Hidden History of Thanksgiving among other things

[Ry]

oh my lord.

Dude Washington was the first President of the United States and Thanksgiving was not a federal holiday it was a state holiday until the civil war. Hanson was the president of the articles of confederation's continental congress (which paid taxes to Britian.) Anyway Thanksgiving was three celebrations in Massachusetts long before Hanson or Washington were even born. When I talked about the governor I did not mean to imply that Washington spoke to him, Washington spoke to the the then current government of Mass/maine and told them to make it into ONE holiday. Richard Bellingham live in the 1640s. just a tad before Hanson and Washington.

two iconic American stories have Spanish antecedents, too. Almost 80 years before John Smith's alleged rescue by Pocahontas, a man by the name of Juan Ortiz told of his remarkably similar rescue from execution by an Indian girl.

yes that part is true, but there was no rescue only a story of it it was the literary boom of the time.. As for the Spanish dining with Indians I think you got a preposition wrong, they fed Indians to their dogs.

[aucuneconnerie]

But that's the rip about history, Ry. We're SUPPOSED to think the years when the US functioned under the Articles of Confederation were like non-years as a nation. Mainly because of what Hanson was. Would have spoiled what drove us to Civil War.

Canada operated under Articles of Confederation from 1867 to 1983 (116 years) and no one has ever suggested that Lester B. Pearson was not a real Canadian Prime Minister, nor Pierre Trudeau during his first time around. Nor would they negate the treaties these PMs made. It was Trudeau who created the Canadian Constitution the second time he was elected. He wanted to go down in history as having done something more than marry his exotic wife. He also wanted to get his mitts on Alberta's incredible resource wealth, and stem its power. The provinces functioned like the states, pretty much autonomously under a federal umbrella.

So when Hanson, et al, wrote that Thanksgiving proclamation, it was a proclamation for all the states to follow. And it was instituted in all states under the federal umbrella. Abe Lincoln redid it to draw attention away from the Hanson angle. Hanson was a "freeman." Can't be having any uppity blacks think they're entitled to the same rights, now, can we. The Maryland Historical Society even goes so far as to claim the discovery in 1900 (or thereabouts) of his "unmarked grave" to which I say How would you know? The point being that his mulatto status caused him to be wiped out of the history pages, which is the real disgrace, because he died young in 1783. And since most of our history at that time was written contemporaneously in either French (Jesuits & other priestcraft) or Spanish (scholarly scribes), most people have to rely on the only two who did write shit down: Nathaniel Hawthorn (novelist) or Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (poet). And they basically made shit up for the largely illiterate American population, as Robert Wuhl showed to great effect in his "Assume the Position" series.

[Ry]

So when Hanson, et al, wrote that Thanksgiving proclamation, it was a proclamation for all the states to follow. And it was instituted in all states under the federal umbrella. Abe Lincoln redid it to draw attention away from the Hanson angle. Hanson was a "freeman." Can't be having any uppity blacks think they're entitled to the same rights, now, can we

I thought all you were arguing about was who made Thanksgiving first. That would be The Mass/Maine colony's [or what is now Mass Sate] governor many decades before Hanson was even born. Hanson and Washington both said that the state only need one holiday for the massacres, but it was Washington who they listened to, Franklin has also said there were too many holidays and before he died he changed his mind on the "Indian question" as well as the slavery question, and signed an amancipation when he was 84 years old in the last year of his life. Washington liewise set his own slaves free but did't dare risk such a feat in the fragile brand new Republic for fear it could tare it apart. Jefferson though later ended the slave trade from Africa but did not free slaves already in the US for the same reasons as Washington, there was also the question of how to assimilate so many people. An embarrassing idea that came up was the ship'em to Lieberia plot something Lincoln later promoted as a congressmen of a State whose 1851 constitution did not even allow colored people to live in the state at all free or slave.

[Ry]

Ryan Dawson

Modern Pirates or Privateers?

In recent events, pirates have been raiding ships and last week captured an oil tanker carrying 100 million dollars worth of goods. The crew is currently being held hostage for ransom. Upon breaking this story, a lot of feed back returned actually rooting for the pirates. Sarcastic or not, this form of thievery is quite romanticized and well "cool." On land or in the air, robbing, taking hostages, and making ransom demands by rouge groups is called terrorism. But at sea its pirates. Once the word Pirate is attached, people try to see the reasons and motives for the underdog something that could actually be appyied to many terrorists as well although it is socially unexceptional.

History often takes on the spin of social context surrounding the people reporting it. Pirates for example have gone back and forth from heroes to villains to just cool and everything in between in a relatively short time. And it always depending on who was telling the story. A privateer from England like Françoise Drake who is upheld as a hero and explorer was nothing but a state sponsored terrorist and a bigot. He routinely attacked the Spanish with no discernment for civilian or soldier, innocent or criminal. He had no problem killing and enslaving Africans (an act of terrorism) and then selling them (often by forced purchases, like getting “protection” money) in the Caribbean, or murdering Catholics, attacking the Spanish towns/ships or killing Native Americans. If any man did that today, assuming he wasn’t an American or an Israeli, he would be put to jail or sentenced to death.

