Part One: Common Tales

1. The reading that comes closest to my childhood understanding of the first Thanksgiving would be the article called “The First Thanksgiving” by Nora Smith. Her version is told in a story-telling type of way in a form that young children might understand and enjoy. She talks very generally about the events, not giving any specific dates or names of the Native tribes involved. It talks about how the Pilgrims went in search of “other white people” which just seems to be an elementary way of explaining things like that. The reading focuses on how the children were effected by everything, and how they felt scared when they saw the Indians for the first time. That just seems to resonate with the version I grew up hearing, how the Natives were made out to be savages that were meant to be feared. After gathering more information, we know that the Natives were welcoming, and actually way more important than we initially think they are.
2. The article that comes closest to my current understanding of Thanksgiving would be the reading titled “The Pilgrims and America’s First Thanksgiving” from holiday.net. This article goes much more into depth about the events that took place leading up to the first Thanksgiving, and the events that took place after that made Thanksgiving a National yearly holiday by Lincoln in1863. It talks about the Merchant Adventurers who invested in the journey to the New World. The article overall does a much better job at being more specific and informative about when things took place.
3. My understanding of the first Thanksgiving has changed drastically over the years since I was a young kid. It started to really change once I took history classes that taught about Christopher Columbus and how awful some of the travelers were to the Natives. For some reason, we are taught about Columbus in a way that leaves out all of his flaws and idolizes him to be some great explorer. Once I learned about the discrimination of the Natives, it changed my perspective on how all of the early conflicts in the New World started.

Part Two: Challengers

1. I find these interpretations to be very interesting, because a few of the show pretty drastic variations in the belief of what truly happened with the first Thanksgiving. It is perhaps most interesting of all that we never learn or hear of these views in school especially as children. We only hear the sugar-coated “official story”.
2. I find one article in particular to be pretty compelling and believable enough to question my knowledge, and that reading is called “The Real Story of Thanksgiving” by rushlimnaugh.com. Now just from looking around the website, it does not seem the most credible. But the alternative story he gives us makes a lot of sense. He talks about how the Pilgrims were collectivists, and were under agreement that all of their advancements, including food, was to go into a common store and every family would receive a common share. The Pilgrims suffered in hunger for so many years because the work was indeed very difficult, but there was lack of motivation for anyone to excel in their work. No one saw a purpose in trying to rise to the top or be the source of new advancements or to solve any problems, because there was no motivation for personal gain. Everyone was entitled to all of the same things no matter what. That concept seems to make the most sense.
3. Richard J Maybury- A writer, author and journalist. He has written several entry level books on United States economics, law, and history from alibertarian

Rushlimbaugh.com- Rush Hudson Limbaugh III is an American entertainer, radio talk show host, writer, and conservative political commentator

Thetruthencounter.com- Dave’s gift in the body of Christ is as a pastor-teacher.  His life goal is to communicate God’s truth through the power of the Spirit in practical and skillful ways.

Aier.org- The American Institute for Economic Research. The mission of AIER is to conduct independent, scientific, economic research to educate individuals, thereby advancing their personal interests and those of their nation

4. Knowing the background of the authors definitely changed my perspective of the credibility of their articles. It seems that The American Institute for Economic Research would prove the most credible. I did not know what they were about before, so their article was much less compelling at first.

 

Part Three: Even More Challengers

 

1. I personally found these interpretations to be a bit less interesting than in part two. That is because these interpretations are much more mellow and a bit less outrageous. They lack as many harsh differences in their stories and tend to offer up for subtle explanations for what truly happened.
2. I found one article to be quite compelling, which is called “True, Grim Story of the First Thanksgiving” posted by npr.org. The audio session talks about how the official story we teach children was designed with specific value and purpose behind it. The official story isn’t wrong, there are just many points that are left out. The true story is difficult to teach to children because it is so grim. For example, the Plymouth colony area was leveled out already because it was previously the Wampanoag settlement, but everyone died there of an epidemic. They say we need to understand that Americans are attached to the official story that we all know and love, but we need to practice a more honest history if we intend to truly protect democracy.
3. Kate Zernike NYTimes- is a national correspondent forThe New York Times. She has covered education, criminal justice, Hurricane Katrina, Congress, and national elections. She is the author of Boiling Mad: Inside Tea Party America (2010), on the Tea Party movement. The Christian Science Monitor in 2010 remarked that “probably no other journalist in the United States has devoted as much time to covering the tea party movement”.

Npr.org- National Public Radio is a privately and publicly funded non-profit membership media organization that serves as a national syndicator to a network of 900 public radio stations in the United States.

Educationworld.com– Education World is a complete online resource that teachers, administrators and school staff can visit each day to find high-quality and in-depth original content. The site offers carefully curated news briefs on topics that matter to educators, lesson plans, printables, worksheets and thousands of other classroom-ready resources, EdTech tips and ideas as well as reviews of apps, websites and tech products, and a huge library of professional development articles and columns.

Internet archive “Way Back Machine” web.archive.org- The Internet Archive is a nonprofit digital library with the mission of “universal access to all knowledge“.  It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including web sites, software applications/games, music, movies/videos, moving images, and nearly three million public-domain books

Teaching Tolerance- Founded in 1991 by the Southern Poverty Law Center, Teaching Tolerance is dedicated to reducing prejudice, improving intergroup relations and supporting equitable school experiences for our nation’s children.

