David J. Silverman (1) (1971–)

this is an incredible history. it is so full of detail and context and blows any mythology about thanksgiving and the years leading up to and after out of the water. it's a lot to keep straight and track of, and that makes it hard sometimes to follow exactly who is doing something or who they were related to or where they were located before their current place. there maybe could have been a way to organize the book differently, that made that easier to follow, but i'm not sure what that would look like. this is just so comprehensive that there's a lot to remember.

he does an excellent job of not just telling the history, but also offering alternative interpretations or tellings if something is unclear or unsure. he gives his reason for favoring his version of events, but doesn't fully discount differing ideas, or tells the reader why they aren't likely.

there is so much information packed into this book, and it's generally understandable and readable and digestible. (it's the "generally" there that keeps this from being rated even higher, for me.)

"...the American holiday of Thanksgiving had become associated with an origin myth in which the Wampanoags played an important if supporting role. Yet that was not always the case. During the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth, Thanksgiving had no link whatsoever with Pilgrims and Indians. It was a regional holiday, observed only in the New England states or those in the Midwest to which New Englanders had migrated. Individual states decided whether and when they would hold the holiday, though the traditional time was late November to mark the close of the agricultural year. The so-called First Thanksgiving, as a 1621 gathering of English colonies and Wampanoags has come to be known, was not the root of this holiday. Thanksgiving celebrations had emerged, ironically, out of the English puritan practice of declaring fast days of prayer to mark some special mercy or judgment from God. Running from one afternoon to the next, these fast days, or days of Thanksgiving, centered on churchgoing, solemnity, and piety, not gluttony and sport, although they usually concluded at sundown of the second day with a community feast. Gradually, during the colonial era, New Englanders began to hold days of Thanksgiving annually each spring and autumn instead of episodically, and the fasting became less strictly observed. The only continuities between the Thanksgivings of early New England and today's celebration are the gathering of family and friends to break bread and reflect on the goodness of our lives."

"Whereas the identity politics of marginalized groups tends to focus on achieving justice and equality (or in the Indian case, sovereignty), white identity politics has always - always - centered on oppressing others."

"...there has been too little public consideration about how the Thanksgiving myth teaches white proprietorship of the nation. Why should a school-age child with the last name of, say, Silverman, identify more with the Pilgrims than the Indians? After all, such a student is unlikely to descend from either group, and the descendants of both groups are Silverman's fellow Americans."

"The Thanksgiving myth casts the Wampanoags in 1620 as naive primitives, awestruck by the appearance of the Mayflower and its strange passengers. They were nothing of the sort. Their every step was informed by the legacy of the many European ships that had visited their shores and left behind a wave of enslavement, murder, theft, and mourning."

"From the perspective of Pumetacom and other Indian militants, war could hardly make things worse. Yet, if doing nothing was resignation to a future of impoverishment, exploitation, and degradation at English hands, warring against the English and their Indian allies put precious lives immediately at risk. Even in the event of a victory - whatever that would mean - Native communities would have to endure killing, disease, famine, captivity, enslavement, and immeasurable stress. People who cared about each other would wind up on opposite sides of the conflict. As in practically all Indian-colonial wars, the colonial side would include thousands of Indians, which in this instance means the Mohegans, Pequots, Ninigret's Niantics, Massachusetts praying Indians, and even the Christian Wampanoags of the Cape and islands. It is safe to assume that none of these groups wished for English dominance and that all of them more or less sympathized with Pumetacom's cause. Yet they saw no prospect of success in battling an English population that could draw on the resources of several colonies and even of an Atlantic empire. Prioritizing the interests of their closest kin and local communities, they sided with the colonies. This kind of choice is what made the colonial regime so sinister. It forced indigenous people either to participate in the destruction of their cousins and friends and, ultimately, a cherished way of life, or else face the deaths of their immediate family members. To Pumetacom and his followers, such concessions had become too much to bear, and so they went to war, despite knowing the terrible possibilities. There were no good alternatives for Native New Englanders in the bloody summer of 1675."

"The Sakonnets, followed by increasing numbers of other Wampanoags, switched to the English side not because they had a change of heart or because their loyalties were thin. The decision was wrenching for them. Yet they had children and other loved ones to protect and were unwilling to see them killed, enslaved, or forced to seek refuge far away from their cherished homelands. Seeing no prospects for victory or even an acceptable loss with honor, they made the hard choice for the sake of their most vulnerable members and future generations. It was the right move insofar as the English kept their promise to spare the Sakonnets' lives and permit them to return to at least a portion of their lands. Yet the guilt must have haunted the survivors for all their remaining days."

"Too often this process is characterized as Indians 'losing' their land, as if their own errors were mainly responsible. No doubt, some of their own misjudgments contributed to the crisis, but the English were the primary culprits by far. They were the ones who used trespass, poaching, control of Wampanoag debt, and command of the courts to force the Wampanoags' hand. Even territory the English were supposed to share with Indians according to joint-use agreements or that English law technically protected for the Natives' sole use was vulnerable. Wampanoags did not lose their land any more than Indians elsewhere on the continent. No, colonists and their successors took it through every means at their disposal."

"Local whites twisted the knife by seizing on the Wampanoags' marriages with outsiders, particularly blacks, and the weakening of the Wampanoag language to contend that the Indians were on the verge of disappearance. This was New England's own regional twist on the national racial idiom of Manifest Destiny. It held that Indian 'blood' was weaker than that of other races, meaning that the child of an Indian and a non-Indian became a 'half-blood,' the child of that 'half-blood' and another non-Indian became a 'quarter-blood,' and then, eventually, all trace of the Indian vanished, which is precisely what whites who coveted Indian land wanted to happen. By contrast, white Americans thought of black blood as polluting, so that any degree of African descent made one black. It was not coincidental that such a formulation expanded the servile black labor pool to the benefit of white people. In other words, whites' inconsistencies in reckoning Indian and black racial identities were not illogical at all. They were entirely in line with white colonial desires."… (plus d'informations)

**I received an advanced readers copy of this book through NetGalley from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Simply, this is a necessary read. Though academic in tone, Silverman constructs a very detailed history of the indigenous peoples of New England and their constant struggle with the arrival of European settlers starting in the 1600s. I found the layer of details so fascinating, most of which has never been discussed or taught in history classes in the United States. It's a heartbreaking and maddening history of the Wampanoag Indians; Silverman does provide a look at the Wampanoags in contemporary times as well. Over 400 pages, with 100 pages of endnotes (a historian's dream!), this is a must read for anyone who wishes to know the true story of Thanksgiving and how relations between the indigenous peoples and the European settlers truly evolved over time.… (plus d'informations)