The structure of privateers was not unlike intelligence agencies or the mafia today. If a nation attacks another nation it is an act of war. However if a nation covertly sponsors and splits the wealth with criminals who are pirates, drug smugglers, contraband, or hired mercenaries through private multinational companies, then there is some distance. If a group of pirates only happen to attack Spanish Ships and never the English who secretly financed them, then upon capture the pirates would be killed or sentenced trough a trial for individual acts of crime. But England would be free of responsibility. A true pirate attacks indiscriminately for profit. A privateer has state backing. Both are just bandits at sea.

The Spanish, or rather factions within the economic system, encouraged the pirates and privateers. Tremendous amounts of money were spent on senseless fortifications and means of defense, always banking on the excuse of the highly over inflated threat of pirates, (which could have been dealt with in a much more efficient manner) which ultimately bankrupted the Spanish yet allowed the Old School Military Industrial complex and the Old School Central Banks better known as Churches, to consolidate the wealth of the populous to their own demise and profiteer handsomely with the ruling elites in all nations. Loyalties were to money not to nations or any acceptable code of ethics.

Today it’s a lot worse and complicated but it is based roughly on the same model of creating a problem, scaring the public, and driving them into debt to supposedly solve what the nation created to begin with and making the problem worse and blaming nearly powerless patsies. I can remember when the US beta tested its first Iraq war by invading the much smaller country of Panama. They cited getting rid of Noriega as the main rational for the war. Noriega had been on the CIA’s own pay roll since 1966 and reached a six figure salary by 1980. In 1989 when I was in Elementary school, the US invaded Panama killing 2-4 thousand civilians and left tens of thousands of others homeless, so the US could put a guy in jail and replace him with a puppet government where all the same drug trafficking etc continues.

People might be interested in learning about “Operation PBSuccess”, the “Phoenix Program,” “Operation Gladio,” “Operation TP-Ajax,” “Operation Paper Clip,” “Project FUBELT,” the entire Iran Contra affair, and the proposed plan of “Operation Northwoods.” Other notable CIA clients have been Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. Each was replaced after serving their purposes.

Pirates or terrorists, for the winners writing the history books have their stories’ and motives flip-flopped according to whatever is a useful context. For example the long held cut throat pirates got a new identity in the time of women’s rights, the Marxist ideas of class struggle, the civil rights era, and so on because some pirates in the Americas at least, were or employed women, freed or were former slaves, offered a life away from indentured servitude and class immobility, and fought the evil genocidal colonial powers like hopelessly out-gunned vigilantes. They can be glorified or demonized depending on the perspective. But what they did cannot be denied, and that would consist mainly or stealing from and murdering innocent people for profit. I would see it more as the little crooks antagonizing the big crooks. But maybe it was said best in the words of a pirate captured by Alexander the Great, who when asked how he dared molest the sea, replied “How dare you molest the whole world? Because I do it with a little ship only, I am called a thief; you, doing it with a great navy, are called an Emperor."

What will the results be of the current pirate news? Well the Somalians will undoubtedly use the money to buy black market weapons, furthering the ongoing violence. Insurance will go out the roof, and inhumane mercenaries (pirate hunters) such as Black Water will offer their naval services to escort ships or hunt down pirate mother ships for the right price of course.
But what of the causes? What possible condition could exist in Somalia to warrant such extreme behavior? What was the CIA doing in their timely trip to Somalia?

We have to strive the root and that's the social economic conditions on the ground in Somalia. It's a strategic pawn wedged between far bigger players in the age old game of MIC build up.

Is this the work of Privateers? One jailed pirate, Farah Ismail Eid, said recently that up to 30 per cent of most hijackers' profits went to government officials. "Believe me, a lot of our money has gone straight into their pockets," he added."

And Somali politicians fuel piracy, says African Union. They look the other way because they get a cut. Just call it what it is not pirates but privateers. Is it any stretch then when countries secretly pay criminal terrorists at sea that they would not also secretly pay terrorist on the land and air? We know for a fact that Israel has set up fake Al Qaeda cells.

What lead to this breakdown in Somalia?

"As recently as 2006, the strict rule of the Islamic Courts Union made most people too scared to join pirate gangs. The demise of that government left a vacuum in which the pirates can do more or less as they please, and easily get hold of the guns and rocket-propelled grenades they need to board cargo ships. As poor Somalis have seen, those willing to take to the high seas rake in massive profits from ransoms at little apparent risk. The temptation to join them and escape lives of poverty has increased. What government remains in Somalia is unwilling or unable to take any kind of stand. Indeed, it may even be profiting from the buccaneering enterprise of its citizens."

The demise of the government like it just happened... The US threw Somalia into war with Ethiopia. It's the forgotten war rarely ever mentioned.

The pirate character or the 1700s might invoke a "cool" image but remember that theft and murder are what they are no matter how you dress or say RRRRR. Profiteering only allows indirect violence by the states, increased military spending, platforms for false flags, and a lot of stealing. It's not cool. OK it's cool but it's not right.

[Ry]

Thanksgiving what really happened?


Although there was a dinner in 1621 Between Pilgrims and Two Native American translators, that's not where the word Thanksgiving came from nor is it what Thanksgiving originally celebrated. You may have noticed how the media has turned this year's Thanksgiving into a "give thanks to the troops" or our heroes day, complete with a rolling statue of liberty and giant balloon uncle Sams at the Macy's parade. That unapologetic nationalism and war support is actually much closer to the original Thanksgiving holiday than the revised mythology of brotherly love peace and sharing.

