thanksgiving – is misleading. They believed they were propelled and preserved by God’s providence: new Israelites seeking Canaan in the wilderness. But they did not resemble the typical English migrant, who was probably an adolescent apprentice on an insalubrious plantation in Virginia or Barbados. And there was nothing divinely inexorable about the progress of colonies or their inhabitants. The English were not natural colonisers. Queen Elizabeth showed little interest – at least, in terms of financial support – despite the efforts of Richard Hakluyt, whose Discourse Concerning Western Planting was written for her in 1584. In that year, the queen granted Sir Walter Ralegh a charter to colonise ‘Virginia’, the idea being not planting per se but rather the creation of a base from which to loot Spanish fleets. However, the experimental Roanoke Colony soon came to a sticky end. Elizabeth’s successor, James VI and I, was similarly non-committal, but peace with Spain removed the need for piratical outposts, while arguments for extracting commodities to reduce imports, and for creating colonial markets to increase exports, became more compelling. Yet royal coffers remained closed. The Virginia Company, formed in 1606, was a consortium dependent on private investment – investment that proved hard to attract and upon which few dividends were paid. Jamestown, the first permanent settlement, became a byword for factional conflict, chaos and high mortality. Promoters spoke of “Earth’s only paradise”, but English paupers preferred to take their chances at home, and speculators looked elsewhere. What happened to the lost colony of Roanoke Island? “It is a matter of great difficulty,” opined the Elizabethan historian William Camden, “by the expenses of a private man to plant a colony in far distant countries.” There was never enough money, in other words – nor enough willing migrants. “We are known too well to the world to love the smoke of our own chimneys so well,” a minister wrote, “that hopes of great advantages are not likely to draw many of us from home.” In contrast to providential or exceptionalist narratives, which somehow make the US seem inevitable, in 1600 the idea that even a single colony would survive seemed far-fetched. There was so much available land, and England had so little – but without workers it had no value. The vexed beginnings of Jamestown taught that colonies needed not just labourers but also skilled tradesmen and political leaders. England’s social order, along with its laws and customs, had to be recreated on the other side of the Atlantic. The question was: how? The problem was compounded by scepticism that occupying foreign territory was even lawful. In the reign of James I, pamphlets appealed to higher ideals and better natures using Roman law, classical history and biblical precept. Land was either empty – vacuum domicilium – or occupied by Native Americans and so ‘hitherto uncultivated’ (hacentus inculta). Either way, English imperialists had the right – indeed a sacred duty – to go forth. Did bees not swarm from the overflowing hive? Had the Romans not saved pagan Britain from savagery? The gospels, good Protestants knew, must be spread throughout the earth before Christ would return. If the land was perfectible as a ‘new’ England, then its peoples might yet be civilised and Christianised. In search of the real Pocahontas The most famous example was Pocahontas, daughter of the Powhatan chief Wahunsonacock, who in 1614 married a tobacco farmer named John Rolfe, and two years later attended the court of James I. She was an exemplar to colonial missionaries, but also a political pawn. Her death, as she prepared to return to Virginia, exacerbated deteriorating Anglo-Native American relations, culminating in the uprising of 1622 in which 347 English colonists perished. Noble aspirations did not die with them – charitable organisations funded missions throughout the 17th century – but now Englishmen felt less inhibited. Indeed, an opportunity for the guilt-free exploitation of native resources may have enhanced America’s appeal to adventurers, even as the Virginia Company fragmented and was taken over by the crown. The Plymouth Pilgrims established a new type of colonial settlement, quite unlike the straggling tobacco farms along the James river: the communitarian godly commonwealth, independent of the Church of England. They also believed that Native Americans could be won for Christ. The migrants led by John Winthrop, a Suffolk gentleman, in the 1630s were not separatists – at least, not openly so – but they did seek to chasten England for losing its spiritual way. This was an ideal famously expressed in a sermon by Winthrop that elevated the Massachusetts Bay Colony as “a city upon a hill” – an aspirational beacon to the Old World. The company seal depicted a near-naked Native American speaking the words: “Come over and help us.” From the start, however, the wilderness got the upper hand – not so much the empty, uncultivated land nor its hostile inhabitants, but the wilderness the English brought with them: their own religious and political differences, and the strains imposed by economic habit. By 1650, Virginia and Massachusetts had become much more like England, but with new gains came old problems: boundary disputes, protests over customary rights, subordination and insubordination, resentment at taxation (without political representation), poverty and crime. The idea of the ‘new American man’ beloved of future generations was totally alien. Far from being dissolved in the melting pot, if anything regional differences between, say, a Londoner and a West Countryman were accentuated. Sometimes they fought. Native Americans were converted, but many more died in the Pequot War of 1637 and in subsequent conflicts. People in New England and old England felt sorry for each other, although the former had better reason to pity the latter once civil war broke out in 1642. Yet even then England managed to export its problems. Not only did hundreds of New Englanders return to fight, but the quarrels were also played out in America. Colonies attempted to appear neutral, but it was obvious that Massachusetts supported parliament and Virginia the king. There were confrontations in New Hampshire, and in 1652 Cromwell sent a fleet to Barbados to remove Lord Willoughby, who had claimed the island for the exiled