Hello my friends and Happy Turkey Day for the Americans, which began as a book promotion publicity stunt that got way out of hand.
The Pilgrims and the Wampanoags did indeed share a harvest celebration together at Plymouth in fall 1621, but that moment got forgotten almost immediately, overwritten by the long history of the settlers’ attacks on their Indigenous neighbors.
In 1841, a book that reprinted the early diaries and letters from the Plymouth colony recovered the story of that three-day celebration in which ninety Indigenous Americans and the English settlers shared fowl and deer. This story of peace and goodwill among men who by the 1840s were more often enemies than not inspired Sarah Josepha Hale, who edited the popular women’s magazine Godey’s Lady's Book. (From Heather Cox Richardson . Her daily newsletter is amazing.)
Sarah Josepha Hale's 1827 novel, Northwood: A Tale of New England, gives the first detailed account of the Puritan Thanksgiving feast. She dedicates an entire chapter to the meal, in which she describes the “celebrated pumpkin pie” as “an indispensable part of a good and true Yankee Thanksgiving.” (https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/thanksgiving-pumpkin-pie-culture-war)
Hale then went on to organize letter-writing campaigns to organize for a National Day of Thanksgiving, just like the one in her book. I can only assume she had turkey swag printed up for the occasion.