Thanksgiving has changed several times. It was once a state holiday for the British colony of Massachusetts, actually it was three holidays, later it became a single state holiday, when the British Colonies became the United states it remained a state holiday. Eventually it became a National holiday through decree by Lincoln during the Civil War and this is where the fairy tale stories of brotherly love comes from. At last Roosevelt changes the dates on the holiday for commercial interest and that it what it still is today.

Sometimes history is colored in such a great degree that it simply becomes false. Everyone in the US and Canada and most of the world has heard the official story of Thanksgiving. It’s a nice tale of racial harmony and happy co-existing cultures sharing food in a feast and giving thanks apparently without contradictions to pantheist concepts and monotheistic myths from sun worship perverted to a self sacrificing sadomasochistic god of ego demanding worship and issuing out eternal punishment for nonbelievers and who thought it was necessary to have a son (or become a his own son) and torture and kill it as a sacrifice to himself in order to be able to save everyone from his own wrath so long as believe his masochistic tantrum.

The American colonies, many of which existed long before the more famous Jamestown in Virginia or the Plymouth Rock colony in Massachusetts, were pirate colonies. Sir Walter Raleigh of the "Roanoke" colony was a notorious privateer. In fact if there ever was a Thanksgiving that even remotely fit the mystical tale it would be the meeting on Croatoan which thanks to a famous fictional play by ultra racist Paul Green, became known as the "Lost Colony" of Roanoke. That's an Island of North Carolina not to be confused with an area of Virginia by the same name.)

The Jamestown colony was sent to grow and ship back tobacco to England in exchange for food often under the conditions of work or starve. Many of the inhabitants didn't leave to flee oppression or freedom of religion, they were normally debtors driven to serve the the interest of the crown or go to jail. Debts could be frivolously made by arbitrarily jacking up tenet costs above the means of the tents. It was all about maximum profit use of the land. New invention is processing wool made the own lord and tenet system less value about than exporting wool from sheep. (a renewable resource to exspand the money supply) So tenets were intentionally driven off the land into jail or sent to colonize.

There was a feast in Virginia in 1623 and it was between Pilgrams and Indians. Cpatain William Tucker and 12 of his men met with the Pamunkey and Cheif Opitchapam under a flag of peace. Opitchapam was the successor of Wahunsonacoc (Powhatan). Captain Tucker and Dr. John Potts had posined the wine. Reportedly 200 Indians fells sick (died) and 50 more were then fired upon and killed. Opitchapam escaped. His brother Opechancanough was who caught John Smith who Pocahantas supposed saved. This capture and rescue story is widely held as a myth depiste what Disney says.

Goofy myths aside, few people outside of small school children still believe in the Pocahantas mythology any more than they believe other American folklore like John Henry and Johny Apple Seed, but nothing quite has the spin put on it like the Thanksgiving story from Massachusetts.

This merry little feast didn’t happen. It did not happen in Massachusetts or Virginia. In the North the English enslaved the Petuxet Indians and sent a ship full of their slaves to England in 1614 six years before the Mayflower came with colonists. Plymouth was the third colony by the English in the New World, the first being a "failure" in what is now North Carolina, in 1584, and second was the oldest successful colony, Jamestown in what is now Virginia established 1607. The Plymouth colony was not the first English speaking colony to visit what is now Massachusetts. Massachusetts is a Native American word which means "at or about the great hill." The Plymouth colony was just the first English speaking people to permanently squat there. When the English were capturing slaves in the new world, they left behind smallpox which decimated Native populations (sometimes as much as 90%!!). The Natives had a lack of resistances to Old World diseases which evolved slowly in the Old World developing with the 13 different domesticated herd animals (which did not exist in the New World including horses, the Spanish brought those there) along side their populations. Note that before vaccinations one of the first observations made in the fight against Small Pox was that milkmaids who contracted cow-pox were not getting Small Pox. Cow were also not native to the Americas.

The old Patuxet area had been nearly abandoned because of Small Pox. One survivor who had also been an English slave from a young age (and may have contracted cow-pox) was the famous man named Squanto, who could speak English. In the history books this is painted as some great chance miracle, because they don't want people to know about the previous voyages, how they had been enslaving American Indians and purposely spreading diseases.

The belligerent compliments in the north were starving to death after walling themselves up to protect themselves from the backlash to their unchecked provocations. Ending trade, they were forced to negotiate. Colonists were particularly aware of their hunger as they would have been celebrating the English Harvest days had they been at home. They invited a Native man named Massasoit to dinner, or more accurately allowed him to come into the settlement because his band had bagged 5 deer. The colony was heavily inebriated as was necessary both for the calories and control. Massaoit honored his band's fortune with the tradition of sharing and invited 100s of Natives to the feast who also brought food. The Europeans were not amused but hunger took precedence. They actually blamed the Indians for hording food. It was not long before they were murdering the Indians again. All in the good lords name of course.

