Thanksgiving Dinner for 142

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First Thanksgiving, Pilgrims

The first Thanksgiving was a three-day feast, so the modern-day holiday would be the equivalent of day two of the 1621 event for what was then an English settlement.

At the party were 52 English settlers and 90 Wampanoag guests. That’s right. The guests outnumbered the hosts. The cooks among the settlers: the four surviving married women, five teenage girls, and a maidservant.

Many traditions we associate with Thanksgiving are from the 19th century. It wasn’t even an annual holiday until President Abraham Lincoln designated it in 1863.

In the 17th century, the settlers didn’t know they were setting a precedent, which likely occurred between September 21 and November 11. They were just glad to be alive after a year of hunger and hardship, and they wanted to celebrate with food and recreation.

“The First Thanksgiving at Plymouth” (1914) By Jennie Augusta Brownscombe, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

According to settler Edward Winslow, four Englishmen had gone fowling and killed enough to feed the settlers for a week. The Wampanoag guests stopped by, were entertained for three days, and contributed five deer (about 360 pounds of venison if they were mature bucks).

The fare was not as portrayed in Standish of Standish: A Story of the Pilgrims, an 1889 novel by Jane Goodwin Austin (an account later taught as part of school curricula). Among other things, Austin describes a long table laden with stew, clam chowder, turnips, oysters, venison, ale and root beer, hasty pudding, and of course a turkey, only stuffed with beechnuts instead of bread.

The real menu probably had fowl, venison, corn (also called maize), ale, and perhaps cod and a pudding made from goat’s milk. It’s possible the fowl was wild turkey – the Plymouth Plantation is in its range – but the area also supported geese, ducks, and passenger pigeons.

The tale of two disparate peoples coming together to celebrate has been mythologized over the centuries. Still, I must admit I love this story of friendship and fellowship, even though I feel sorry for the women who had to cook for all these people.

Originally published November 2013 in English Historical Fiction Authors.

Sources

“The First Thanksgiving,” Christian Science Monitor

Butcher & Packer

Eating History, Andrew F Smith

A Thousand Years over a Hot Stove, Laura Schenone

Overwhelmed by Choice: Writing about a Medieval Pilgrim’s Day

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Historical Fiction, medieval, Middle Ages, Pilgrims, The Ashes of Heaven's Pillar, The Cross and the Dragon

“A Day in the Life” should be an easy thing for a historical novelist to write about. After all, the very thing we research is the daily routine of the era. But when it came to writing about a day in the life of an eighth-century pilgrim, a lot of variables appeared before me.

Where does the day start? In a city? An abbey? The woods? And where does it end? The aforementioned city, abbey, or woods? How about a village or an estate?

And whose day is it? A woman desperate for a child? A man hoping a saint will cure him of the chronic coughs that sometimes cause him to spit up blood? A teen girl who hears voices that tell her to set her home on fire? An old priest wanting to atone for sins and spend less time in Purgatory? A man who murdered someone in a fight in a tavern?

And what social class is this pilgrim? An aristocrat has different transport, companions, and lodging than a commoner.

Finally, I settled on a character I had already created for The Cross and the Dragon and The Ashes of Heaven’s Pillar, Sister Elisabeth, who has heard about the afterlife for all 50 of her years and would like to spend less time in Purgatory, perhaps even avoid it. Read my post at Unusual Historicals for what a day in medieval pilgrim’s life was like.

The Pilgrimage to Canterbury by Thomas Stothard, 1806-7