This Land Is Their Land: The Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving

by David J. Silverman

Overview

Ahead of the 400th anniversary of the first Thanksgiving, a new look at the Plymouth colony's founding events, told for the first time with Wampanoag people at the heart of the story.

In March 1621, when Plymouth's survival was hanging in the balance, the Wampanoag sachem (or chief), Ousamequin (Massasoit), and Plymouth's governor, John Carver, declared their people's friendship for each other and a commitment to mutual defense. Later that autumn, the English gathered their first successful harvest and lifted the specter of starvation. Ousamequin and 90 of his men then visited Plymouth for the “First Thanksgiving.” The treaty remained operative until King Philip's War in 1675, when 50 years of uneasy peace between the two parties would come to an end.

400 years after that famous meal, historian David J. Silverman sheds profound new light on the events that led to the creation, and bloody dissolution, of this alliance. Focusing on the Wampanoag Indians, Silverman deepens the narrative to consider tensions that developed well before 1620 and lasted long after the devastating war-tracing the Wampanoags' ongoing struggle for self-determination up to this very day.

This unsettling history reveals why some modern Native people hold a Day of Mourning on Thanksgiving, a holiday which celebrates a myth of colonialism and white proprietorship of the United States. This Land is Their Land shows that it is time to rethink how we, as a pluralistic nation, tell the history of Thanksgiving.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781632869241
Publisher:	Bloomsbury USA
Publication date:	11/05/2019
Pages:	528
Sales rank:	172,522
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.70(d)

About the Author

David J. Silverman is a professor at George Washington University, where he specializes in Native American, Colonial American, and American racial history. He is the author of Thundersticks, Red Brethren, Ninigret, and Faith and Boundaries. His essays have won major awards from the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and the New York Academy of History. He lives in Philadelphia.

Table of Contents

A Note on Spelling, Terminology, and Dates ix

Introduction Mourning in America 1

Chapter 1 The Wampanoags' Old World 23

Chapter 2 Danger on the Horizon 61

Chapter 3 Golgotha 95

Chapter 4 Reaching Out to Strangers 127

Chapter 5 Ousamequin's Power Play 175

Chapter 6 A Great Man and a Little Child 205

Chapter 7 Ungrateful 253

Chapter 8 Ruining Thanksgiving 299

Chapter 9 "Days of Mourning and Not Joy" 355

Epilogue Toward a Day with Less Mourning 419

Acknowledgments 429

Glossary of Key Indian People and Places 433

Abbreviations 439

Notes 443

Index 499

Editorial Reviews

09/16/2019

George Washington University history professor Silverman (Thundersticks) deconstructs the “Thanksgiving myth” in this revealing study of the 1621 gathering at Plymouth colony between Puritan colonists and Wampanoag Indians that inspired the holiday. A confederation of local tribes, the Wampanoag had recently been decimated by an infectious disease brought by Europeans (Wampanoags credited the epidemic to supernatural causes) and were under threat from their rivals, the Narragansett. Wampanoag chief Ousamequin entered into a “mutual defense pact” with the Pilgrims, Silverman writes, and brought 90 men to the colonists’ fall harvest celebration in order to help cement the agreement. But an influx of settlers in the decades following the 1629 establishment of Massachusetts Bay Colony led to increased tensions and occasional outbursts of violence between natives and Pilgrims, setting the stage for King Philip’s War in 1675. That brutal conflict shifted the balance of power in the region so dramatically, Silverman notes, that the Wampanoag were nearly wiped out over the next two centuries. Silverman sketches the Wampanoag story up to the present day, giving voice to such tribal activists as Frank James, who declared Thanksgiving a “National Day of Mourning” in 1970. This lucidly written and convincingly argued account of the most “American” of traditions deserves to be read widely. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

"David J. Silverman delivers [the story] in astonishing detail . . . His pointed, lucid prose makes his book as deeply engaging as it is sobering." - Boston Globe

“Throughout this well-documented, unique history, Silverman offers a detailed look at . . . the palpable sense of overall mourning after the aftermath of King Philip's War and the [European] attempt to annihilate (and assimilate) the Wampanoags-and their incredible ability to transcend the dehumanization and prevail . . . an eye-opening, vital reexamination of America's founding myth.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review

“Silverman's highly recommended work enlightens as it calls into question persistent myths about the origins of Thanksgiving.” —starred review, Booklist

“This lucidly written and convincingly argued account of the most “American” of traditions deserves to be read widely.” —Publishers Weekly

"This publication is well researched . . . It should be required reading for how not to treat indigenous peoples." - New York Journal of Books

“David Silverman has crafted a gripping Native-centered narrative of the English invasion of New England. Finally, there is a book that vividly contextualizes the fabled first Thanksgiving, placing Native diplomacy and actions at the very center of the story, along with the warfare, dispossession, and struggle for sovereignty that was very much part of the longer aftermath of first contact. It is a story that continues into the present and a must read for every American.” —Linford Fisher, author of THE INDIAN GREAT AWAKENING

