Be thankful you live in the present, not the past

If you just can’t think of anything to be thankful for this thanksgiving, be thankful that you live in the Midwest in 2007 rather than in New England in the 1620s.

The Governor of Plymouth (William Bradford) invited Grand Sachem (what the heck is a Sachem, anyway? That’s why we use easier labels like “Chief”) Massasoit and the Wampanoag people to join them in a feast which included fresh eel and corn. Mmmmm, eel.

The Pilgrim settlers fed and entertained the Native Americans for three days, at which point some of the Native Americans went into the forest, killed 5 deer, and gave them to the Bradford as a gift. I don’t have anything against venison, but it seems to me like the Wampanoag family just didn’t know when to go home. That or the Pilgrims were way too polite and couldn’t figure out a sensitive way to let them know that the party was over and they needed to get to bed so they could get up in time for the big sales at the Plymouth Mall Friday morning.

Something I’ve often wondered as a student of history is whether “Wampanoag” is a Wampanoag word or an English one. I guess if there can be tribes with names like Lakota, Ioway, Ute, and Pawnee, there can be one called Wampanoag.

Young parents who give their babies “Black” names like Tanisha, Taquisha and Laquisha confound white people. What if people went back and used Wampanoag names like Squanto and Massasoit? This was a difficult paragraph to read, wasn’t it? Just imagine being poor William Bradford and having to pronounce all the non-English words. People form Iowa have a hard time pronouncing Spanish words like Cholla (Choya), Ocotillo (Oc-a-tiyo) and Saguaro (Sa-wor-o).

The last think I want to do is to be insensitive to Native Americans. Maybe Massasoit should have had a better policy about illegal immigration. His oldest son Wamsutta mysteriously turned up dead after meeting with the leaders of the Plymouth colonists. That made his second son Metacomet angry enough to declare war on the Pilgrims.

If you’re thankful that a woman may become the next President of the United States, thank the Wamanoag for setting the example of encouraging women leaders. Massasoit was Grand Sachem, but Weetamoo was a female Sachem. She drowned in a river running to escape from the Pilgrims. Then there was Awashonks, another woman Sachem who led braves into battle along side Metacomet.

Whew! Those are hard names. Probably why the Pilgrims decided to just call Metacomet “Prince Phillip.”

Poor Bill Bradford. His first wife, Dorothy May Bradford fell overboard from the Mayflower in December 1620, and drowned in Provincetown Harbor. He must have threw himself into his political career, because he was elected governor thirty times. The first Governor, John Carver died in the winter of 1620, along with half the Mayflower’s passengers. I’m not sure if Bradford constituted the first machine politician, centuries before Chicago’s Richard Daley or if it was more like the Mayor’s job in Charter Oak, where nobody else wants to do it so poor Randy just gets stuck with it.

Of course Captain Myles Standish had that whole “Serino Debergiac” thing going on with John Alden and Priscilla Mullins. Mrs. Standish got sick and died in 1621 and Myles hoped to remarry the demure Miss Mullins, but being a shy sailor and not one of the “in-crowd” among the Separatist Pilgrims, he asked his friend John to ask Pris if she thought he was cute and if she’d sit by him at recess. Unfortunately for Capt. Myles, she started crushing on Johnny instead. That’s how those things always seem to work out.

FYI Standish was just “a captain,” “THE Captain” of the HMS Mayflower was Captain Christopher Jones. Why nobody ever remembers him, I don’t know. Presumably he was just under contract to the Plymouth Company and not one of the Pilgrims. Of the 100 passengers on the three-month passage, the “strangers” outnumbered the Pilgrims.

Around 1741, the townspeople of Plymouth wanted to build a wharf. They decided to commemorate their town fathers with big boulder about 650 feet from where the initial settlement was built. Thus was “Plymouth Rock,” our nations first tourist trap, born. It must have been a big rock. In 1774 they decided to haul it up to town hall. Unfortunately, it broke in half and they just left part of it down by the wharf. History is never easy.