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Imagine All the People: Debunking the Pilgrims + Pumpkin Pie Myth
I doubt I have a drop of American Indian blood — my grandparents were born in Ireland, Italy and New York City. But I’ve been learning more and more about our landcestors.
By the time the young women in our family (now 25 and 13) were kindergartners, shaking cream in glass jars until it turned into butter, they heard pushback against the old, burnished Thanksgiving story: Pilgrims and Indians gathering to share turkey and pumpkin pie.
The true tale, even children know, goes beyond cardboard cutouts of black-hatted Pilgrims in buckled shoes, happy Indians and striped teepees. It trails back to a painful loss.
Now we are trying to make up after 400 years and honor our honest-to-goodness original landowners; the Native Americans, who were not clinking cups of cider with people who took their turf. The wooded tracts they foraged, fertile acres they farmed, the fishing coves, the sandy shores — those treasures changed hands, parcel by precious parcel, in deals that swindled the Indians.
Many of their names remain. Nantucket, according to capecod.com, is a “rough interpretation of the Algonquin term for ‘Faraway Land’ — 3,000 Wampanoags lived on the island when it was taken by the English in 1659.” Mashpee, which you zip past on Route 6 East en route to the Outer…
