Posted on 11/24/2004 4:59:49 AM PST by BellStar
The Great Thanksgiving Hoax
By Richard J. Maybury
Each year at this time school children all over America are taught the official Thanksgiving story, and newspapers, radio, TV, and magazines devote vast amounts of time and space to it. It is all very colorful and fascinating.
It is also very deceiving. This official story is nothing like what really happened. It is a fairy tale, a whitewashed and sanitized collection of half-truths which divert attention away from Thanksgiving's real meaning.
The official story has the pilgrims boarding the Mayflower, coming to America and establishing the Plymouth colony in the winter of 1620-21. This first winter is hard, and half the colonists die. But the survivors are hard working and tenacious, and they learn new farming techniques from the Indians. The harvest of 1621 is bountiful. The Pilgrims hold a celebration, and give thanks to God. They are grateful for the wonderful new abundant land He has given them.
The official story then has the Pilgrims living more or less happily ever after, each year repeating the first Thanksgiving. Other early colonies also have hard times at first, but they soon prosper and adopt the annual tradition of giving thanks for this prosperous new land called America.
The problem with this official story is that the harvest of 1621 was not bountiful, nor were the colonists hardworking or tenacious. 1621 was a famine year and many of the colonists were lazy thieves.
In his 'History of Plymouth Plantation,' the governor of the colony, William Bradford, reported that the colonists went hungry for years, because they refused to work in the fields. They preferred instead to steal food. He says the colony was riddled with "corruption," and with "confusion and discontent." The crops were small because "much was stolen both by night and day, before it became scarce eatable."
In the harvest feasts of 1621 and 1622, "all had their hungry bellies filled," but only briefly. The prevailing condition during those years was not the abundance the official story claims, it was famine and death. The first "Thanksgiving" was not so much a celebration as it was the last meal of condemned men.
But in subsequent years something changes. The harvest of 1623 was different. Suddenly, "instead of famine now God gave them plenty," Bradford wrote, "and the face of things was changed, to the rejoicing of the hearts of many, for which they blessed God." Thereafter, he wrote, "any general want or famine hath not been amongst them since to this day." In fact, in 1624, so much food was produced that the colonists were able to begin exporting corn.
What happened?
After the poor harvest of 1622, writes Bradford, "they began to think how they might raise as much corn as they could, and obtain a better crop." They began to question their form of economic organization.
This had required that "all profits & benefits that are got by trade, working, fishing, or any other means" were to be placed in the common stock of the colony, and that, "all such persons as are of this colony, are to have their meat, drink, apparel, and all provisions out of the common stock." A person was to put into the common stock all he could, and take out only what he needed.
This "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" was an early form of socialism, and it is why the Pilgrims were starving. Bradford writes that "young men that are most able and fit for labor and service" complained about being forced to "spend their time and strength to work for other men's wives and children." Also, "the strong, or man of parts, had no more in division of victuals and clothes, than he that was weak." So the young and strong refused to work and the total amount of food produced was never adequate.
To rectify this situation, in 1623 Bradford abolished socialism. He gave each household a parcel of land and told them they could keep what they produced, or trade it away as they saw fit. In other words, he replaced socialism with a free market, and that was the end of famines.
Many early groups of colonists set up socialist states, all with the same terrible results. At Jamestown, established in 1607, out of every shipload of settlers that arrived, less than half would survive their first twelve months in America. Most of the work was being done by only one-fifth of the men, the other four-fifths choosing to be parasites. In the winter of 1609-10, called "The Starving Time," the population fell from five-hundred to sixty.
Then the Jamestown colony was converted to a free market, and the results were every bit as dramatic as those at Plymouth. In 1614, Colony Secretary Ralph Hamor wrote that after the switch there was "plenty of food, which every man by his own industry may easily and doth procure." He said that when the socialist system had prevailed, "we reaped not so much corn from the labors of thirty men as three men have done for themselves now."
Before these free markets were established, the colonists had nothing for which to be thankful. They were in the same situation as Ethiopians are today, and for the same reasons. But after free markets were established, the resulting abundance was so dramatic that the annual Thanksgiving celebrations became common throughout the colonies, and in 1863, Thanksgiving became a national holiday.
Thus the real reason for Thanksgiving, deleted from the official story, is: Socialism does not work; the one and only source of abundance is free markets, and we thank God we live in a country where we can have them.
* * * * * Mr. Maybury writes on investments.
This article originally appeared in The Free Market, November 1985.
I'm surprised, after all according to the left, the economy of the Soviet Union was a smashing success. And don't those Cuban's live in luxury. Just ask Oliver Stone.
bookmarked
You mean Ethiopia can produce their own food and are just lazy? I thought there were droughts throughout there and they didn't have the land to grow food....?
