The Completely True History of America: Thanksgiving

Today the United States of America celebrates its oldest holiday, Thanksgiving. In remembrance of a grand festival in which Pilgrims and Native Americans celebrated the great harvest and their perfect friendship in 1621, a couple hundred million  Americans will gather with friends and family to commit the deadly sin of gluttony by gorging themselves on Turkey. Everybody participates from

Squash

New England, where a ridiculous number of them will also partake in squash, to Texas, where they will eat copious amounts of cornbread. (Source: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/heres-what-your-part-of-america-eats-on-thanksgiving/)

Of course, this isn't actually America's oldest holiday and the fact that it's celebrated annually today has little, if anything, to do with the Pilgrims of 1621. The Pilgrims did celebrate a feast that they called Thanksgiving, but it wasn't annual and it wasn't the first Thanksgiving celebrated in what would become the United States. Virginia likes to claim it held the first Thanksgiving in 1610. This version of events almost certainly wouldn't have included any natives since as we've discussed at length, the colonists and natives were pretty enormous dicks to each other. This probably isn't true either. In reality the first American Thanksgiving was likely celebrated by Spanish people either in Florida in 1565 or Texas in 1598. Naturally only people from Texas would think 1598 came before 1565.

From colonial times all the way up through the first few decades of the United States, days of Thanksgiving would be sporadically declared by governors or presidents, but never annually and rarely on the same day across localities. In the early 1800's New England Calvanists were the only

Hale Showing Off a Lot of Shoulder for 1831

ones routinely celebrating the holiday. This is where Sarah Josepha Hale enters the story. Hale was an author and magazine editor known primarily for the following things (in no particular order):

1) Writing the poem 'Mary Had a Little Lamb'
2) Advocating for women's rights

Hale really, really loved Thanksgiving. She loved it so much that over the course of 40 years she petitioned five different presidents to make it an annual federal holiday. In her petitions she advocated for the holiday on the grounds of its religious and moral merits and the fact that she believed it could be a source of unity for the ever growing United States and its vast cultural differences. These may or may not have been the real reasons as one anonymous sources swears he could have heard her say, "Those ungrateful little shits that I birthed never say thank you for what I do for them. I'll be damned if I don't make it a federal law that they have to thank me."

Finally, in 1863 Hale's point about national unity got through to Abraham Lincoln who in the midst of the Civil War thought, "You know what would make Texas like us more? If we forced them to participate in a holiday currently only celebrated widely in New England." He didn't make it an annual holiday by law, but did declare it both in 1863 and 1864 on the last Thursday of November and every president thereafter declared it a federal holiday each year at the same time until FDR. His plan, predictably, didn't do jack shit on the unity front. The south didn't recognize the holiday until 1870's after the completion of reconstruction.

In the 1930's it was considered taboo for stores to advertise Christmas goods before Thanksgiving. In the 1930's there was also this small event going on that is commonly referred to as the Great Depression. Because of these things, in 1939 FDR came up with a fantastic plan. If Thanksgiving is moved up a week, the Christmas season will also be extended by a week, the people will use the money that they don't have to buy extra Christmas presents during the extra week, and the depression will be over. Armed with his brilliant idea, FDR declared the second to last Thursday in November to be Thanksgiving. The move angered Republicans who very wisely believed that the move was a purely political move meant to demean the memory of Abraham Lincoln. Because of this, only

23 states observed the new date and 22 states did not. The remaining states, including Texas, observed both days because they were lazy and didn't want to work and also because they enjoyed eating obscene amounts of food.

Finally in December 1941, after three years under the FDR plan, Congress decided the economy was expanding too rapidly and passed a law declaring Thanksgiving to be the final Thursday of November. The Senate, citing a need for occasional economic growth, passed the bill with an amendment making it always be the fourth Thursday of the month meaning that in the less frequent five Thursday Novembers it would be the second to last Thursday of the month. For several years a handful of states continued to ignore the federal guidance and celebrate the occasion on the last Thursday of the month including in five Thursday years. The last state to do so was, of course, Texas in 1956.

And that is the story of why the state of Texas is Thanksgiving's equivalent of the Grinch. Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!

The Completely True History of America, Part III: War and Peace...And War. Also, Tobacco.

When we last checked in with our friends the colonists they were mostly dead and the few that weren't were ready to go back to England and have a nice cup of tea by the fire. As they sailed down the James River back toward the ocean, they encountered Thomas West (also known as Lord de la Warr because British royals love to change their names to places which in my opinion is a little bit weird) who convinced them to return to the colony because he was really looking forward to being governor and thought being governor of nothing would be kind of lame. The good lord was known as a colossal douchewaffle which is why his name (restylized as Delaware) was eventually adopted by a state that is home to the PO boxes of corporations that want to evade taxes and literally nothing else. Anyway, de la Warr decided that instead of even feigning diplomacy he was going to start wars of conquest against the natives.

