The Goldwater clan is spending the Thanksgiving holiday with my folks in bucolic Clayton, NC. The other evening, I was reading five year-old Princess Goldwater her usual allotment of bedtime stories, and came upon one of her books appropriately entitled, “The First Thanksgiving”. As I read through the book, I was struck by the tone of several of its passages, including these selected ditties:
“The Pawtuxets planted corn, beans, squash and pumpkins…every year they gave thanks to Mother Earth at the Green Corn Dance….In the early 1600’s, Englishmen visited their shores more and more frequently. These men sailed in ships with butterfly wings, killed with guns and kidnapped Wampanoag men for slaves. The Indians became deeply afraid of white men…”
“As Squanto jubilantly strode into his village in 1619, he suddenly slowed his stride…no children clambered over the big rock. No voices sounded. The homes they called wetus were skeletons. The cornfields had grown into weeds…all of his people were dead because of a European plague...”
“The Pilgrims decided to seek their fortune in the New World…they carried firearms and armor to protect themselves against the vicious animals and the people of the New World they called “savages”…”
“Although the military men and Miles Standish had been shot at by Indians on Cape Cod, the Pilgrims had yet to meet one “savage”…”
Wow, chew on that between your turkey and pumpkin pie today – white men suck. The book further goes to note that, if it wasn’t for the selfless heroics and agricultural know-how of the Native Americans, the first settlers were as good as goners.
And how did we repay them? We enslaved the healthy ones, and exterminated the weak and invalid by coughing on them.
Personally, I like this version of the first Thanksgiving better.
Thursday, November 27, 2008
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