Same story Rush tells each year at Thanksgiving.
The old 20/80 rule.
Bookmarking for my youngster.
I'm a Jamestown decendant so know there were hard times and many died. Good article.
Perhaps that explains why the real GDP of the EU has been running in the red.
A good read - thanks for posting this!
Some of the same attendees managed to show up at the first one in Virginia (at Jamestown), and later on at the first one in Plymouth colony (about 1623), and probably in Nieuwe Amsterdam shortly thereafter.
There are 30 old European settlements on the East Coast dating from the time of Jamestown or before. 28 of them have never been studied. Still, you find echoes of their existence and the people there, and how they lived, in family traditions and tales. Thanksgiving was always in there. Maybe it's just a memnonic for the purpose of recalling the ancients, I don't know, but whatever it was, it was real to them.
bookmark
Yeah, I know what you mean. Who in the world can grow anything in the desert? (Phoenix, AZ)
I think it was William F. Buckley who once said that Russia exported grain for decades, then the communists took over and they suffered 80 straight years of droughts.
Some were fleeing persecution, for sure, but Britain was fairly adept at shipping their thieves, murderers and other recalcitrants to the colonies and out of the Kingdom.
The other obvious example were the early white settlers in Australia.....90% were common criminals.
Great post...'course the Indians helped a bit with food and technology.
But privatization helped as much as anything else. Those who figured out the "technology" faster and better thrived more.
Bump!
The truth shall set us free...thanks for the post.
Reading this at the table was my first thought too. Great minds.
Bump!
Bump!
Bump!
The Wall STreet Journal also runs an editorial every year around Thanksgiving telling the same story. Thanks for posting...I like reading it over and over again! And I will also establish a new tradition in my home...reading it to my family every year, since my kids never here this version in school.
Very fascinating.
BTW, the Pilgrims actually first landed on Cape Cod and later moved to Plymouth.
Cape Cod was once a heavily forested area. The cutting down of many trees, especially near the tip of the cape and along the coastline, exposed the ground again to the winds that quickly stripped away the thin topsoil that had formed over the ages. This accelerated the dehydration of the large trees, leaving them unable to cope; the land was quickly denuded by both man and nature.
If I recall correctly, the Pilgrims were only there a year or two, and then on to Plymouth etc.
(Quote - unquote, Park Service info read at roadside park, summer of 1986.)
"Yeah, I know what you mean. Who in the world can grow anything in the desert? (Phoenix, AZ)"
No kidding. Or...how about in that formerly vast desert called "Israel"?
Jim,
Yup.
Matter of fact, the English even sent a fresh load of convicts to VA soon AFTER the Revolution! It was turned away of course.
It's a shame really that it's just a big sandbar now.
Although I hear tell of a fearsome hunter name of Kerry who almost bagged a ridiculously huge buck on the Cape not too long ago.
My greatest Thanksgiving hoax was putting pepper spray in the gravy.
What so many people don't get is that the First Settlers were often simply people who couldn't get along with their neighbors.
And yes, thieves, drunks, debtors, etc.
There was also some religious fanatacism that was right up there with the Taliban.
A good read.
Lazamataz wrote:
The Great Thanksgiving Hoax
My greatest Thanksgiving hoax was putting pepper spray in the gravy.
How art thou?
Thank you for the recommendation....it was indeed a good article. :-)
A little off topic perhaps, but do you suppose that Bush will pay another surprise visit to Iraq this Thanksgiving so he can serve another "plastic" turkey to the troops?
Well, what kind of holiday would the real story make? We'd all go around stealing turkeys and pies!
LOL!
Gearing up to do the "Thanksgiving Mom" thing.
Which means I will be TRYING to look sexy, bouncy and joyous, but will actually be scrambling madly, trying to get the timing right and hoping that nobody notices that I am faking it!
I can always tell.
Givey Hapsthanking!
I would find this article infinitely more useful and topical if the original sources were listed: documents, letters, diaries, archives, whatever.
Learn something new everyday on this site. Thanks for the information.
American-style socialists (liberals) have figured out that you can let the people keep a certain percentage of what they earn, and then you simply tax the bejeesus out of the biggest producers for the benefit of the unproductive...that is their constituents. Since there will always be a large percentage of people who have no problems leeching off others, there will always be the few overtaxed and the many undertaxed. But you'd be surprised (or maybe you wouldn't) at the numbers of ignoramuses who think that the rich pay little or no taxes and that the poorest pay the most. These are the Democrats.
LOL!
Guys always say that.
Happy Thanksgiving to YOU, too!
No, no, no, the Canadians do. Why else would all the fleeing liberals prefer the freezing, unfriendly North over a tropical island paradise full of happy brown people?
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