Charles II. In Maryland, in 1655, the battle of the Severn saw Catholic royalists pitched against Protestant parliamentarians – arguably the last engagement of the Civil War. The 1640s and 1650s brought protests in the name of liberty – appeals to a sense of Englishness raised above crown or parliament through vague yet potent claims to the ‘ancient constitution’. In his determination to subdue subjects abroad, Oliver Cromwell did not depart from the ways of Charles I; nor, later, did Charles II differ much from Cromwell. The ideological differences of the Civil War shifted towards more explicit conflict between colonies and crown – a crown that happened to offend Protestants in its absolutism and Catholicism, but might have been quite different in politics and religion and still caused friction in America. New England’s Puritans celebrated the Glorious Revolution of 1688–89, but the monarchy’s imperialist character was here to stay. William III and II declined to repeal the hated Navigation Acts by which levies were charged on colonial trade, nor did the charter he restored to Massachusetts have the same strident spirit as that which John Winthrop had carried there in 1630. Dissatisfaction magnified feelings dating back to the founding of Jamestown, namely that colonists were entitled to some self-government. Typically, the focus was local interpretation of English law, not independence. Settlers justified this in that they had surrendered home comforts, risked their lives, and alone understood the problems of governance several thousand miles from Westminster. Ironically, their claims, like all claims to the rights of freeborn Englishmen, were conservative in inception yet potentially radical. Nowhere was this attitude stronger than in Boston, whose laws followed Moses, not English statute. There money was illegally minted, regicides were kept from justice, and errant Englishmen – so petitioners complained to Charles II – assumed “the privilege of a free state”. Had these exiled Englishmen, who clung to Englishness in the wilderness and loudly advertised English rights, somehow become ‘Americans’? They didn’t call themselves this, or if they did it was self-deprecating: they meant that cultural starvation had turned them into ‘Indians’. But there was truth in this false modesty. As New England expanded, so more colonists lived far from schools and churches, and became tough survivalists. To Puritan stalwarts in Boston, such people were ‘white Indians’. In the 1650s, a settler in Connecticut, who had been amazed to see natives converted, imagined a Judgment Day on which Native Americans were bathed in glory alongside Englishmen sunk in ‘Indian darkness’. Less sensationally, every colonist of some years’ standing was changed – not into ‘Americans’ as such, but certainly a different kind of English person. New Englanders, at least, acquired a distinct and unsavoury character in old English eyes. In the 1690s, the journalist Ned Ward portrayed them as hypocrites in “puritanical postures”, yet fond of rum and “as subtle as serpents”. By 1700, European America had a population of 300,000, two-fifths of New English descent. The New Englanders mocked by Ned Ward were mostly of the third generation, upon whom puritanism exerted less force than it had on their grandparents. Native Americans had been pushed to the margins of their ancestral lands – banished, diminished. If, as early explorers described, they had lived in a kind of paradise, this was their fall; songs of experience replaced songs of innocence. Robert Beverley, a Virginian planter, admitted in 1705 that Englishmen had taken everything from the Native Americans in exchange for “drunkenness and luxury… which have multiplied their wants, and put them upon desiring a thousand things they never dreamt of before”. As Eden receded, so did Canaan. America never fulfilled the utopian dreams upon which adventures were built, and worldly ideals took over. We know of some English colonists who joined the Native Americans and were assimilated, including Joshua Tift, captured during King Philip’s War and executed as a traitor. Such complete conversions were few compared to the thousands who absorbed something of native America simply by living there. They did, however, prove the possibility of something unimaginable when Englishmen first travelled to save ‘savages’ from Satan. The most striking example of a colonist-turned-Native American was Eunice Williams, the child left in Quebec when her family was freed in 1706. Renamed Waongote, meaning ‘transplanted’, she married a Mohawk and resisted attempts by her father, John Williams, to redeem her. She even forgot how to speak English. All English people who went to America were the transplanted, and over time this signified strength more than dislocation, pride more than unease, a singular loyalty not a divided one. To be an American was to be self-willed, resilient, and defiant – qualities tested in 1776 and not found wanting. Earlier events acquired exceptionalist significance. The contract signed on the Mayflower, an Old World business agreement deferential to law and custom, became a kind of proto-constitution. And Winthrop’s “city upon a hill” lost its reactionary colour to become an emblem of valour and idealism, evoked by US presidents as different as Kennedy, Reagan and Obama. Colonists were recruited from the past as progressive libertarians, even though Winthrop equated democracy with tyranny and defined liberty as freedom to abide by his interpretation of God’s will. It may not matter to millions of Americans that the germ of their brave new world was formed in England by people trying to solve English problems, that their restless innovation grew out of English determination to resist change, not encourage it, nor that ‘manifest destiny’ was a self-justifying illusion concealing a less epic reality: an incoherent, faltering rag-bag of ill-conceived colonial adventures. But it should matter for the history of England because America reflected the nation’s tensions and anxieties in the 17th century, and its very English agonies of transformation. Malcolm Gaskill is professor of early modern history at the University of East Anglia and author of Between Two Worlds: How the English Became Americans (Oxford University Press, 2014). This article was first published in the Christmas 2014 issue of BBC History Magazine