Pilgrims… Go Home

11/26/09-by Paula Brooks
The modern Thanksgiving holiday traces its origins from a 1621 celebration at the Plymouth Plantation, where the Plymouth settlers held a harvest feast after a successful growing season. It is this iconic event that is generally referred to as the “First Thanksgiving.”

Squanto, a Patuxet Native American residing with the Wampanoag tribe, who had learned English after he had been kidnapped, and enslaved in England, taught the Pilgrims how to catch eel and grow corn…. Pretty much getting them through that first winter in the new land…

Successive generation of Native Americans really latter came to regret that Squanto was such a nice guy…. Because The European colonization of the Americas latter forever changed the lives, bloodlines and cultures of these original peoples inhabiting the the continent by bring them infectious disease exposure, displacement, warfare diminished populations and a general destruction of their cultures and religons.

So Native American Activists are planning another little Thanksgiving get together in Plymouth, Mass for later today to express just how they feel about the Pilgrims…

The United American Indians of New England say they have been holding the annual protest since 1970 to call attention to the disastrous consequences that eventually followed that first feast between European settlers and Native American tribes nearly 400 years ago.

The groups co-leader Moonanum James, a Wampanoag Indian, said native people have no reason to celebrate the arrival of the Pilgrims. He called Plymouth Rock a monument to racism and genocide.Organizers said participants in the protest planned to gather at about noon on Thursday by the statue of Massasoit on Coles Hill above the Plymouth waterfront.

via Indians plan Plymouth, Mass. Thanksgiving protest The Republican-American.