4. After looking into the authors of all the readings. My perspective changes a bit. From skimming the articles, they already seemed more informative than part two’s articles. It has proved true that each of the authors/organizations are highly credible and they all have similarly compelling interpretations to consider.

 

 

Part Four: Reflection

1. A historian would research from several different areas and consider various interpretations of the story to try and make sense of the truth. One step they would surely take to make sure their interpretation is accurate is to do a bit of background reading on the sources they are pulling from. The credibility of the source makes a big difference.
2. An average young adult may not do a great job at deciphering trustworthy information if they weren’t trained on how to do so. They might take the information for what it says and not think to really question the information being presented and the value of it.
3. I would look for primary sources in a library maybe in a biography section, or a museum.
4. I would look for reliable secondary sources in a library as well, sources written by historians or documentaries.

Part I

• I think the first reading is closest to what I learned as a child about the first Thanksgiving. All three of them had similarities and they each explained in a bit more detail other pieces of the history. The First was more traditional, the second reading was told in more of a religious tone and the third went into more detail about the couple years after the first Thanksgiving.
• The first article comes closest to my current understanding of the events that took place. The reason is because it doesn’t seem to go into as much detail as the other two and is more traditional.
• I don’t think my understanding of the events have changes as after elementary school I don’t remember learning much more about any of the events. The way I celebrate it has changed as I now celebrate it with my husband and his family. They have many traditions and are a bigger extended family than I had growing up. I also have come to enjoy family get-together’s and now that I have children of my own we have started our own traditions and I try and teach and learn with them and make memories.

Part 2

• I find these interpretations very interesting. The reason I find these interpretations interesting is because it is a different spin on the actual meaning of the first Thanksgiving. I have come to understand as an adult that as children we are sheltered from a lot of harsh realities of life and never told the “truth”. We become adults and are unprepared for how “hard” life really is, and we have to find out on our own that life is not a fairytale.
• As with anything else if you read or hear about something from multiple sources or multiple times you are bound to be influenced or believe some part of the content. I think this information did change my understanding of the post first thanksgiving time and let us know that initially the Pilgrims were contracted to try and make socialism work and they came to realize that it didn’t, so they changed to a free market and this (along with knowledge from the Native Americans) is the reason for their long term success.
• The first author was a high school professor but couldn’t find any title that would give a clear explanation of his views so he came up with his own titles and wrote his own books. He encompassed bits and pieces from other titles and names to come up with his way of looking at things. He has a libertarian perspective and writes in epistolary form. The second author is a radio talk show host who is a conservative political commentator. The third seems to be a business man, religious, served under President Bush, a professor and has written a couple of books. Looks like he is trying to bring the Christian worldview to the body of Crist. Lastly, this one doesn’t seem to have a specific author but more the website is the America Institute for Economic research and the founder was E.C Harwood. He was a military man and intensively studied economics.
• My views did not change with the research of the authors and the website but I do have reservations when it comes to reading anything anyone writes as I know their bias and agendas are part of their writings and they want you to believe what they have come to understand as their truths.

Part 3

• I found these readings to be just as interesting as the readings in step two because they looked more at the Native American aspects. It did go over some of the same information the step two presented, which was the pilgrims starting out with a socialist society and converting to capitalism because socialism wasn’t working. Then in started to bring up a new side that the pilgrims did not change to the free market because they were staving and having other problems or else they would have never had the “first thanksgiving” feast. They changed because they wanted to try something new. Also, interesting was looking at different ways to teach about the origins of Thanksgiving in the classroom.
• I do find these reading to be compelling as they bring up alternate views from the reading in step two and brought up the Native American side. I think that it makes you think how a simple story can have many different meanings, sides and versions depending on what and who you are talking about or to. These readings have changed my understanding, as now I know that the event wasn’t as simple as it seemed to be and there are different things to consider based on who is writing this information.
• The first readings author is a National correspondent at the New York Times and has done extensive coverage of the Tea Party Movement. The second audio was done by NPR’s Bob Edwards who was with NPR for 24 years before going over to Sirius XM radio to host a show. The third article was by Gary Hopkins who is the Founder, Editor in Chief at education world his responsibilities include planning the content of student and teacher editions and managing the teams that produce them. The fourth reading looks to be from Russell M. Peters who is Wampanoag and sits on several councils in the state, local and national level. Lastly, is the suppressed speech written by Frank James, who was a Wampanoag.
• Researching the authors didn’t necessarily change how I viewed the interpretations but it solidified which ones I think are factual versus political views.

Part 4

• I think that a historian would have to do a lot of reading from both first hand and second hand sources, complete fact checking with other known accounts from around that time period, have multiple discussions with other historians that are looking at the same event. Another aspect is to have many proofreaders so that it is considered from many different points of view. I do believe as with anything else that it is very hard to be objective and accurate because everyone interprets events different depending on their our own life experiences. This applies to the Governor of New Plymouth’s account, others interpretations of his account and the historians interpretations of sources.
• The average person would do a lot of Internet research and would most likely come to a conclusion based on the views that they have adapted over the years. I think for the most part these articles where all providing similar accounts of the information provided but interpreting it in a different way based on the views of the author or company they are working for.
• I think you could get a primary source about the first Thanksgiving from a historical museum, library, or from an Internet search from a reliable source.
• I feel like I would look at the library or an Internet search from a reliable source.