t turns out that Thanksgiving is more of a holiday than I thought.  The Pilgrims that migrated to America practiced many days of fasting and thanksgiving in response to “internal and external threats and blessings” according to Martha L. Finch’s essay in  Eating in Eden: Food & American Utopias, edited by Etta M. Madden & Martha L. Finch.  The chapter begins with a recounting of a two month long drought in 1623 Plymouth.  The colonists called a fast for God’s mercy and broke their fast with a day of Thanksgiving when it finally rained. A Pokanoket named
Hobomok, who lived with the colonists, said that the colonists’ god “‘is a good God, for he hath heard you, and sent rain.’” 

Included in this chapter is an account of the thanksgiving on which we base our Thanksgiving Holiday.  The Pilgrims were only in New England for about a year in 1621. 

Finch reminds us that half of the Pilgrims had fallen prey to the
trip over the Atlantic on The
Mayflower and starvation in Plymouth.
But the survivors were thankful “ for what they believed to be God’s
benevolent support of their undertaking, providentially confirmed in a
plentiful harvest.”  She quotes colonist Edward Winslow’s letter to a
friend back in England that described the feast the Pilgrims and the
Pokanokets shared that year and in it, the food does not differ much
from what many of us will have this Thursday: fowl, deer, corn, squash,
beans, nuts, berries, fish, eel, and cornbread.  Yep, eels.  Come to
think of it, I did have a friend in elementary school who said that his
family ate octopus during the holidays. 

The Pilgrims liked sweet cornbread that was made “by mixing ground
and sifted parched corn with water and dried wild strawberries or
cranberries, maple syrup, or honey.”  They also ate “a ‘mess of
pottage,’ or ‘succotash.’”  The Pilgrims and the Native Americans, just
as the legend says, supplied the food.

I’m not sure if I can wait two whole days, but soon I’ll be home
eating my own share of fowl, which comes from domesticated tofurkey
raised on farms in Midwestern states like Nebraska or Iowa, killed
humanely and shipped to my whole food store’s freezer or fridge.  I’ll
also enjoy some dressing, macaroni and cheese (the non-commercial-oven-made-goodness kind), greens, cornbread, biscuits, beans, candied yams, sweet
potato pie, pineapple upside down cake. . . maybe I should fast today
and tomorrow in preparation for Thursday.

Have a good Thanksgiving,

DeEee

Read the table of contents and the introduction to Eating in Eden: Food & American Utopias

For traditional Native American recipes, check out Recovering Our Ancestors’ Gardens: Indigenous Recipes and Guide to Diet and Fitness By Devon Abbott Mihesuah

For Crow Indian specific recipes, visit the book page for A Taste of Heritage: Crow Indian Recipes and Herbal Medicines By Alma Hogan Snell