In 1630s just a dozen winters or so from the arrival of the Mayflower and only a few years after the arrival of Christian Zealots known as Puritans, the real mass butchering began. In 1637 Europeans forces cornered 700 Natives mostly women and children at the mouth of the Mystic river. They shot and beat to death the men and burned everyone else in longhouse fires. Bounties were set on the head of Indians with the price for a woman’s scalp being the highest (something that lasted until the 1930s) to encourage murder. And that is where the term Redskin comes from. Native Americans are not red. The red refers to the blood stained scalps which acted like trophies. In fact when the Spanish accidentally discovered (for themselves) the new world they thought they were in India and this is why the people were ignorantly named Indians, a name that did not change despite later indisputable evidence that they were indeed not in India. There was no mention of (Asian) Indians being red, but light skinned to dark skinned browns, which they made a nifty little religiously supported racist caste system for and kept a very good record of as it was very important to them.

By 1671 the English and Dutch mercenaries were in a full scale war with the Wampanoag and Chief Metacomet who they renamed King Philip, (thus King Philips War) because the whole concept of a society not ruled by a (divinely appointed) central figure determined by bloodlines, was a totally alien and incomprehensible to the “civilized” English. They just invented a king to fight.

It was this Mystic River massacre along with 2 other large massacres that had Richard Bellingham the governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony declared it a Thanksgiving. It was George Washington who finally suggested that only one day of Thanksgiving per year be set aside instead of celebrating each and every massacre. Of course they didn't label them as massacres, they saw them as god assisted triumphs. In 1863 Abraham Lincoln made Thanksgiving Day to a legal national holiday. (Before that it was a State Holiday). Lincoln needed a brotherly mythology as in his war it actually was a matter of brother against brother and the Natives above the and West of the Union could threaten to create a new front. It was from Lincoln that a mythology became historized. FDR would later establish the fixed date of the next to the last Thursday in November for Thanksgiving mainly for commercials interest as it was considered inappropriate to advertise products for Christmas until after Thanksgiving. This gave everyone a longer period to sell. Yes even back then people put up xmas lights and decorations months before Christmas. It is the largest capitalist holiday you know. It is not that mythologies are bad it's just that they are not true and when it comes to history we have a duty to uphold the truth including the bad and the ugly.

It was quite common actually for the English to kidnap Native American youths to teach them English and the Bible and later use them as interpreters. The founding of the college of William & Mary (where I went to school) in Williamsburg/Jamestown was set up at first as a religious divinity school consisting of three subjects, Philosophy which was actually Christian theology, English, and Religion which was more like the practice of it rather than the studying of it, much like church vs. Sunday school. One of the main buildings was a house for Indians who were forced to go there. They were taught English and Jesus. Oh there were some half haeted pretext for "scientific research" to gather grants for the charter. The financial motives of the charter heads nixed an agreement to Robert Boyle (of Boyle’s law). There were supposed to send him his scientific requests for the New World's Flora and Fauna. They never gave a thing.

Interestingly, today W&M is not run by the likes of James Blair, despite having a huge black statue of the ugly Holy Roller, and they have put more pride in their Thomas Jefferson, George Washington roots. In a sense of redemption to Boyle perhaps, the college promised to and has collected at least one indigenous tree from all over the America and placed it on the campus including the most northern palm tree (which sits next to the heater of the English building) and redwood trees, which fell in 2003 because of the leftover winds from hurricane Isabel, thus breaking that tradition and promise. (Virginia was not hit by a hurricane, only a tropic storm however all the news reports would disagree with the actual evidence and wind speeds which define a hurricane. That's just another example of revised history)

The Plymouth settlers were more disruptive than any storm however. They did not see any fences on the land, a European marking of property administered by the church vestiges, and so they assumes everything was public land, and they stole land, food and children from the Wampanoag who were unlucky enough to be living near them and trust them. This lead to conflict. The Settlers were not friendly to the Natives they built an 11 foot high wall around their settlement complete with 5 cannons. The Natives quit trading with the Pilgrims who, lost in an unknown land with foreign crops, ended up in the same position as the Virginia colonies, they faced starvation.

In Virginia, however, that problem was compounded by the top down order to grow tobacco instead of food and sell it to England in order to buy food. Nathaniel Bacon put an end to that, but not in the heroic way we were all taught about the rebelling proletariat. What he did was gather a mob and go around burning other poor people’s tobacco crops insuring he and his mob could sell their own for a higher price and ensuring the others would starve. He then kidnapped the governor’s wife and the wives of his strongest supporters and had Indian allies who ignorantly/innocently saw the struggle as a rebellion against a corrupt leader.

Nathaniel Bacon's rebellion which is colored today as the proletariat rebelling against the wealthy elite nothing of the sort. Bacon and his mob burned the tobacco fields of other poor people in order to get a higher price for their own yield. He was angry with the governor for not allowing him to kill more "Indians" who the governor had made peace with.

Bacon’s tactics worked as you are all familiar with. He celebrated by having attacking Indians at night and killing the men, and I think we know what happened to the women. That’s the part left out of PC history books. Bacon attacked the Pamunkey (who are still surviving but currently only number 58 people. It is extremely rare for any of the original Native American groups from the East coast to have survived) He attacked the Occaneecheee and pitched a fit at Governor Berkeley for not appointing him as the General for all Indian affairs. The elite did not care, they wanted people to starve to death as it relieved them of their 7 and 6 year contracts which promised land in exchange of the indentured servitude. Once again Bacon was no more than Berkeley’s land pirate/terrorist who between the two egos nearly burned all of Jamestown. Problem, action, solution.

