Thanksgiving

1620

Plymouth, 1620. The Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe’s own timeline begins: “Pilgrims established a settlement on Wampanoag land in Plymouth.” The Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) says its nation once held southeastern Massachusetts and eastern Rhode Island, “over 67 distinct tribal communities,” and that with the settlers came “disease that virtually wiped out whole villages.” Bradford wrote that “thousands” died about three years before the English came and that Squanto was a native of the place with “scarce any left alive besids him selfe”; he names no disease. United American Indians of New England says the diseases came on trading ships before the Pilgrims, and the Plimoth Patuxet museum says the Pokanoket were left weakened while their Narragansett neighbors went unharmed.

22 Mar 1621

The agreement. On 22 March 1621 Ousamequin, the Pokanoket leader the English called Massasoit, made an agreement with Plymouth’s governor, John Carver. Bradford lists its terms: mutual aid in war, but also that Ousamequin must “send ye offender” among his people to be punished by the English, and that his men must “leave their bows & arrows behind them” when they visited. The Plimoth Patuxet museum says the English likely saw a broad alliance, while Wampanoag communities governed themselves and Ousamequin likely saw an agreement between the Pokanoket and Plymouth alone. The alliance, it says, “survived for nearly fifty years” before it could not “withstand the population pressures and land use controversies” that ended in violence in 1675.

Mar 1621

Tisquantum. Samoset told the English of another man, Squanto, “a native of this place, who had been in England.” Bradford, the colony’s governor, says a ship’s master named Hunt carried him off with others, thinking to sell them as slaves, and that he reached England and came back with a Mr. Dermer, an Englishman sent to explore. Bradford adds that Squanto “stood them in great stead” when the settlers planted corn. Everything here about him is an Englishman’s account, and Bradford gives no year for the kidnapping.

1621

The feast. In the autumn of 1621, Winslow wrote, “our governor sent four men on fowling,” and during “other recreations” the settlers “exercised our arms” while the Indians came, Massasoit “with some ninety men”; they feasted three days and the guests killed five deer. About half the Mayflower passengers were alive: 24 men, five women and 24 children and teenagers. The Wampanoag and Penobscot historian Nancy Eldridge, quoted by the museum, thought it “probable” that Ousamequin’s coming “was a political show of force.” The letter is the only eyewitness account, and the museum says no Wampanoag record from the time is known.

1621–1863

The school-book version. Winslow has no invitation, only “many of the Indians coming amongst us,” and he does not call the feast a thanksgiving; Bradford writes of the small harvest and “wild Turkies” but not of a feast or guests. In 1841 a minister, Alexander Young, put the label on it in a footnote, and the museum says that in the 1800s Sarah Josepha Hale and others made the Pilgrims the holiday’s founders in popular imagination. Bradford does record a day of thanksgiving of the colonists’ own, after rain broke a drought.

26 May 1637

Mistick Fort. The Mashantucket Pequot Museum’s report says the war began in 1636 when Massachusetts Bay forces “attacked and burned a village,” which the Pequot under Sassacus took as unprovoked; Pequot attacks followed at Saybrook and, in April 1637, at Wethersfield, where nine English settlers died. At dawn on 26 May about 77 English with 100 Mohegan and River Indian allies and 300 Narragansett and Niantic attacked the Pequot fort. Captain Mason wrote, “I then resolved to set it on fire,” and Bradford wrote that the English “brought out fire, and sett them on fire,” and that those who escaped “were slaine with ye sword.” The report counts more than 400 Pequot men, women and children dead; Bradford wrote “about 400.” The report says it was “historically characterized a massacre,” and also a short, intense battle the English nearly lost.

1637–1638

The captives. The report says captured Pequot men were killed, while women and children “were given to colonists as spoils of war,” held under allied nations, or sold into slavery and shipped to the Caribbean. Winthrop’s journal puts those “slain and taken” at about seven hundred, and says fifteen boys and two women were sent toward Bermuda but carried instead to Providence Isle. The Hartford Treaty of September 1638 assigned the Pequot captives to the Mohegan and Narragansett.