On August 9, 1610 the good lord launched his first attack against the Paspahegh people, killing around 70 and capturing the queen and her children. On the boat ride back to Jamestowne, the children were thrown overboard and shot in the water while the queen watched. She would later be slain by sword upon their return to the fort. This dickish act officially invoked war between the English and the Powhatan Confederacy. In early 1611 a new governor, Sir Thomas Dale arrived on the scene. Chipper Dale, as the colonists liked to call him because he was known as a morning person and because he founded Chippendales Male Revue, made a few solid policies that benefited the colonies. Perhaps his biggest one was doing away with the communist practice of communal farming land and dividing the land into private property. This would strongly benefit the character that we'll meet in the next paragraph. Dale was also much like the good lord in his desire for total domination of the native tribes. He continued the lord's wars and succeeded in claiming one metric fuckton of prime riverfront property from the local tribes. This may have been partially due to Chief Powhatan's advancing age and lack of desire to do anything except sit on his porch and yell at kids to get off his lawn. After almost three years of fighting, the English captured Pocahontas, the daughter of Chief Powhatan in early 1613 which led to an immediate ceasefire.

While all of this was going, another pretty important dude by the name of John Rolfe was hanging out back in Jamestowne changing the course of American history. Before John Rolfe, American kids who wanted to rebel against their parents were forced to smoke local wild tobacco which apparently didn't do much for them. As a result not many people smoked, which really didn't make that much of a difference since everybody was still dying young of starvation and smallpox anyway. Still, Rolfe thought that the lack of lung cancer was a scourge on the American reputation and thought if only he could produce a more addictive tobacco then surely he could make billions of whatever they used instead of dollars. Rolfe had been part of the third supply effort that was stranded in the Caribbean while they built two new ships in 1609-1610. While there he picked up some seeds of a Spanish-Trinidadian strain of tobacco that he called Orinoco. The main difference between this strain and the local Virginia strain was an ingredient by the name of nicotine which the people seemed to not be able to get enough of. This new strain of tobacco, which he was able to grow on his private land thanks to Chippendales, made him lots of money and gave him the opportunity to meet and fall in love with the Indian Princess, Pocahontas. In early 1614, Rolfe married Pocahontas (now known as Rebecca because she was converted to Christianity) which would lead to eight years of peace between the colonists and natives.

In 1622 Chief Opechancanough, the younger brother of Powhatan who took over in 1618 after Powhatan's death, acted as though he were ready to give into the English and convert to Christianity. This allowed his subjects to intermingle with the colonists. Finally, on March 22, 1622, with no warning, the natives massacred the colonists, killing approximately 350 of them (or nearly one third). Far more may have died had some of the natives not truly converted to the English ways and warned the settlers. The natives, relying on their traditional attack methods, decided to wait for a response instead of maintain their offensive. This was a really stupid move and allowed the colonists to regroup and ultimately win the second round of war which lasted ten years until 1632. After another dozen years of peace, the natives decided to attack again, this time killing 500 colonists which was a significantly lower percentage of the now much larger population than the previous massacre. Having not learned their lesson for whatever reason, they waited again, and this time wiped out in two short years. At the conclusion of this third war, the English enacted a harsh treaty on the losing natives. In addition to making the natives subjects to the English crown, they enacted a line of racial segregation (a close predecessor to the first Indian Reservations) which may or may not have included separate drinking fountains and separate bus seats. The silver lining of this whole ordeal is that it finally appears that the colonists may survive long enough to write another few chapters in this story. 

The Completely True History of America, Part II: Arrival and Starvation in Jamestown

So, the colonization of North Carolina didn't go so well. A lot of money was spent, a lot of people died, and nobody really got anything positive in return. But all of that occurred under the leadership of Queen Elizabeth I. In 1603, James I took the thrown and was heard saying at the coronation afterparty, "Of course she couldn't pull it off. She's a woman. I can toooootally do it." A couple years later, he signed a charter to start the Virginia Company of London which was funded by private investors and tasked with the mission to "chop down every last tree and see if we can't turn a profit on that uncivilized, disease ridden continent."

Captain John Smith, looking much more handsome than Disney portrayed him.

