Don't believe everything you learned in school about the Pilgrims and the Native people who met them.
From the landing on Plymouth Rock to the harmonious feast with the native Wampanoags, the story about the Pilgrims — and by extension, the story of Thanksgiving — is rife with myth and inaccuracy.
Here are four myths that have been corrected based on documented history:
Myth: The Pilgrims were the first Europeans to land in Southern New England and to interact with the Native people.
The commonly told version of the 1620 Mayflower landing is that the Pilgrims were the first Europeans to step onto the shores of Massachusetts. According to historic accounts, however, Europeans had been visiting New England since at least the late 1400s. The Basques, English and French had a thriving fishing industry off the coast of Maine and New England. The first documented European to make contact with either the Narragansetts or the Wampanoags in Southern New England was Italian explorer Giovanni de Verrazano, who, in 1524, while sailing for the French, traveled up Narragansett Bay and traded with the Native people he found there.
In fact, several Native Americans in the area spoke English by the time the Pilgrims arrived in 1620, picked up either through trading encounters or by previously being taken into slavery by the English but they either escaped or were returned to the area. Samoset, Tisquantum, or “Squanto,” and Epenow, all spoke English and played important roles in burgeoning relations between the Pilgrims and the Wampanoags, as detailed by historian and author David Silverman in his book, "This Land Is Their Land: The Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving."
Myth: The Pilgrims came to the New World seeking religious freedom.
The group we most often associate with the Pilgrims — the Puritan congregation that separated from the Church of England — did, at least partially, come to America looking for a place where they could practice their religion without persecution. Puritans made up less than half of the more than 100 people who crossed the Atlantic on the Mayflower and settled what would eventually become Plymouth, as detailed in William Bradford's "Of Plimouth Plantation."
The main reason they came to America was to maintain their English culture and to make money. After splitting off from the Church of England near the turn of the 17th century, the congregation fled to Holland, which allowed for more religious freedom. But they found it difficult to find jobs to support themselves and were worried their children were being too influenced by Dutch culture and morals.
They secured a charter from The London Company to start a colony in America — England’s second, after Jamestown in Virginia — and began gathering a group of people to travel with them, mainly servants, explorers and sailors. It’s also worth noting that, while the Pilgrims wanted the freedom to practice their religion, that freedom did not extend to anyone else. One of their main goals was to convert the Native people to Christianity.
Myth: The Pilgrims intended to settle in Patuxet/Plymouth or, alternately, the Pilgrims meant to settle in Virginia but they were blown off course.
While the story of the first Thanksgiving usually starts with the Pilgrims completing their oceanic crossing by stepping off the Mayflower onto Plymouth Rock (another myth!) the area then known as Patuxet and later christened Plymouth was actually the Pilgrims’ second landing. On Nov. 11, 1620, the voyagers dropped anchor on the tip of Cape Cod and came ashore at what is now Provincetown.
They were driven off about a month later, due to intimidation by Nauset tribesmen, who did not take too kindly to the new European arrivals. The Pilgrims got back on the ship and sailed further into Cape Cod Bay to settle at the site of the relatively abandoned Wampanoag village of Patuxet in December. Most of the Pilgrims spent the rest of the winter living on the Mayflower until enough buildings were built and they could settle the area in earnest in 1621.
Alternatively, there is also an idea that the Pilgrims were originally meant to settle in Virginia, near England’s first colony, Jamestown. While Virginia was considered by the Pilgrims as a destination, the charter granted to them by The London Company covered the area north of Virginia, named New England. As Bradford writes, their destination was meant to be the area around the mouth of the Hudson River, where Dutch traders had tapped into the lucrative fur trade. The Pilgrim's goal was to claim that area, and the fur trade, for England.
When the Pilgrims sighted Cape Cod, they realized they’d been blown off course and tried to head south for the Hudson River, only to encounter dangerously rocky shoals causing them to turn back. Since Cape Cod technically was part of New England, they decided to stay there.
Myth: The Pilgrims and Wampanoags came together in November 1621 for a Thanksgiving feast.
There’s a lot to unpack with this one, and not just because it forms the basis of our country’s Thanksgiving Day story.
First, while the Puritans did have “days of Thanksgiving” they were literally the opposite of a big, fun, family feast. They were usually days of fasting and prayer that maybe would be broken with a larger meal.
Edward Winslow, in his writing about the first few years in Plymouth titled “Mourt’s Relation: A Journal of the Pilgrims in Plymouth,” does mention a celebration marking the settlement’s first successful harvest, probably held around October 1621. Given the context, it certainly wasn’t a huge deal but it would later become one in modern America.
According to Winslow, despite the fact that the Wampanoags had allowed the Pilgrims to live on their land, provided them with aid and taught them how to successfully grow native crops, the Wampanoags were not invited to this celebration. They arrived only after the Pilgrims started shooting their guns into the air. Believing themselves to be under attack, the Wampanoags head sachem, Massasoit, showed up at the settlement with about 90 warriors expecting war. Instead, they found a celebration and they decided to stay, with their hunters bringing in five deer as a contribution. Rather than a happy celebration of camaraderie and partnership, the feast that would serve as the basis of the traditional Thanksgiving myth was actually quite a tense affair, fraught with political implications.