15 Jun 1637

The second version. UAINE says the first official Day of Thanksgiving was proclaimed in 1637 for the return of Massachusetts men from Mystic. Winthrop’s own journal says that on 15 June 1637 “a day of thanksgiving was kept in all the churches for the victory obtained against the Pequods, and for other mercies.” So a thanksgiving day tied to the Pequot war is on the record. What the sources used here do not show is that it was the first, or that it led to the 1621 feast or the holiday of 1863, whose proclamation names no Pequot. The counts differ: UAINE says over 700 died at Mystic, the Pequot museum’s report more than 400 there, and Winthrop about 700 slain and taken in all.

1675–1676

King Philip’s War. The National Park Service writes that English land purchases and a series of hostile incidents led to the war of 1675. In December about 1,000 colonists invaded Rhode Island and attacked the Narragansett winter village in the Great Swamp, after a neutrality treaty and after Boston demanded the Wampanoag refugees there as hostages; the Park Service calls it “the Great Swamp Fight, or Massacre” and says almost seven hundred men, women and children died.

1675–1676

The war’s course. Native armies forced the abandonment of most English settlements in central Massachusetts, and the Narragansett burned Providence. On 9 August 1676 Plymouth’s governor condemned 110 Indigenous men, women and children to “perpetual servitude and slavery,” saying they had helped Metacom and done “Many inhumaine Crueltyes and injuryes,” and authorized Captain Thomas Smith of the ship Seaflower to transport and sell them. The Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe’s timeline says over forty percent of the Wampanoag population was killed and many healthy males sold as slaves.

3 Oct 1789

A day set by the nation. In 1789 both Houses of Congress asked President Washington to recommend a day of public thanksgiving. His proclamation, written in New York, set Thursday 26 November and gave the reasons: the end of the war, the new Constitution, and “civil and religious liberty.” It does not mention Plymouth, the Pilgrims or any Native nation.

28 May 1830

The Removal Act. Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act on 28 May 1830; it passed the Senate 28 to 19 and the House 101 to 97. It let the President set aside western land “for the reception of such tribes or nations of Indians as may choose to exchange the lands where they now reside, and remove there.” Jackson called the policy “benevolent.” The Park Service counts about 100,000 people of the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek and Seminole nations and others who moved west between 1830 and 1850 after the government “coerced treaties or used the U.S. Army against those resisting,” and says an estimated 3,500 Creeks died in Alabama and on the way.

1832

Worcester v. Georgia. Gold was found on Cherokee land in 1830, and Georgia held lotteries “to give Cherokee land and gold rights to whites”; the state annexed the Cherokee lands and “abolished their government, courts, and laws.” The Cherokee Nation hired lawyers for the missionary Samuel Worcester, sentenced to four years’ hard labour, and in 1832 the Supreme Court, Chief Justice John Marshall writing, held Georgia’s law void. Georgia ignored the ruling and held the missionaries until a pardon in January 1833; Jackson “did not enforce the decision,” writing to General Coffee that it “has fell still born, and they find that it cannot coerce Georgia to yield to its mandate.” The Georgia Encyclopedia adds that the ruling did not protect the Cherokee from removal.

1835–1839

The treaty and the road. In December 1835 the United States sought out a minority at New Echota who, the Park Service says, “believed that they might survive as a people only if they signed a treaty”: only 300 to 500 Cherokee were there, none of them elected officials of the Cherokee Nation, and twenty signed (another Park Service page says 19). More than 15,000 Cherokee protested, and the Senate ratified the treaty by one vote. In May 1838 federal troops and state militias began the roundup; the missionary doctor Elizur Butler estimated that over 4,000 died, nearly a fifth of the Cherokee population, and the Park Service says no one knows how many. The reconstituted Cherokee Nation made Tahlequah its capital.

