History Professor Helps to Redefine the Story of the First Thanksgiving with the Plimoth Plantation

By Leigh DuPuy

The traditional story of the first Thanksgiving in America often includes images of an overflowing harvest table, gifts of food, and settler and native sitting side by side in the spirit of celebration. The Plimoth Plantation Museum, a historical re-creation of 17th-century Plymouth, is helping to redefine the story with the expertise of History Professor Malcolm Smuts.

Smuts, a scholar of 16th and 17th century early modern England, was one of three experts invited by the museum to participate in a new interactive video exhibit at the museum. During a taped presentation, which will run in the museum’s resource room, Smuts discusses how the cultural attitudes of the 17th century English settler might have shaped idyllic visions of the first Thanksgiving.

As example, Smuts offers a contemporary description in which a local native sachem and a party of warriors come to the settlers’ celebration of the first harvest in Plymouth. According to the story, the settlers invited the sachem to join them, who then sent his men out to kill a deer for the feast. Smuts points out that it was very common in England for kings and other men of rank to travel with a large entourage and to feast at the households of other men of rank. At these times, they often made presents of venison. “I suggest that the English would therefore interpreted the native’s behavior within a familiar set of assumptions about hospitality,” Smuts explains.

He points out that English agricultural practices were highly destructive to the Native American habitat, making the communal celebration sadly ironic. Not only did the English believe they improved land by enclosing it, they also considered such enclosures as established property rights.

“In England unenclosed land was treated as common land, which they used to graze animals,” says Smuts. As a result, the settlers let herds of sheep and pigs graze in “common” land, which destroyed native plots and forage for deer and wildlife. He says, “These colonial practices wreaked havoc with the native habitat, forcing Native Americans to adopt English enclosures to protect their fields and eventually eliminating wild deer from eastern Massachusetts.”

Smuts points out that English believed they had a religious and moral imperative to improve nature, and that those who didn’t improve nature lost their rights to the property. “They believed Native Americans didn’t improve their land, and thus, they deserved to lose their property rights,” explains Smuts.

The first Thanksgiving can be seen as a cautionary tale, Smuts points out. “This 17th century story dovetails on the proliferation of today’s western technology and industry which imposes on other cultures. It can be both a disruptive and productive influence. This is a morally ambiguous story of real significance.”

Smuts, who has been associated with the Plimoth Plantation Museum through conferences and projects throughout the years, hopes UMass Boston and the Museum can work together on continued educational outreach to schools and local communities.

Professor Malcolm Smuts taped a presentation for a new interactive video exhibit on the first Thanksgiving for the Plimoth Plantation Museum. (Photo by Harry Brett).

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