Thursday, November 26, 2015

Thanksgiving

First off, a Blessed and Happy Thanksgiving to all of you.

Now a recap of history.

So you're some white people.
You've recently arrived on the shores of this land, not where you thought you would..You're not gonna make it without some help.
Over half of you have died already.
You pray to your God for help.
A Native American walks out of the woods and asks in clear King's English:
"Can I help?", and proceeds to show you how to farm, fish, hunt, survive and serves as an ambassador to the native people.

Yea, there's a God, and He had a hand in founding this country.

Happy Thanksgiving.

If you read about Bradford below, which I of course recommend, Understand that they almost died because of a socialist philosophy. Bradford put an end to that, and they all prospered.

(I am truly thankful today that I could rip this off from http://www.ushistory.org/us/3b.asp )

William Bradford and the First Thanksgiving

The First Thanksgiving by Brownscombe
Copyright 2001 by Pilgrim Hall Museum
As was the custom in England, the Pilgrims celebrated their harvest with a festival. The 50 remaining colonists and roughly 90 Wampanoag tribesmen attended the "First Thanksgiving."
The major similarity between the first Jamestown settlers and the first Plymouth settlers was great human suffering.
November was too late to plant crops. Many settlers died of scurvy and malnutrition during that horrible first winter. Of the 102 original Mayflower passengers, only 44 survived. Again like in Jamestown, the kindness of the local Native Americans saved them from a frosty death.
The Pilgrims' remarkable courage was displayed the following spring. When the Mayflower returned to Europe, not a single Pilgrim deserted Plymouth.

Helping Hands

Massasoit's treaty with the Pilgrams
Massasoit, chief of the Wampanoag tribe, signed a treaty with the Pilgrams in 1621, that was never broken. As a result, the two groups enjoyed a peaceful coexistence.
By early 1621, the Pilgrims had built crude huts and a common house on the shores of Plymouth Bay. Soon neighboring Indians began to build relations with the Pilgrims. SQUANTO, a local Indian who had been kidnapped and taken to England nearly a decade before, served as an interpreter with the local tribes. Squanto taught the Pilgrims to fertilize the soil with dried fish remains to produce a stellar corn crop.
MASSASOIT, the chief of the nearby Wampanoags, signed a treaty of alliance with the Pilgrims in the summer. In exchange for assistance with defense against the feared Narragansett tribe, Massasoit supplemented the food supply of the Pilgrims for the first few years.

Governor Bradford

Pilgrim
The modern conception of a Pilgrim might include a man in a black hat with a buckle, but not all of the original settlers of Plymouth County fit this description.
Successful colonies require successful leadership. The man to step forward in Plymouth colony was WILLIAM BRADFORD. After the first governor elected under the Mayflower Compact perished from the harsh winter, Bradford was elected governor for the next thirty years. In May of 1621, he performed the colony's first marriage ceremony.
Under Bradford's guidance, Plymouth suffered less hardship than their English compatriots in Virginia. Relations with the local natives remained relatively smooth in Plymouth and the food supply grew with each passing year.
By autumn of 1621, the Pilgrims had much for which to be thankful. After the harvest, Massasoit and about ninety other Indians joined the Pilgrims for the great English tradition of HARVEST FESTIVAL. The participants celebrated for several days, dining on venison, goose, duck, turkey, fish, and of course, cornbread, the result of a bountiful corn harvest. This tradition was repeated at harvest time in the following years.
It was President Lincoln who declared Thanksgiving a national celebration in 1863. The Plymouth Pilgrims simply celebrated survival, as well as the hopes of good fortune in the years that lay ahead.

8 comments:

  1. Excellent recap. No doubt our founding was at the hands of divine Providence. Happy Thanksgiving to Mr and Mrs B and family.

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    1. Thank you sir.
      And to you and Mrs. DaB and family.

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  2. Remember Ed...
    They just didn't have time to fully implement Socialism.
    With a few more months they'd have had UTOPIA.

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    1. You mean they quit too early? Quitters?!? We could have had Utopia?
      Maybe this time around.

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  3. I think the Squantos story is THE most amazing miracle ever....he just happened to have been taken to ENGLAND and learned English and got back in time to save the first American colonists? Like they had 300 flights a day between Plymouth and London? :-)
    I post that story every year on Thanksgiving and am glad you mentioned it, too.
    Yes, He definitely had a BIG hand in settling this country...we ought not squander it; and socialism is antithetical to the American spirit I believe God intended.

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    1. I see Mustang posted the story today. A video of Ben Shapiro telling the story.
      Even covered the socialism aspect.
      Glad I posted first or it would look like I ripped it off. :)

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  4. Great stuff Ed. Man you gotta get nervous thinking of how things can so much more easily go South vs North. I was in school in the 60's and I find it incredible the amount of BS that was stuffed into my young perfectly working brain that I've spent decades purging and replacing with real information. You might like the site "Today I Found Out". Lots more of this kind of stuff and you can subscribe to it so the new stuff shows up in your inbox. I've been enjoying it.

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