Some people falsely think that Europe had potatoes before contact, they did not. The Irish potato famines were in the 19th century and those were largely manufactured not natural. The English were exporting food to England from a starving Ireland to drive tenets off the land because a new method of processing wool made raising sheep more cost efficient than milking poor tenets who had to pay you what you were paying them, where as sheep cost little and the wool could be sold for income outside the normal circles of the money supply. (it was a renewable resource) The immigrants didn’t just leave for freedom, they were driven out to escape starvation and trumped up debts they couldn’t pay. The English won either way. I say England rather than Britain because that is who it was. The Bank of England which is privately owned was a large part in all of this, as was other mega companies like the East India Tea company. The IET was a private corporation larger than some nations. That island has been ruled for a very long time by corporate plutocrats and it still is. The former Republic of the USA is currently headed for an economic collapse and is stuck in perpetual war the driving force of which is Religious fanaticism, namely Zionism and military industrial banking complex.

If you think the crimes of the past have gone away because people don't talk about them and cover things up with stories think again.
<embed style="width:400px; height:326px;" id="VideoPlayback" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://video.google.com/googleplayer.sw ... 8078&hl=en" flashvars=""> </embed> In the 1970s Under the Family Planning Act approved By George Bush Sr. 42% on Native women were targeted for sterilization. At the same time another scandal where mothers of white children were told that their babies had died and then the perfectly healthy babies were sold to rich families (unaware of what was going on) looking to adopt white children. Ric Flair the famous Pro Wrestler who lives in North Carolina discovered that he was one of those children and he wrote about it in his book. This was in America. That babies could be stolen from mothers and other potential mothers could be sterilized. Bush Sr. was part of the Family Planning Act. Well he is the son of a Nazi sympathizer/financier and just look at what his sons are doing particularly George Jr. Oh they can not be as overt in their racism as they used to but believe me it never went away. Bush reminds me of those psychotic Puritans burning people by the river. He thinks he is doing the Lords work and calls his wars a crusade. As the saying goes "We have to learn history or we are damned to repeat it."

Who are the real savages? Who are the terrorists? Who are the real pirates? And when will we unchain history and not censor the brutal past for the sake of feel good fantasy stories? Never, probably never. On a lighter note, Turkey Day has morphed into a positive and loosely Native American Holiday. The common foods, turkey, cranberries, pumpkin, corn, potatoes, and cornbread are all American foods that were once exclusive to the Americas. It's also a time to gather the family, to pig out and watch the Redskins play football.

Converting "savages" gave the paternal English who polluted all their own rivers and at one point deforested their whole island, and had public floggings of women and executions as a stable of entertainment, a reason to justify their brutal conquests of "uncivilized" people. People should read what Red Cloud and other Natives brought to England and France had to say about their visits to the Hellish lands. It's very interesting what he says.

We want everyone to enjoy your Thanksgiving feast but we do want to point out the hidden history of it, not that that is what is celebrated today.

Happy Thanksgiving.
For a more happy note, see the Real First Thanksgiving, Croatoan the forgotten colony.

Do not copy this or reprint this.
Just send people a link.

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-Ryan Dawson


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[general hoke]

It was Arthur Barlowe July 4th 1584 that celebrated Thanksgiving first in this country. He did this on Hatteras Island NC called Croatoan back then.

Granganimeo was the cheif that gave the English their first feast.

[Ry]

http://rwor.org/a/firstvol/883/thank.htm more

[Ry]

2009 version.
Unraveling Thanksgiving and other surrounding myths.
Thanksgiving what really happened?

Ryan Dawson

Although there was a dinner in 1621 Between Pilgrims and Two Native American translators, that's not where the word Thanksgiving came from nor is it what Thanksgiving originally celebrated. Last year in 2008 You may have noticed how the media has turned this year's Thanksgiving into a "give thanks to the troops" or our heroes day, complete with a rolling statue of liberty and giant balloon uncle Sam's at the Macy's parade. That unapologetic nationalism and war support is actually much closer to the original Thanksgiving holiday than the revised mythology of brotherly love peace and sharing. We'll see if they do that again this year.

Thanksgiving has changed several times and the ritual we celebrate today were all added in at different times. Thanksgiving was once a state holiday for the British colony of Massachusetts, actually it was three holidays. It was to celebrate three different massacres of Native Americans. Later it became a state holiday and when the British Colonies became the United states it remained a state holiday. Eventually it became a National holiday through a decree by Lincoln during the Civil War, and this is where the fairy tale stories of brotherly love come from. At last Roosevelt changed the date of the holiday for commercial interests and that it what it still is today. Unofficially the day after Thanksgiving has become a national buy things of sale for xmas day.

Sometimes history is colored in such a great degree that it simply becomes false. Everyone in the US and Canada and most of the world has heard the official story of Thanksgiving. It’s a nice tale of racial harmony and happy co-existing cultures sharing food in a feast and giving thanks apparently without contradictions to pantheist concepts and monotheistic myths from sun worship perverted to a self sacrificing sadomasochistic god of ego demanding worship and issuing out eternal punishment for nonbelievers and who thought it was necessary to have a son (or become a his own son) and torture and kill it as a sacrifice to himself in order to be able to save everyone from his own wrath so long as believe his masochistic tantrum. Also known as Christianity.

