http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Valley/1001/holiday
Alot of myth has grown up over what really happened on the first Thanksgiving, because the popular story isn't "the rest of the story". In reality, the Pilgrims rented the Mayflower along with many others, they wandered about because no established colony wanted them, and the finally ended up in Massachusetts along with the Puritans who were well on their way to founding a Theocracy - the New Jerusalem on Earth, but because they landed late in the year their first harvest was both late and disasterous...
But, Thanksgiving, first made a National Holiday by Abraham Lincoln and the most 'Mercan of 'Mercan holidays is under attack by the Politically Correct. The bad wicked Christian Europeans stole 'Merca away from the noble indiges, and this Holiday is said to celebrate the conquest. For the Politically Correct VegeTerrorist it's a day of Horror - when people everywhere around them celebrate unsavory practices by reverting to meat eating savages ! Well, I'm sure that the natives didn't expect the Europeans to just keep coming and coming and coming ! But, Europe really was an awful place to live in in those days - can one really resent those that left for wanting out. Keep in mind that it ws the decendants of the Pilgrims that changed their minds about good relations with the "Indians"
The Pilgrims, like many Protestants wanted to be free to worship the way they wanted - again, a more "pure" faith than the Church of England would provide or tolerate. Their sect was unpopular with the English King which meant they couldn't go back to England, and they didn't want their offspring to be assimilated into Dutch culture - so they hired the Mayflower and sailed to the New World. Of all the places that they could have landed they chose Plymouth Bay, all too close to the Puritans of Boston. Then they settled down to starve when the supplies had run out and their harvest was bad. The third harvest is Samhain, they finished harvesting what they had by late November. Without native help they wouldn't have made it - they weren't a very practical bunch and had to be taught about things like hunting and fertilizer. They only survived because of Squanto and other friendly indian tribes. The relations between the Pilgrims and the natives were good - for one generation.
As the Pilgrims and the Puritans prospered they hardened their hearts against the natives, as well as any religious deviance within their ranks. What peace remained between them and the natives was destroyed by their descendants. Thought each thought the others to be rank heretics, they did cooperate in destroying Merry Mount - the first openly Euro-Pagan settlement, and in general hostility towards the natives that in decades past had saved them.
The Thanksgiving on the street with the shopping cart ! BE thankful to what ever dieties you hold dear if you're not among them - and try to help them out this year - you never knkow - it may one day be you !!