“Probably the most important book you need to read before the 400th anniversary of the first Thanksgiving. You know the outlines of the story, but this book is so full of human detail from the perspective of the Wampanoags, you'll feel like the old histories have inverted the whole thing. It's like we've been looking at a negative image all our lives, and Silverman gives us the real story finally in vivid color.” —Joseph Kelly, author of MAROONED: JAMESTOWN, SHIPWRECK, AND A NEW HISTORY OF AMERICA'S ORIGIN

“With a rare combination of deep learning, passionate commitment, and moving prose, David Silverman's history of Wampanoag people is a book that all Americans need to ponder.” —Daniel K. Richter, McNeil Center for Early American Studies, University of Pennsylvania

“This recasting is refreshing, important, and just, showing both the the power and skill of indigenous diplomats, and how all that the Pilgrims ultimately achieved came at the expense of native peoples.” —Michael Leroy Oberg, author of NATIVE AMERICA: A HISTORY

“David Silverman's sobering story of friendships forged in a complex intertribal world and betrayed in a nightmarish colonial world demands a national rethinking of America's mythic beginnings.” —Colin G. Calloway, author of THE INDIAN GEORGE WASHINGTON

“A good measure of a work of history is whether it changes the way we understand its subject. By that measure, David J. Silverman succeeds admirably in Thundersticks… In Silverman's sober, sprawling account, America is a nation built on slaves and guns.” —New York Times Book Review on THUNDERSTICKS

“Written in an accessible and at times swashbuckling style, the book is in many ways a retelling of the U.S.' Indian Wars from the 17th to the 19th centuries, with a twist.” —Los Angeles Times on THUNDERSTICKS

"This text is an eye-opening account of an often ignored history … [it] serves as a much-needed challenge to the national origin myth of Thanksgiving." - Shelf Awareness

From the Publisher

★ 2019-09-11
An impassioned, deeply knowledgeable history of the "first contacts" between the Indigenous peoples of the Americas and the English and Europeans, this time told from the Native side.

A scholar of Native American, Colonial, and racial history in America, Silverman (History/George Washington Univ.; Thundersticks: Firearms and the Violent Transformation of Native America, 2016, etc.) first orients readers toward what the landing Pilgrim scouts at Cape Cod in November 1620 would have actually seen in the environs: evidence of an undeniable Native civilization. As the author shows, the Wampanoag Indians had already adopted horticulture (maize, beans, squash); created a system of governance via individual sachems (chiefs), inherited through the male line; and established proprietorship of the land stretching back generations. Moreover, there had already been a history of violence between the Natives and the shipboard European explorers for at least 100 years, as the explorers often lured the Natives into unfair trade, which often led to violence, and spread fatal diseases that decimated their population. "The ease of some of the Wampanoags with the English," writes the author, "suggests that there had been other more recent contacts than surviving documents report. At Martha's Vineyard, thirteen armed men approached the Concord without any fear, as if they had experience with such situations." Throughout this well-documented, unique history, Silverman offers a detailed look at the long, tortured relations between the two and captures the palpable sense of overall mourning after the aftermath of King Philip's War and the attempt to annihilate (and assimilate) the Wampanoags—and their incredible ability to transcend the dehumanization and prevail. Ultimately, the author provides an important, heart-rending story of the treachery of alliances and the individuals caught in the crosshairs, a powerful history that clearly "exposes the Thanksgiving myth as a myth rather than history." Silverman also includes a helpful "Glossary of Key Indian People and Places."

An eye-opening, vital reexamination of America's founding myth.

Kirkus Reviews

09/01/2019

In celebration of a peace and mutual defense agreement, a Wampanoag delegation led by Ousamequin visited Plymouth during fall 1621 and celebrated what became known as Thanksgiving. In the U.S. mythology, that event was immortalized as the moment when American Indians ceded the New World to Euroamericans. To modern Wampanoag and other American Indian peoples, the day is viewed as one of mourning. Silverman (history, George Washington Univ.; Thundersticks) situates the origins of the Thanksgiving tale within the scope of Wampanoag history, beginning prior to the arrival of the Pilgrims, to illuminate why they would have allied themselves with the floundering Plymouth colony in the first place. The relationship between the Pilgrims and Wampanoag grew quickly strained, leading eventually to the devastation of the tribe during King Philip's War in 1675. Although that event saw Wampanoag nearly erased from history, they continue to express their identity and agency to this day. VERDICT Silverman's reconstruction of the world of the Wampanoag provides fascinating insights for both general readers and scholars into the early years of the colonization of Massachusetts, situating not only Thanksgiving within the nation's history but also the tragedy of King Philip's War.—John R. Burch, Univ. of Tennessee at Martin

Library Journal

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