In late 1606 a fleet of three ships, Godspeed, Discovery, and the flagship known as either the Susan Constant or the Sarah Constant, set sail for the New World. The reason for the discrepancy in the name of the flagship is that the night before departure Captain Christopher Newport promised the barkeep at the local inn that he'd name his ship after her if she gave him a handjob in the bathroom and by the time morning rolled around he couldn't remember if she said Susan or Sarah. About half way through the journey, another one of the captains on board, John Smith, was accused of covering up a mutiny plot and was ordered to be hanged at the next stop the ships made (This isn't even close to the only detail Grandmother Willow got wrong in her version of the story, but she's a 100 year old tree, what do you expect?). Luckily for Captain Smith, Captain Newport refused to make any intermediate stops en route to their final destination, reminding the crew that he warned them all that they should use the bathroom before they left because so help him God they weren't stopping. This detail would prove crucial in saving Smith's life because upon arrival at Cape Henry, VA in 1607 sealed orders were opened that named Smith as part of the governing council and killing a member of the governing body would have been seen as impolite.

In addition to naming the governing council, the orders also instructed the group to select a location for the colony that was further inland and easily defensible. On May 14, 1607 the settlers selected Jamestown Island for the fort because it was on a curve in the river that provided extended views of the waterway, ships could anchor near the land, and it was uninhabited by native populations. This would have been a good time for somebody to ask the question, "Why is it uninhabited by the people who inhabit basically all of the other land in this area?" Had somebody asked that question the answer would have been that it's isolation from the mainland limited the number of wildlife that could be hunted, there wasn't enough space or high enough quality soil for agriculture, it was swampy and thus plagued with malaria infested mosquitoes, and finally the brackish water in the area was borderline undrinkable. Further dooming the group was the fact that most of them were aristocrats, aka whiny little bitches that didn't want to do any work, and the fact that they arrived too late in the year to plant any crops. Within months 51 had died and many others defected to nearby Indian tribes. These tribes, however, also wanted their members to do work and would eventually drive out the defectors for continuing to refuse to work. The 14,000 natives in the area were a part of the Powhatan Confederacy whose chief offered to relocate the colonists closer to his village and have them become productive members of the Confederacy. Instead they wisely refused any help from the natives and two thirds of them died before the first resupply ship arrived in 1608.

This first supply ship brought German, Polish, and Slovak craftsmen who actually did some work and manufactured the first goods that the Virginia Company could actually make some money on. Unfortunately they now had even more people and still nothing in terms of a self sustaining food supply so the starvation incident got a teensy bit worse. The Germans soon defected to the local tribes and started coordinating an attack with the Spanish and the Indians on the English settlers. The attack was only called off because of the arrival of the second supply ship which was a large, intimidating ship. And while this ship may have prevented an attack, it also brought bad news in the form of a strongly worded letter from the mother company. Investors were really mad that they weren't able to make any money from the hard labor of aristocrats who had been abandoned in a strange continent with no food so they came up with a list of completely reasonable demands: enough sellable goods to cover the cost of the supply ship's voyage, a lump of gold (real gold, not the fools gold that the colonists had already mined so much of), evidence that they had found the South Sea (with all of the boats that they totally had), and a member of the lost colony of Roanoke. John Smith instead sent back a strongly worded letter of his own, known as the "Rude Response," which demanded more supplies and people who would actually work so that they had a chance to survive.

Smith had managed to maintain just tolerable enough relations with the native tribes to keep the colonists from all dying, but his strange obsession with making everybody pull their weight had made him a very unpopular man and several attempts were made to force him back to England. The colonists got their wish when a gunpowder explosion in Smith canoe gave him severe burns and he was forced to return home for treatment. It should be noted here that although the colonists hated the man, John Smith won the PR battle in history. He is now credited with single handidly willing the colony to survival, with creating highly accurate maps of the area that would aid the British cause well after his departure, and with compiling the only written history of the time. It's also possible that he's viewed favorably now because his account is the only account that the time can be judged on. But probably not.

Meanwhile, the investors actually took Smith's harshly worded letter to heart and sent a massive supply ship with additional ships for the third supply effort. This fleet had 214 additional settlers who would all be put to work and more food than had ever been sent before. Unfortunately the fleet was caught in a hurricane and while some boats made it to Jamestown, the big ship was damaged heavily and it's crew was stranded in Bermuda for nine months while they built two new ships. While waiting for supplies, the Jamestown settlers continued starving and actually started eating each other to stay alive. Remember, morals are great and all, but the first one to resort to cannibalism is usually the one who's going to survive. By the time the supplies finally arrived in 1610, only 60 of the 214 original settlers were still alive and most of them just barely. The operation was determined to be a failure and the survivors were boarded on the two new ships to be taken back to England with all of the new crew. On their way out of dodge, the two ships ran into another supply ship headed by Governor Baron De La Warr who convinced them that they should go back and together they would rebuild. Unfortunately there still wasn't nearly enough food and De La Warr was kind of an asshole to the Indians which could only mean one thing: War. But that's a story for another time.

The Completely True History of America, Part I: The Lost Colony

In honor of the fact that soon I'll be moving to the location of America's first successful British Settlement, I've decided to transform my blog into a multi-part, in depth history of the United States. All information comes from peer-reviewed articles, Wikipedia, or my ass. How much history we cover depends on how many posts I write before I get bored and ignore this blog for another six months. Today we start with Britain's first very unsuccessful attempt to colonize the New World.

