Rebecca Jo Anthony posted: " In the United States, Thanksgiving Day often comes with clean retellings of "The First Thanksgiving" stories. If you're familiar with this tradition, you've probably heard Tisquantum included as a character in this story. (You may have heard of him ren"
In the United States, Thanksgiving Day often comes with clean retellings of "The First Thanksgiving" stories. If you're familiar with this tradition, you've probably heard Tisquantum included as a character in this story. (You may have heard of him renamed as "Squanto" in some versions.)
Because, as they say, the victors write the history,*[3] we were brought up with stories of Pre-U.S. America that seem to favor a positive view of the European American immigrants. Especially as children, we're taught a version of our history that isn't entirely false, but leaves out or glosses over just the right things, and weaves in just enough positive mythology, to not leave any room to easily extract the bias, while allowing school textbooks to paint most of our early colonist ancestors and forefathers as heroes.
In that history-according-to-the-victor tradition, the story of Thanksgiving is often told following something along these lines:
The Pilgrims were having a hard time surviving in their new home, until Tisquantum (aka "Squanto") introduced them to the rest of his people, who taught them how to work with the natural crops of the area, especially corn, and how to hunt the natural game of the area, especially turkeys. The Pilgrims and the Native American people became good friends, and after harvest and a particularly big hunt, they got together for a celebratory feast, and gave thanks for their abundance and friendship.
A popular well-meaning portrayal of this story is the one played out by Peanuts characters. The Charles M. Schulz company created a series called "This is America, Charlie Brown" in the late 1980s. The Thanksgiving episode, called "The Mayflower Voyagers," features the narrator frequently using the phrase "brave heroes" in reference to the white immigrants, and the phrase "friendly Indian" in reference to the character Squanto. (Even though the events of the Mayflower occurred long after European sailors realized they were not landing in India.) And in case you haven't seen it, Squanto is portrayed like this:
screencap credit: CommMedia
This Peanuts production is obviously not an accurate historical reference, and it has those subtle issues I mentioned above, among other things. But it's not the worst take. It's bright, fluffy, nonviolent, and child-friendly. So it's understandable that much of reality was taken out of the story.
When something like this Peanuts Thanksgiving portrayal becomes a problem:
1 - When there is no visible effort by the creators or producers to make it clear that this story is for entertainment purposes only, not educational,
and
2 - When schools actually show this episode (or media like it) to children, especially as a lesson, in lieu of talking about more reliable sources.
and (to be specific to the Peanuts version)
3 - When one of the "Indian" characters explains his English-speaking ability to the children with the line: "Nice English fur-traders teach me speak."
The happy, watered-down Thanksgiving story is what I was taught for most of my years in public school.
Naturally, at some point, I wondered how "Squanto" already spoke English well enough to be a translator before English settlers arrived. When I asked, I received varying answers: - "He learned it from the Pilgrims, and then started translating to the rest of his tribe, because they spent less time with the colony than the others did." - "He had actually met and had been interacting earlier immigrants, which is why he was able to talk to the people from the Mayflower." - "I don't know." <--I respect this answer the most. None of the answers included the full story. Either because the teachers didn't think it appropriate to tell children, or because they themselves didn't know. I'm not sure which. (The latter is a very real possibility, considering what was in our history books and curriculum.)
"Squanto" learned English while in Europe.*[1] They didn't tell us that. They didn't even tell us that his real name was Tisquantum until much later.
How did the early European-American immigrants find so much open space to build their colonies? It's not that there was an excess of untouched land, that the native people just happened to not use these locations. It's that Europeans cleared space for themselves by removing the existing population. Many Native Americans were forced onto ships, and taken to Europe to be sold as slaves. Others, who likely put up too much of a fight to be kidnapped, were instead killed or chased away.*[1]
Tisquantum was among those taken as a slave.*[1][2]
In his early 20s, Tisquantum, along with a number of other indigenous people from the Maine area, was captured by George Weymouth in 1605. After being enslaved for several years in England, Tisquantum was able to return to America in 1614 as the property of John Smith. (Yes, the John Smith who was also involved in the infamously disputed story of Pocahontas.) He did not spend long on his homeland, as he changed hands to Thomas Hunt, and was sold again in France.*[2]
After his escape and final return to America, he found his home village burned down, and learned that he was the only surviving member of his tribe. He was taken in by a nearby Wampanoag tribe.*[1][2]
It was probably true that Tisquantum later helped mediate between immigrants and natives because of the language abilities he gained during his enslavements*[1][2], but may not have been as involved as our popular stories would have us think. According to Wampanoag historian, Linda Coombs, "He did show the English how to plant corn using herring or fish as a fertilizer. That much we know … and whether or not he was actually there to help them harvest or see them through the summer of tending to the gardens or whatnot, we don't know."*[1]
We've all heard it said several times, usually in the context of discussing why certain details of history seem to have holes in their reporting, or become hard-to-source reports of the minority, disregarded by the majority, or sadly, disappear from public record entirely. Why is so much information missing or even fibbed? Because "history is written by the victors."
The conqueror gets to decide how the conquered will be remembered, especially if they've killed off many of the voices that might speak an opposing viewpoint, and they're the ones writing in the dominant language, and if they outlaw the languages and cultural story-sharing practices of their victims, and for good measure, enforce indoctrinating schooling of the survivors and descendants of the victims.
"History is written by the victors" and similar phrases are sometimes attributed to Winston Churchill, but he was actually not the first to make that observation, and is misquoted by pop culture. Churchill's actual words were, "I consider that it will be found much better by all parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history myself."
Source:
History News Network. "The History of 'History Is Written by the Victors.'" from Matthew Phelen of Slate.com, The George Washington University, Columbian College of Arts and Sciences, <https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/173752.>
Variations of this phrase have been used throughout the world, a popular sentiment because it's true everywhere that the most widely taught versions of history are the ones written and edited by successful conquerors, colonists, and their descendants, or the winning side of a war.
One example of the usage of "It is the victor who writes the history," comes from the biography of Charles George Gordon, written in 1889 by Sir William Francis Butler. In mentioning the lack of recorded history about the dead of the 1746 Battle of Culloden in Scotland: "How many perished in the butcheries and the burning that followed the defeat of the clans at Culloden will never be known. It is the victor who writes the history and counts the dead, and to the vanquished in such a struggle there only remains the dull memory of an unnumbered and unwritten sorrow."
An early public record of this phrase in the United States is attributed to George Graham Vest, saying "In all revolutions the vanquished are the ones who are guilty of treason, even by the historians, for history is written by the victors and framed according to the prejudices and bias existing on their side."
Source:
"Speech of the Senator at the Confederate Reunion." Parsons Daily EclipseNewspaper from Parsons Kansas, 21 Aug. 1891. Digitized by the Kansas Historical Society and Ancestry.com. <https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/419139525/>
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