The American colonies, many of which existed long before the more famous Jamestown in Virginia or the Plymouth Rock colony in Massachusetts, were pirate colonies. Sir Walter Raleigh of the "Roanoke" colony was a notorious privateer. In fact if there ever was a Thanksgiving that even remotely fit the mystical tale it would be the meeting on Croatoan which thanks to a famous fictional play by ultra racist Paul Green, became known as the "Lost Colony" of Roanoke. That's an Island of North Carolina not to be confused with an area of Virginia by the same name.) However the "Lost colony" was never lost. It didn't become missing until 1933 when Paul Green's play created the myth out of thin air. He also wrote plays. "Common Glory" and "The Founders" which were about the Revolutionary War and the Founding Fathers, which were equally mixed with fact and fiction. They used to play in the old King's theater in Williamsburg VA. Perhaps because those events were much later than the 1584 expeditions and because so much had already been written about both, the last two play didn't have as much of a poisoning effect to Actual history as did the "Lost Colony."

Few people outside of small school children still believe in the Pocahontas mythology any more than they believe other American folklore like John Henry and Johny Apple Seed, but nothing quite has the spin put on it like the Thanksgiving story from Massachusetts.

This merry little feast didn’t happen. It did not happen in Massachusetts or Virginia. In the North the English enslaved the Petuxet Indians and sent a ship full of their slaves to England in 1614 six years before the Mayflower came with colonists. Plymouth was the third colony by the English in the New World, the first being a "failure" in what is now North Carolina, in 1584, and second was the oldest successful colony, Jamestown in what is now Virginia established 1607. The Plymouth colony was not the first English speaking colony to visit what is now Massachusetts. Massachusetts is a Native American word which means "at or about the great hill." The Plymouth colony was just the first English speaking people to permanently squat there. When the English were capturing slaves in the new world, they left behind smallpox which decimated Native populations (sometimes as much as 90%!!). The Natives had a lack of resistances to Old World diseases which evolved slowly in the Old World developing with the 13 different domesticated herd animals (which did not exist in the New World including horses, the Spanish brought those there) along side their populations. Note that before vaccinations one of the first observations made in the fight against Small Pox was that milkmaids who contracted cow-pox were not getting Small Pox. Cow were also not native to the Americas.

The old Patuxet area had been nearly abandoned because of Small Pox. One survivor who had also been an English slave from a young age (and may have contracted cow-pox) was the famous man named Squanto, who could speak English. In the history books this is painted as some great chance miracle, because they don't want people to know about the previous voyages, how they had been enslaving American Indians and purposely spreading diseases.

Here is what happened at the so called dinner that Thanksgiving now tries to associate itself with. Keep in mind that this is not what Thanksgiving originally celebrated. This dinner wasn't attached to the holiday until much later.

The belligerent colonists in the north were fanatically religious, and outstandingly prejudice. They were starving to death after walling themselves up to protect themselves from backlash to their unchecked provocations. Ending trade, they were forced to negotiate. Colonists were particularly aware of their hunger as they would have been celebrating the English Harvest days had they been at home. They invited a Native man named Massasoit to dinner, or more accurately allowed him to come into the settlement because his band had bagged 5 deer. The colony was heavily inebriated as was necessary both for the calories and control. Massaoit honored his band's fortune with the tradition of sharing and invited 100s of Natives to the feast who also brought food. The Europeans were not amused but hunger took precedence. They actually blamed the Indians for hording food. It was not long before they were murdering the Indians again. All in the good lords name of course.

In the 1630s just a dozen winters or so from the arrival of the Mayflower and only a few years after the arrival of Christian Zealots known as Puritans, the real mass butchering began. In 1637 Europeans forces cornered 700 Natives mostly women and children at the mouth of the Mystic river. They shot and beat to death the men and burned everyone else in longhouse fires.

It was this Mystic River massacre along with 2 other large massacres that had Richard Bellingham the governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony declare it a Thanksgiving. It was George Washington who finally suggested that only one day of Thanksgiving per year be set aside instead of celebrating each and every massacre. Of course they didn't label them as massacres, they saw them as god assisted triumphs. In 1863 Abraham Lincoln made Thanksgiving Day to a legal national holiday. Lincoln needed a brotherly mythology as in his war it actually was a matter of brother against brother and the Natives above the and West of the Union could threaten to create a new front. It was from Lincoln that a mythology became historized. FDR would later establish the fixed date of the next to the last Thursday in November for Thanksgiving mainly for commercials interest as it was considered inappropriate to advertise products for Christmas until after Thanksgiving. This gave everyone a longer period to sell. Yes even back then people put up xmas lights and decorations months before Christmas. It is the largest capitalist holiday you know. It is not that mythologies are bad it's just that they are not true and when it comes to history we have a duty to uphold the truth including the bad and the ugly.

Of course people celebrating today are not celebrating the massacres of Native Indians. Today the myth has been attached to an alleged dinner where the Pilgrims were saved from starving by the Indians. Most point to a dinner in Massachusetts and some point to a dinner in Virgina.

