How do we know about the first Thanksgiving?

The first known written description of the Pilgrims’ first “Thanksgiving” is a letter written by Edward Winslow months after the event. The incident possibly took place in late September or early October of 1621, and the first account was written down by Winslow in a letter dated December 11, 1621. The letter was published as part of Relation or Iournall of the beginning and proceddings of the English Plantation settled at Plimoth in New England, by certain English Aduenturers both Merchants and others (London, 1622), a book that is also known as Mourt’s Relation. The book was written by both Edward Winslow and William Bradford, but somewhere along the way authorship was falsely attributed to George Morton aka George Mourt, hence, Mourt’s Relation.

A second description of the first Thanksgiving was given by William Bradford in his work Of Plimouth Plantation which he wrote between 1630 and 1651. That means that Bradford recorded the events of the day at a minimum of nine years after it happened.

Thankful for what?

The Pilgrim settlers had a lot to be thankful for in the fall of 1621. They survived the Atlantic Ocean crossing of 1620 to arrive on the New England coast in the dead of winter. Starting in December 1620, they attempted to scratch out a settlement within the ruins of Patuxent, an empty Indian settlement. Patuxent was empty because of a disease, probably smallpox, wiped out the native inhabitants a few years before the Pilgrims’ arrival. The Pilgrims called the new settlement Plimouth Plantation. Living in the shadows of old Patuxent, half the colony’s settlers died from disease, malnutrition, and cold during the first winter of 1620-1621.

Notwithstanding the frosty beginnings, the colony began to thrive in the spring and fall of 1621. The 53 surviving settlers built seven houses for private use and four common buildings for company use. They planted 20 acres of corn, six acres of peas, and six acres of barley. Plymouth not only survived, it started to grow and blossom.

How did they prepare for Thanksgiving?

In preparation for celebrating the harvest in the fall of 1621, Governor William Bradford sent four men to hunt fowl. In just one day, the hunters managed to kill enough fowl to feed the colony for a week. During the “recreations” in the lead up to the festivities, the roughly 20 men of the colony prepared for war by drilling (“exercised our Armes”).

Then Massasoit, the sachem of the Wampanoag tribe, arrived at Plimouth Plantation accompanied by 90 of his Wampanoag Indians. According to Mourt’s Relation, the Indians killed five deer and presented them as gifts. The Pilgrims hosted the Wampanoag over a three-day feast. Bradford added in Of Plimouth Plantation that “besids water foule, ther was great store of wild Turkies, of which they tooke many, besids venison

Who attended?

Roughly 50 English Pilgrims and 90 Wampanoag Indians attended the first Thanksgiving. Despite all the modern depictions of Pilgrims outnumbering the Indians, the Pilgrims were outnumbered almost 2:1.

What was Recorded?



“Many of the Indians coming amongst vs, and amongst the rest their greated King Massasoyt, with some nintie men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed fiue Deere, which they brought to the Plantation and bestowed on our Governour, and vpon the Captaine, and others.”

In addition to the description of the first Thanksgiving in his letter, Winslow described the food the Pilgrims ate throughout the year including the crops they planted and the seafood and fruit they harvested from the wild. Additionally, Winslow described the local Indians, the Pilgrims’ response to a false alarm French attack, an English resupply ship, and provided advice for future colonists.

On Plimouth Plantation recorded William Bradford’s interpretation of the history of the Pilgrims from 1608 to 1647, covering their time in England, the Netherlands, and Massachusetts. The portion pertaining to the first Thanksgiving is just one paragraph in a 500 + page handwritten text. I uploaded a color PDF of the document that I originally downloaded from the State Library of Massachusetts. (found here William Bradford Of Plimouth Plantation)

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