1862

Mankato, 1862. The Minnesota Historical Society writes that in August 1862, “with the Dakota facing starvation,” some factions attacked white settlements; the treaties had promised reservations “in perpetuity” until the Senate replaced the words with “at the discretion of the President.” Hundreds of settlers were killed in the first days, though most Dakota chose not to fight. A military commission sentenced 303 Dakota men to death, Lincoln cut the list to 39 names, and on 26 December 38 were hanged at Mankato, the largest mass execution in U.S. history; two of those hanged were hanged by mistake. The law professor Carol Chomsky says the authorities did not recognize that they were dealing with “the aftermath of a war fought with a sovereign nation.”

1862–1863

What came after. In November 1862 Minnesota’s governor, Alexander Ramsey, declared that “the Sioux Indians of Minnesota must be exterminated or driven forever beyond the borders of the state.” About 1,600 Dakota women, children and older men were marched to Fort Snelling, attacked by mobs of settlers on the way, and nearly 300 prisoners died over the winter. In 1863 Minnesota put bounties of $25 to $200 on Dakota scalps, and a federal law, the Dakota Expulsion Act, ended all Dakota treaties and made it illegal for Dakota to live in the state. The Society says the Act has never been repealed; we did not check the statute book.

3 Oct 1863

One day for the whole country. Sarah Josepha Hale had campaigned for years for a fixed national Thanksgiving; on 28 September 1863 she wrote to Lincoln, and on 3 October he proclaimed the last Thursday of November. The Park Service says Secretary of State Seward wrote the proclamation and that it “may have never been issued” without Hale. It speaks of the year’s harvests and of the war’s widows and orphans, and it names no Native nation, no Plymouth and no Pilgrims; no source used here connects it to the Mankato hangings. The Library of Congress adds that Confederate states did not consider themselves bound by it, and that Congress made Thanksgiving a national holiday in 1870.

29 Nov 1864

Sand Creek. In May 1864, the Park Service says, Colorado soldiers shot the Cheyenne chief Lean Bear, who wore a peace medal given to him by Lincoln; in June the murdered Hungate family was displayed in Denver, and settlers panicked. On 29 November about 675 U.S. Volunteers under Colonel John Chivington attacked a camp of an estimated 700 to 750 people who had been told “they would be under the protection of the military”; Black Kettle raised an American flag and, “as instructed,” a white flag.

29 Nov 1864

The death toll. The Park Service says the soldiers killed over 230 Cheyenne and Arapaho, about 150 of them women, children and elderly, and that at least 16 soldiers died. Chivington reported hundreds of warriors killed and wrote, “No white flag is raised”; his staff counted 300 to 800 dead and other soldiers 100 to 150. Captain Silas Soule kept his men clear and later testified; he was shot dead in Denver.

1865

Congress looks. In January 1865 Congress ordered its Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War to inquire into the attack, and its report said of Chivington that he “deliberately planned and executed a foul and dastardly massacre.” It left his motive open, noting that some thought it was ambition and others a wish to avoid dangerous service. In October 1865, the Park Service says, officials persuaded “a handful of Cheyenne and Arapaho chiefs” to sign the Treaty of the Little Arkansas, which condemned “the gross and wanton outrages” at Sand Creek and promised reparations. The same treaty removed Colorado from Cheyenne and Arapaho treaty lands, and the Park Service says the reparations were never paid.

1887–1969

Land after 1887. In 1887 Congress passed the Dawes Act, allotting 160-acre tracts to heads of families and opening the rest of the reservations to homesteaders; the Park Service says tribal government was eliminated and reservation lands reduced by over 60%, the Minnesota Historical Society that Indian-held lands fell by more than two thirds. In 1934 the Indian Reorganization Act reversed the privatization and allowed a return to tribal self-government. In the 1950s and 1960s, the Park Service writes, government policies forced tribal members off reservations and into cities. The Interior Department’s 2024 report says the United States’ official objective was to sever the connection between Native peoples and their territories.