There is a prevailing myth about the Jamestown inhabitants as well.
The Jamestown colony was sent to grow and ship back tobacco to England in exchange for food often under the conditions of "work or starve." Many of the inhabitants didn't leave to flee oppression or freedom of religion, they were normally debtors driven to serve the the interest of the crown or go to jail. The choice was debtor's prison or getting on a boat. Debts could be frivolously made by arbitrarily jacking up the tenet costs above the means of the tents. It was all about maximizing profits for the use of the land. A new invention in processing wool made the own Lord and tenet system less value than exporting wool from sheep. (a renewable resource to expand the money supply) So tenets were intentionally driven off the land into jail or sent to colonize. It was now for cost efficient to use land for sheep than for peasants. So the best way to collect more from peasants or force them to move so that sheep could be brought in, was to simply raise their rates and taxes. And that is why people left.

There was a feast in Virginia in 1623 and it was between Pilgrims and Indians. Captain William Tucker and 12 of his men met with the Pamunkey and Chief Opitchapam under a flag of peace. Opitchapam was the successor of Wahunsonacoc (Powhatan). Captain Tucker and Dr. John Potts had poisoned the wine. Reportedly 200 Indians fells sick (died) and 50 more were then fired upon and killed. Opitchapam escaped. His brother Opechancanough was who caught John Smith who Pocahontas supposed saved. This capture and rescue story is widely held as a myth too despite what Disney says. However at least the names were right. Opechancanough was a real person.

Today however people just want to eat with family and maybe watch the Redskins play football on TV. What is a Redskin anyway? It's not the color of an Indian obviously. That's about as stupid as thinking that Asian people are yellow. And yet sadly although most people know that Asians are white don't know about American Indians because so many were killed that it is not uncommon for someone to have never met an American Indian. And I mean a real Indian not some pretindian who claims to be "part Cherokee." And so the myth prevails.

Bounties were set on the head of Indians with the price for a woman’s scalp being the highest (something that lasted until the 1930s) to encourage murder. And that is where the term Redskin comes from. Native Americans are not red. The red refers to the blood stained scalps which acted like trophies.

In fact you may have heard the myth that when the Spanish "accidentally discovered" the new world they thought they were in India and this is why the people were ignorantly named Indians, a name that did not change despite later indisputable evidence that they were indeed not in India. Now this is not what happened either but even within the myth, for it to work, Native Indians would have to look like Indians of India who are not red. And if that's not enough for you then put it this way, American Indians today are not red. Nobody evolved that fast either.

There is no mention of (Asian) Indians being red, but light skinned to dark skinned browns, which they made a nifty little religiously supported racist caste system for and kept a very good record of as it was very important to them.

Columbus himself is a myth with in a myth. Columbus didn't really think he was in India. And the word Indians was just a root for indigenous. That's why they never changed it. And he wasn't a brave champion of saying the world was round nor was he setting out to prove that. That's an American fable told to school children. Most of the world, including even Europe, knew and believed the world was round. Only a minority of Christians and Jews thought otherwise and no one else. The Indians too knew the world was round. Columbus went to conquer and pillage. I hate Columbus but basically all the crap you learned in school is just that, pure crap. Columbus was a genocidal maniac.

And he did not discover the Americas. For one he never even made it to the main land. Secondly for at least 492 years before his famous voyage the vikings had already been in both Canada and Greenland. They even inhabited Greenland. Columbus was the first CATHOLIC to discover the Americas and that is why he is credited with the whole discovery. He was a Knight a Malta hardcore Christian. The man fed children to dogs and made a sport of hanging bodies up by tying arms and hacking at them the way would cut a tree down. And this guy has his own holiday.

By 1671 the English and Dutch mercenaries were in a full scale war with the Wampanoag and Chief Metacomet who they renamed King Philip, (thus King Philips War) because the whole concept of a society not ruled by a (divinely appointed) central figure determined by bloodlines, was a totally alien and incomprehensible to the “civilized” English. They just invented a king to fight.

It was quite common actually for the English to kidnap Native American youths to teach them English and the Bible and later use them as interpreters. The founding of the college of William & Mary (where I went to school) in Williamsburg/Jamestown was set up at first as a religious divinity school consisting of three subjects, Philosophy which was actually Christian theology, English, and Religion which was more like the practice of it rather than the studying of it, much like church vs. Sunday school. One of the main buildings was a house for Indians who were forced to go there. They were taught English and Jesus. Oh there were also some half-hearted pretext for "scientific research" to gather grants for the charter. The School nixed an agreement in their charter to Robert Boyle (of Boyle’s law). There were supposed to send him his scientific requests for the New World's Flora and Fauna. They never gave a thing. And then he died. Buy they already took his money.

