Below is an excerpt from a letter my friend Four Arrows (aka Don Jacobs) sent out on this Thanksgiving eve (in the USA).
Here are some facts about this holiday to consider that we tend to ignore at great peril as we allow too similar of events to continue around the world:
THANKSGIVING: The year was 1637…..700 men, women and children of the Pequot Tribe, gathered for their “Annual Green Corn Dance” in the area that is now known as Groton, Connecticut. While they were gathered in this place of meeting, they were surrounded and attacked by mercenaries of the
English and Dutch. The Indians were ordered from the building, and as they came forth, they were shot down. The rest were burned alive in the building.
The next day, the Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony declared: “A day of Thanksgiving, thanking God that they had eliminated over 700 men, women and children.” For the next 100 years, every “Thanksgiving Day” ordained by a governor or president was to honor that victory, thanking God that the battle had been won.
Historian Francis Jennings wrote of the attack:
“Mason proposed to avoid attacking Pequot warriors, which would have overtaxed his unseasoned, unreliable troops. Battle, as such, was not his purpose. Battle is only one of the ways to destroy an enemy’s will to fight. Massacre can accomplish the same end with less risk, and Mason had determined that massacre would be his objective.”
In Howard Zinn’s book, A People’s History of the United States, one of the Pilgrims on the expedition is quoted as saying:
“The Captain also said, We must Burn Them; and immediately stepping into the wigwam….brought out a Fire Brand, and putting it into the Matts with which they were covered, set the Wigwams on Fire.”
William Bradford, in his History of the Plymouth Plantation, described the carnage:
“Those that scaped the fire were slaine with the sword; some hewed to peeces, others rune throw with their rapiers, so as they were quickly dispatche, and very few escaped. It was conceived they thus destroyed about 400 at this time. It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fyer, and the streams of blood quenching the same, and horrible was the stincke and sente there of, but the victory seemed a sweet sacrifice, and they gave the prayers thereof to God, who had wrought so wonderfully for them, thus to inclose their enemise in their hands, and gave them so speedy a victory over so proud and insulting an enimie.”
Cotton Mather, one of the more odious and obdurate Pilgrim leaders, wrote:
“It was supposed that no less than 600 souls were brought down to Hell that day”.
Mather, in his Annals of Christ in America, wrote:
“I do, with all conscience of truth,…report the wonderful displays of His infinite power, wisdom, goodness, and faithfulness, wherewith His divine providence hath irradiated an Indian wilderness”.
Francis Jennings said:
“The terror was very real among the Indians. They drew lessons from the Peqout War:(1) that the Englishmen’s most solemn pledge would be broken whenever obligation conflicted with advantage; (2) that the English way of war had no limit of scruple and mercy”.
The Pilgrims justified their conquest by appealing to the Bible, Psalms 2:8:
“Ask of me, and I shall give thee, the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.”
The use of force to take this “inheritance” was justified by citing Romans 13:2:
“Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation.”
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