America’s worst kept secret is its treatment of indigenous people.
Note: The terms “Native American” and “indigenous people” are used interchangeably in this article, but the vocabulary that Native Peoples prefer varies depending on the region.
If you asked me to describe the first Thanksgiving that I remember celebrating, my recollection would include paper headdresses, poorly drawn hand turkeys, and the narrative that the first Thanksgiving in history was a shared feast between the Wampanoag tribe and English settlers. There would be no mention of war, bloodshed, or cultural erasure. For most people who grew up in the United States, this is a familiar memory. There might be some merit to keeping Thanksgiving kid-friendly for children (although this does not excuse the blatant and disrespectful cultural appropriation that’s characteristic of most elementary school celebrations of the holiday), but there’s no justification for the failure to combat the incorrect story of Thanksgiving in later years. In high school, we all learn about the genocide of Native Americans during the Trail of Tears, but time restrictions prevent teachers from delving into the topic of indigenous rights in the United States of America with depth.
The Story of Thanksgiving is Fake
To clarify, there was a feast between the Wampanoag tribe and English settlers at Plymouth. However, this wasn’t a friendly interaction. It was a tense, political one. When English settlers first arrived at the continental United States, they starved. About half of them died within the first winter. While they were farmers, the soil and climate in England differed from the soil in the United States. As such, the seeds for crops that they brought with them could not grow on the land that they occupied. Since they were starving, they searched for any food source they could find. They disturbed several Wampanoag graves and stole a store of dried corn. Further, they were changing the landscape; they built permanent structures, chopped down trees, and encroached upon Native territory. The Wampanoag tribe was justifiably hesitant to trust these newcomers, so Massasoit, the leader of the Wampanoag tribe, gathered a force of about 90 men and confronted the English. This wasn’t a friendly confrontation, but no blood was shed.
Massasoit’s people were interested in the English’s guns and wanted to understand them. There was a feast that took place, in which the English performed military drills and contributed waterfowl and the Wampanoag brought deer and vegetables. Contrary to popular depictions, there were no women or children present. The common narrative of Thanksgiving arose from this feast, but it has been warped over the years.
So, we’ve thrown away the typical story of Thanksgiving, but the concept of Thanksgiving existed prior to this interaction. For the English, who were Calvinist reformers, Thanksgiving would’ve been a day of prayer and fasting after winning a battle or a war. In fact, the first Thanksgiving that the English declared was after the Pequot massacre. For the Native Americans, it would’ve been a celebration of the harvest. There would’ve been multiple Thanksgivings a year for both groups.
The actual holiday of Thanksgiving came from Abraham Lincoln, who declared it a national holiday after being influenced by a woman named Sarah Josephine Hale. Hale wanted a holiday that could meld all the individual states’ conceptions of Thanksgiving together into a national celebration. It had a nationalistic premise; people were meant to band around the shared narrative that their country was borne from a celebratory feast.
Let’s Decolonize: The Potano Tribe and the Seminoles
With Thanksgiving coming up, it’s important to acknowledge the origin of our university. The University of Florida was built on land that originally belonged to the Potano and Seminole peoples. It acquired this land following the Morrill Act, which gave Florida a land grant of about 30,000 acres of Federal land to use and sell for profit.
The Potano Tribe was a subsect of the Timucua peoples. They don’t exist as a tribe in the modern day; historians believe that they assimilated into the broader Timucua peoples in order to survive. The Potano are mentioned in the writings of Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto. The Spanish settlers, led by him, overcame the French settlers that had previously occupied the region and began to convert the Timucua peoples. As a result of failed violent uprisings and pestilence, these peoples were decimated and no longer exist as a tribe.
The Seminoles are known for their incredible resilience in the face of colonialism and still exist today. In Alachua County, the Seminoles fought in the Battle of Micanopy against settlers who wished to conquer the land for their own use. During the Seminole Wars, they lost several of their people and much of their land. Many of them were relocated to Oklahoma, but those who managed to stay in Florida occupy reservations in Hollywood, Big Cypress, Brighton, Immokalee, Fort Pierce, and Tampa. Seminole traditions are central to their culture today. This includes their brightly colored patchwork clothing (which dates back to the 1900s) and the Green Corn Ceremony. The Green Corn Dance has roots to the Seminoles’ Creek origins. The Green Corn Ceremony is a four day celebration of the renewal of seasons meant to thank the Creator for life and food. It’s a spiritual event in which Seminoles participate in manhood ceremonies and stomp dance. Stomp dancing is a traditional dance in which a medicine man leads a single file line of chanting male dancers followed by silent female dancers with rattles tied to their legs. The rattles, which are sometimes made from turtle shells, are a symbol of independence.
When confronted with these facts, many people feel defensive. To some extent, we are all (save for indigenous people) settlers of this land. However, in a time in which the United States lags behind other nations in protecting indigenous rights despite its bloody history, it’s paramount to acknowledge the truth. Of course, it’s a small step to simply know basic information about the land that we occupy, but it’s a necessary one. Knowing the past helps to change the present. If we continue to propagate the lie that Thanksgiving was friendly and wholesome – if we refuse to accept our history – we are at risk of repeating our mistakes.