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.

Step 1

I would say that the third article is the closet to what i learned about Thanksgiving. A lot of the terms spurred thoughts of my childhood. Names like John Smith and Governor Bradford sounded very familiar. I remember hearing about the Mayflower Compact but never being told what it really pertained to. My understanding of the first Thanksgiving has never really been challenged because i have never looked into the history of it.  I find it very interesting that Thanksgiving wasn’t even made a national holiday until 200+ years later by Lincoln.

 

Step 2

I found these articles very compelling. They have not completely changed how i view the “pilgrims”. These articles don’t really explain the interactions between the Native Americans and the settlers. They are based heavily around the fact that socialism or a commonwealth idea, doesn’t work.  I do find that as primary source, Bradford himself, states this almost 400 years ago, but still to this day we have presidential candidates trying to legitimize socialism as a good idea.  I feel author of the third article “Pilgrims, Socialism and Thanksgiving” is not as credible as some of the other authors. He doesn’t use direct quotes or paraphrase from any sources. His article feels like it is just his opinion of how it all went down. The first article written by Richard J. Maybury is much more backed in research. After researching about Maybury he has a degree in economics. He also taught economics as a public school teacher for many years. Based on this research i feel that his viewpoint is sound and not too biased. I also feel the last article “The Real Meaning of Thanksgiving…” to be very accurate. After researching about AIER and learning that they are a nonprofit who only cares about providing accurate information.

 

Step 3

I found this set of articles interesting but they did not change my view of Thanksgiving either. The story that every child is told is not completely wrong or right. It has been washed down to a happy story about prosperity and giving thanks. I felt that these articles were more built around how to be more politically correct during the Thanksgiving time. There was only 1 article that actually helped understand Thanksgiving from the Native American’s viewpoint. That was the “The Suppressed Speech of Wamsutta”. The “The Pilgrims were…Socialists?” by Kate Zernike was a great article to counteract the previous section of articles. After reading up about the author and her previous works. She sets herself apart by being fair and unbiased even though she speaks from a Liberal agenda.

 

Step 4

In order to be a truly objective historian, you would need to put your opinions and previous understandings of the situation aside and research every side as thoroughly as possible.  To be as accurate as possible you would need to kind of stitch together all the information into a bigger picture to fully understand it. I felt that the second and some of the third set of articles were to politically biased, right against left type stuff. In order to build the big picture you need to separate the chaff from the grain. While it is interesting that the Pilgrims lived under a kind of socialist system, it doesn’t really bear any weight to “the first Thanksgiving”. I would start with the original telling of the first thanksgiving and build from there, trying to see if that information was accurate. If i were to look for primary sources i would start with Bradford’s journal/diary. Does Governor Bradford’s diary tell more about the first thanksgiving or is it just about the economic systems they used in those times? Were there other journals from Pilgrims that could fill in some holes? Did the Native Americans keep any journals as well?  Looking into secondary sources should be fairly easy, making sure they are accurate and reliable would be more difficult. I would look into Wamsutta more to find a starting point and work my way backwards. Also any museum exhibits and books would be a decent source to start looking into.