There are different accounts of that feast in Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1621. Some say it was not an observance of thanksgiving for a successful year, but the celebration of a treaty with the Wampanoag tribe and that the natives were invited guests. Others say that it was a celebration of another year of survival for the settlers after a long drought, and that the Wampanoag had not been invited.

I always wondered just why only the native men had been present and none of their women or children. According to some accounts, some of the settlers became a bit too happy during the feast and shot their firearms into the air. A group of native hunters nearby heard the commotion and mistook it as possible hostilities. Having been friendly with the settlers, they went to assess the situation, ready to help if the settlers were in trouble. Seeing that it was simply a rowdy celebration, and the settlers having realized their concern, they were invited to join in the festivities.

The feast itself is another area in question. We have “traditions” involving the foods that were served at that memorable meal – å lasted for days, by the way. This was, by no means, a sit-down dinner with place-cards and an appointed time. The cooking went on constantly and the eating and drinking followed as the food was ready. There are several things that we consider traditional for a Thanksgiving dinner that may not have been served at that historic feast. Pumpkin pie, cranberries, mashed potatoes and turkey come to mind, but history brings a measure of doubt to that belief.

While pumpkins were available and plentiful, they  were served as a cooked vegetable, not in the form of pie – probably much as we eat potatoes which, native to the Andes, had not yet been raised in North America. Cranberries were plentiful, but as sweeteners were scarce, it is doubtful that they were eaten as the sweet, jellied sauces we enjoy. While familiar to the Wampanoag, the berries were used, not as food, but as dyes. There is much disagreement over the matter of the turkey that may or may not have been a part of the meal. In any event, the wild turkeys native to the area at the time had not been crossbred with the plumper, meatier bird from Europe, and did not much resemble either the wild or the domestic turkeys of today.

We know there were at least the five deer brought by the native hunting party. Roasted over a smoky wood fire, the thought of them makes my mouth water. I also envy the abundant fresh seafood the celebrants surely enjoyed – oysters, fish, mussels and lobsters which, I’ve read, were so plentiful that some grew to an amazing five feet long.

There was a variety of vegetables the pilgrims raised; beans, onions, spinach, cabbage, carrots, turnips peas, and corn (called maize) which was not served fresh as we do today, but as a mush or soup, the dried mature kernels having first been pounded to a meal as the Indians had taught them to do.

There are many accounts of “first” Thanksgiving celebrations in the New World, taking place in a number of different locations. We must remember that giving thanks for a good harvest or for surviving a difficult time has been a common practice in civilizations since long before the settlement of the American colonies. There is, no doubt, an element of truth in even the most doubtful version. Stories of thanksgiving celebrations, especially those following survival of extreme hardships, have been passed from generation in written form as well as word of mouth. Facts can easily be forgotten, exaggerated and skewed with each telling. No doubt there is some truth in all those accounts.

What we do know for certain is that the settlers survived, that we owe our present blessings to that survival, and that the celebration has survived for more than 200 years in our colonies and states. It was magazine editor Sarah Hale who persuaded President Lincoln to proclaim it a national holiday in 1863, to be observed on the last Thursday of November. That date prevailed until 1941, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt changed the date to the fourth Thursday of that month.