 The Lost Colony

Sir Walter Raleigh Feeling Especially Fancy (Portrait by Nicholas Hilliard)

The year is 1584, it's been 92 years since Christopher Columbus accidentally ran into North America because he was too stubborn to ask for directions on his way to India and decided to massacre every native group he came across so that there wouldn't be any witnesses to claim he wasn't the first one to find this place. Other than the Spanish who had established a profitable diseases for gold exchange program with multiple native tribes, nobody in Europe had quite figured out how to monetize the new continent yet. This had Queen Elizabeth I rather upset because mama needed some new earrings to match her party crown so she granted a charter Sir Walter Raleigh to establish a colony that could exploit North America's raw materials to create goods that could be sold in the motherland. Raleigh wasn't a big fan of long boat rides because he had a crippling fear of pirates stemming from his mother not giving him attention and instead letting him watch Pirates of the Caribbean at age 5 despite it's PG-13 rating so he wouldn't bother her while she drank wine at 2 pm on a Tuesday and watched General Hospital in the other room. Because of this, Raleigh would never actually visit North Carolina himself, but instead sent other men to establish his colony.

The first expedition landed on Roanoke Island, North Carolina on July 4, 1584. The date is still celebrated to this day as the birthday of America. The men of this expedition quickly encountered two local tribes known as the Secotans and Croatoans. That natives, who did not have access to Barney VHS tapes, had never learned to share and didn't want to share their land with the new men. Despite this, the natives decided to allow the men to live and opted instead to play the long game and send two tribe members covered in North American microbes to England with the explorers under the premise of ambassadorship so that they could spread disease among the European population. The British, themselves great fans of the long game, would respond 180 years later by distributing smallpox blankets to the native population of Pittsburgh.

Armed with information obtained from the native ambassadors, Raleigh sent a second, much larger, expedition to Roanoke Island in 1595. Despite several problems along the way and losing much of their food supplies, all five ships from the expedition eventually arrived at the island. Soon after arriving, one dude couldn't find his silver cup and decided to blame the local population, prompting the group to raid and burn a local village. This is widely considered to be the most diplomatic possible move and established the great relations between Europeans and natives that would endure for centuries. Despite being out of food and having just pissed off anybody who could possibly help them, 107 men decided to stay and establish a fort while the ships went back to Britain for more supplies.

The first several months of 1586 came and went without any sign of the resupply ships. The colonists attempted to contact the ships by building a robust telephone network out of tin cans and string made from the colonists own hair. As the first call was being placed, one of the cans cut the face of the phone operator and he immediately died of tetanus. Soon after, Sir Francis Drake decided to stop by for a visit and the colonists, now lacking any way to contact their relief fleet, decided to go back to Britain with him instead of dying of starvation or being killed by the natives. Shortly after this, the relief fleet finally arrived to find the colony abandoned. A few men from this fleet stayed to maintain the claim on the fort while the rest returned to Britain.

In 1587 another group of Englishmen were sent to the New World, this time to establish a colony farther north on the Chesapeake Bay, but they were to stop at Roanoke to check on the group of men that stayed behind the previous year. When they arrived, they found nothing at the fort except a single skeleton. This is the point where a smart commander would say, "Huh, everybody that stays here seems to disappear. Better GTFO while we can." This was not the reaction of Commander Simon Fernandez, who instead said, "I have a great idea. Forget Virginia. North Carolina is where it's at. We're gonna stay here because it takes three times for an Englishman to learn his lesson." After one colonist was killed by natives, the colonists sent Governor John White back to England to ask for help.

White's return to the New World was delayed by several factors. First he wasn't allowed to sail back during the winter. Then this little gang of ships that called themselves The Spanish Armada decided to attack and basically every single boat in England was engaged in a fight with them. Finally White was able to hire two private ships for his expedition, but the captains tried to capture some Spanish ships to steal their gold and instead got themselves captured. Finally in 1590, after the colonists had been expected to survive with almost no food for 3 years, White finally made it back to Roanoke. There he found no sign of the colonists as the fort had been deserted and all of the structures had been taken down. The only clues of their whereabouts were the word "Croatoan" carved in a gatepost and "Cro" carved in a tree. Because their agreed upon safe word wasn't carved in the tree, White believed the colonists moved to nearby Croatoan island and tried to live among the natives. He initially wanted to conduct a search, but a storm was forming and White was famously afraid of thunder, needing to hide in a bathtub anytime he heard it. Because of this he instead sailed all the way back to England and never made another attempt to find the lost colonists. To this day, their fate is unknown. North Carolina was eventually successfully settled in 1663.