29 Dec 1890

Wounded Knee. After Sitting Bull was killed on 15 December 1890, about 200 Hunkpapa Lakota fled to join Big Foot’s Miniconjou band, which set out for Pine Ridge and was stopped by the 7th Cavalry; on 29 December, as soldiers disarmed the camp, a shot was fired. The ethnologist James Mooney, who read the War Department files and spoke to survivors, concluded that “the first shot was fired by an Indian,” that the soldiers’ answering volley and the Hotchkiss guns trained on the camp fell on women and children, and that “the wholesale slaughter of women and children was unnecessary and inexcusable.”

29 Dec 1890

The count. The dead were never counted exactly: the Adjutant-General said 128, the Park Service 150 to 300, the AP about 250, Mooney “very nearly 300,” and Congress, which in 1990 called it the Wounded Knee Massacre, “350-375” dead and injured; the Adjutant-General put soldiers killed at 31. The resolution places it in a policy of “forcibly removing the Indian tribes” from the path of settlement.

1970

A day of mourning. UAINE says Wamsutta (Frank B.) James was asked to speak at a Massachusetts banquet for the 350th anniversary of the Pilgrims’ landing in 1970, and that the organizers, after seeing his speech, told him he would not be allowed to give it because “anything inflammatory would have been out of place”; they would let him speak only from a text they supplied, and “Wamsutta refused to have words put into his mouth.”

1970

The speech. His speech, UAINE says, was delivered at the first National Day of Mourning on Cole’s Hill, where he said the Pilgrims had robbed the graves of his ancestors and that “before 50 years were to pass, the Wampanoag would no longer be a free people.” UAINE’s reason for mourning, in its words: “Thanksgiving Day is a reminder of the genocide of millions of Native people, the theft of Native lands and the erasure of Native cultures”; the Plimoth Patuxet museum says “For many Wampanoag people, Thanksgiving is a day of mourning.” UAINE is the only account of the 1970 events among our sources.

1870–2021

The nations today. The Wampanoag nations did not vanish: the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe and the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) are federally recognized tribal governments, and Mashpee says its people have lived in this country “for more than 12,000 years.” The Mashpee timeline records that in 1870 Massachusetts abolished the Mashpee district and conveyed the remaining 3,000 to 5,000 acres without the federal approval the 1790 Act required; that Mashpee children were sent to the Carlisle Indian School in 1904 to 1916; that the tribe filed a land claim in 1976; and that it was recognized in 2007, its reservation approved in 2015 and confirmed by Assistant Secretary Bryan Newland in 2021. What these sources show is a long fight over land and recognition, not a killing campaign today; the wider toll of disease and war is for the story The Great Dying.

1990–2025

The medals. In 1990 Congress adopted Senate Concurrent Resolution 153, expressing “deep regret on behalf of the United States,” but did not revoke the 20 Medals of Honor given to 7th Cavalry soldiers, whose awards, the AP says, “cite a range of actions including bravery, efforts to rescue fellow troops and actions to ‘dislodge Sioux Indians’ who were concealed in a ravine.”

1990–2025

The 2024 review. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered a review in 2024 after a recommendation in the 2022 defense bill, and in September 2025 Pete Hegseth announced the soldiers keep their medals, saying the review panel “concluded that these brave soldiers should, in fact, rightfully keep their medals”; the AP says the report may not be made public. Cheyenne River Sioux Chairman Ryman LeBeau said the decision came with “no contact or request for consultation to the Tribes,” Standing Rock Sioux Chairwoman Janet Alkire called Wounded Knee “an unprovoked attack,” and the National Congress of American Indians asked Congress to pass the Remove the Stain Act. The regiment’s coat of arms, the AP notes, still shows a Native chief’s head to “commemorate Indian campaigns.”

2021–2024

The boarding schools. In June 2021 Interior Secretary Deb Haaland ordered an investigation. The Department’s 2024 volume lists 417 schools in 37 states or then-territories, confirms at least 973 children dead and at least 74 burial sites, and finds that the assimilation of Indian children “was intentional and part of that broader goal of Indian territorial dispossession.” Assistant Secretary Bryan Newland said the reports prove what Indigenous peoples have long known: “federal policies were set out to break us, obtain our territories, and destroy our cultures and our lifeways.”