You may conceive you learned everything there is to know about the firstThanksgivingback in mark school . It was a simple intimacy : The pilgrims wore buckles , the Native Americans brought corn and everyone made merry until thesunwent down . But that ’s not the most exact personation of the historical event .
In 1607 , a group of British Protestants break from the Church of England and sic sail for Holland , where they stay for 12 years . When their money ran out , some English merchant offered them a fiscal incentive to sail across the Atlantic and put down roots in America . These separatist boarded the Mayflower , a cargo ship that had been used in the wine trade , for a 66 - solar day journey . Violent storms nigh broke the ship ’s independent mast , and the 102 passengers came ashore at Cape Cod , though they originally think to settle closer to Virginia . Nearly one-half died from cold and disease in the coarse New England winter .
The settlers who survived made a comfortable home for themselves in Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts . According to Plymouth records , these masses were promise " first arrival , " and they were just the first wave of settlers who get on America ’s shores in the early 1620s . Scholars dissuade us from calling the settlerspilgrimsbecause this blanket term lumps together the separationist and non - separatists , groups that had different motives for finalize in America .
These first comer install a little but unchanging settlement in Plymouth and became friendly with the Wampanoag kin . The Wampanoags had lived in the area for nearly 12,000 years before the Plymouth colonist arrived , and their first perception of the Europeans were n’t favorable – heroic settlers were filching supply from the kin group ’s storehouses as they crouch down for winter . The Wampanoag tribesman Squanto and an Abenaki named Samoset kindly render them how to harvest corn and demonstrated how to fecundate their crops with Pisces . By March of 1621 , the settlers and the Wampanoags formed an alliance and vowed to protect one another from encroaching tribes . Furthermore , the Wampanoags instruct the Europeans how to survive in treaty with their new environment , alternately sportfishing , hunting and farming for sustenance as the seasons deepen .
As spring and summertime turn to fall , the settlers rejoiced in the bounty of their harvest and planned a solemnisation . When the military man set out to hunt barbaric secret plan , however , the leader of the Wampanoags , Massasoit , erroneously thought their gunfire signal state of war . Massasoit take 90 man with him to call on the settlers and demand an account . It was a happy surprise to see that they were hunt for a fete , and the Wampanoags link up in . For three day to a week ( count on the root ) about 90 Wampanoags and 53 settlers banquet on such modern Thanksgiving staples asturkey , Amerindic corn , pumpkinand chestnuts . They also ate some local delicacies that many of us would get hold quite strange , including eel , swan , seal , crane , eagle and samp ( Indian corn porridge ) .
Many people confuse this harvest jubilation with the first Thanksgiving . We do n’t have as many detail about that outcome because it was a pretty somber ( and genuine ) social function . It occurred in the fall of 1623 , when the settlers offered prayers of thanks for the rain that relieved a severe two - calendar month drought .