Interestingly, today W&M is not run by the likes of James Blair, despite having a huge black statue of the ugly Holy Roller, and they have put more pride in their Thomas Jefferson, George Washington roots. In a sense of redemption to Boyle perhaps, the college promised to have and has collected at least one indigenous tree from all over the America and placed it on the campus including the United States most northern palm tree (which sits next to the heater of the English building) and Redwood trees, which fell in 2003 because of the leftover winds from hurricane Isabel, thus breaking that tradition and promise. (Virginia was not hit by a hurricane, only a tropic storm however all the news reports would disagree with the actual evidence and wind speeds which define a hurricane. That's just another example of revised history)

The Plymouth settlers were more disruptive than any storm however. They did not see any fences on the land, a European marking of property administered by the church vestiges, and so they assumes everything was public land, and they stole land, food and children from the Wampanoag who were unlucky enough to be living near them and trust them. This lead to conflict. The Settlers were not friendly to the Natives they built an 11 foot high wall around their settlement complete with 5 cannons. The Natives quit trading with the Pilgrims who, lost in an unknown land with foreign crops, ended up in the same position as the Virginia colonies, they faced starvation.

In Virginia, however, that problem was compounded by the top down order to grow tobacco instead of food and sell it to England in order to buy food. Nathaniel Bacon put an end to that, but not in the heroic way we were all taught about the rebelling proletariat. What he did was gather a mob and go around burning other poor people’s tobacco crops insuring that he and his mob could sell their own for a higher price and ensuring the others would starve. He then kidnapped the governor’s wife and the wives of his strongest supporters and had Indian allies who ignorantly/innocently saw the struggle as a rebellion against a corrupt leader.

Nathaniel Bacon's rebellion which is colored today as the proletariat rebelling against the wealthy elite nothing of the sort. Bacon and his mob burned the tobacco fields of other poor people in order to get a higher price for their own yield. He was angry with the governor for not allowing him to kill more "Indians" who the governor had made peace with.

Bacon’s tactics worked as you are all familiar with. He celebrated by attacking Indians at night and killing the men, and I think we know what happened to the women. That’s the part left out of PC history books. Bacon attacked the Pamunkey (who are still surviving but currently only number 58 people. It is extremely rare for any of the original Native American groups from the East coast to have survived) He attacked the Occaneecheee and pitched a fit at Governor Berkeley for not appointing him as the General for all Indian affairs. The elite did not care, they wanted people to starve to death as it relieved them of their 7 and 6 year contracts which promised land in exchange of the indentured servitude. Once again Bacon was no more than Berkeley’s land pirate/terrorist who between the two egos nearly burned all of Jamestown. Problem, action, solution.

And here is another myth.
Some people falsely think that Europe had potatoes before contact, they did not. The Irish potato famines were in the 19th century and those were largely manufactured not natural. The English were exporting food to England from a starving Ireland. The immigrants didn’t just leave for freedom, they were driven out to escape starvation and trumped up debts they couldn’t pay. The English won either way. I say England rather than Britain because that is who it was. The Bank of England which is privately owned was a large part in all of this, as was other mega companies like the East India Tea company. The IET was a private corporation larger than some nations. That island has been ruled for a very long time by corporate plutocrats and it still is. The former Republic of the USA is currently headed for an economic collapse and is stuck in perpetual war the driving force of which is Religious fanaticism, namely Zionism and military industrial banking complex.
Potatoes came from the Americas. The first to bring them back to Europe were the Spanish. Also form the New World came, Sweet Potatoes, Tomatoes, Oranges, Grapefruit, Squash, Vanilla, Cranberries, Corn, Turkey, Chili Peppers, Peanuts, Manioc, Pineapple (from Brazil not Hawaii) Avocados, Cashews, (modern/genus Fragaria) Strawberries, and Chocolate. Yes although most of the chocolate in the world today is made by virtual slaves in Africa, it originally came from Mexico.


If you think the crimes of the past have gone away because people don't talk about them and cover things up with stories think again.

In the 1970s Under the Family Planning Act approved By George Bush Sr. 42% of Native women were targeted for sterilization. At the same time another scandal mothers of white children were told that their babies had died and then the perfectly healthy babies were sold to rich families (unaware of what was going on) looking to adopt white children. Ric Flair the famous Pro Wrestler who lives in North Carolina discovered that he was one of those children and he wrote about it in his book. This was in America. Babies could be stolen from mothers and other potential mothers could be sterilized. Bush Sr. was part of the Family Planning Act. Well he is the son of a Nazi sympathizer/financier and just look at what his sons have done particularly George Jr. Oh they can not be as overt in their racism as they used to but believe me it never went away. Bush reminds me of those psychotic Puritans burning people by the river. He thinks he is doing the Lords work and called his wars a crusade. As the saying goes "We have to learn history or we are damned to repeat it."

Who are the real savages? Who are the terrorists?
Converting "savages" gave the paternal English who polluted all their own rivers and at one point deforested their whole island, and had public floggings of women and executions as a stable of entertainment, a reason to justify their brutal conquests of "uncivilized" people. People should read what Red Cloud and other Natives brought to England and France had to say about their visits to the Hellish lands. It's very interesting what he says.

When will we unchain history and not censor the brutal past for the sake of feel good fantasy and stories? Never, probably never. On a lighter note, Turkey Day has morphed into a positive and loosely Native American Holiday. The common foods were once exclusive to the Americas. It's also a time to gather the family, to pig out and give thanks.

We want everyone to enjoy your Thanksgiving feast but we do want to point out the hidden history of it, not that that is what is celebrated today.

Happy Thanksgiving.
For a more happy note, see the Real First Thanksgiving, Croatoan the forgotten colony.

-Ryan Dawson


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