I'm from Plymouth. Ask me anything.
It might surprise people outside of Plymouth to learn that the town itself has been trying to educate people on the history of the time as a whole, but people are still going to believe whatever mythological story was built up around it.
For one, it's amazing there was relative peace for 50 years before King Philips war occurred. The Plymouth colony and Bay colony (Boston) were different sets of religious groups and did not get along. At all. You can still a line on the maps between the Old Colony and Bay Colony territory. The Bay colony was were most of the trouble with the natives began, so fuck Boston.
Yes, the local Wampanoag approached the pilgrims because they wanted the English (and their guns) on their side because they were fighting wars with other tribes at the time. The entire native population of the New England coast had been decimated by an epidemic 4 years prior to the arrival of Pilgrims. When they landed on Cape Cod they found unburied skeletal remains of those that didn't survive. They dug up existing graves and stores of food because they were out, at one time digging up the corpse of a woman and child who had blond hair. (No explanation for that.) They eventually landed at 'new plimoth' (what John Smith had labeled the Wampanoag village of Patuxet.) It was a nice little harbor with drinkable water and cleared land. The entire village had died in the epidemic (which was likely spread by European fishermen and traders.)
One settler killed herself by jumping off the Mayflower and drowning upon arrival in the New World. The pilgrims labeled her suicide an 'accident' so her soul wouldn't be condemned to hell for eternity. That first winter the Pilgrims were so afraid of the Wampanoag finding out that they were sick and dying that they propped the dead bodies up against trees to make them appear to be standing guard. They were buried in unmarked graves in Cole's hill, where over the next two hundred years the bones occasionally washed out and were
interned in a stone sarcophagus at the top of the hill. The myth of Plymouth Rock is equally as weird, and mostly involves a drunken men's club.
The only time turkey is mentioned in "Of Plimoth Plantation" is as FOLLOWS:
And after ye time of ye writīg of these things befell a very sadd accidente of the like foule nature in this govermente, this very year, which I shall now relate. Ther was a youth whose name was Thomas Granger; he was servant to an honest man of Duxbery, being aboute 16. or 17. years of age. (His father & mother lived at the same time at Sityate.) He was this year detected of buggery (and indicted for ye same) with a mare, a cowe, tow goats, five sheep, 2. calves, and a turkey. Horrible [249] it is to mention, but ye truth of ye historie requires it. He was first discovered by one yt accidentally [475]saw his lewd practise towards the mare. (I forbear perticulers.) Being upon it examined and com̅itted, in ye end he not only confest ye fact with that beast at that time, but sundrie times before, and at severall times with all ye rest of ye forenamed in his indictmente; and this his free-confession was not only in private to ye magistrats, (though at first he strived to deney it,) but to sundrie, both ministers & others, and afterwards, upon his indictmente, to ye whole court & jury; and confirmed it at his execution. And wheras some of ye sheep could not so well be knowne by his description of them, others with them were brought before him, and he declared which were they, and which were not. And accordingly he was cast by ye jury, and condemned, and after executed about ye 8. of Septr, 1642. A very sade spectakle it was; for first the mare, and then ye cowe, and ye rest of ye lesser catle, were kild before his face, according to ye law, Levit: 20. 15. and then he him selfe was executed. The catle were all cast into a great & large pitte that was digged of purposs for them, and no use made of any part of them.
Not all of the native population was killed in King Philip's war. Just most of it. Many natives were shipped off to Jamaica into slavery. Communities of 'praying indians' survived. Large portions of the town were still owned by Wampanoag interests until 1870 when the State made a proclamation that all natives were Massachusetts residents and had the rights to do whatever with their land. Disenfranchised for generations most chose to sell large portions to pay off debts.
Plymouth, today, tries to use Thanksgiving as an opportunity to promote multicultural exchanges and community togetherness. History is fascinating. My hometown is beautiful, and complicated, and weird.
