Three Thanksgiving Lessons: #1. Pilgrims Rejected Socialism. #2. Disease killed most Indians. #3. Indians Killed Each Other in Genocidal Wars Before Europeans Arrived.

Teach your children well tomorrow. These three important history lessons about Thanksgiving, and America, are no longer taught by our schools, media, or Hollywood/TV pop culture.

Lesson #1: America became the “Land of Boundless Opportunities” only after the Pilgrims rejected socialism.  Before then, it was a land of hunger, resentment, and death.

Shortly after the Pilgrims arrived, they were befriended by Squanto.  Squanto was an American Indian of the Patuxet tribe . (“American Indian” was the term used for 400 years before leftists invented the  “Native American” to delegitimize everyone else born in America).  Squanto miraculously survived disease and famine that wiped out most of his tribe several years before. He taught the Pilgrims how to grow corn and other American crops, and where to find fish. The Pilgrims also used fertile fields that had previously been cleared and fertilized with fishheads for farming by Squanto’s tribe.

However, in spite of Squanto’s help, the Pilgrims struggled. They barely produced enough food to feed themselves during their first two years in America.  That is because they ran their settlement as a socialist commune. There was no privately owned land. Everyone worked commonly owned fields together.  Everything produced was put into a common storehouse, and given out based on need.  This caused enormous problems.

William Bradford, the colony’s governor, explained them in his journal.

“Young men resented working for the benefit of other men’s wives and children without compensation. Healthy men who worked thought it unjust that they received no more food than weak men who could not. Wives resented doing household chores for other men, considering it a kind of slavery.”

To fix these problems, the Pilgrims got rid of socialism in their third year. Governor Bradford’s journal continued to describe the changes that were made and the dramatic results.

“At length, after much debate of things, the Governor (with the advice of the chiefest amongst them) gave way that they should set corn every man for his own particular, and in that regard trust to themselves; in all other things to go on in the general way as before. And so assigned to every family a parcel of land.?

“The colonists, each of whom now had to grow their own food, suddenly became very industrious, with women and children who earlier claimed weakness now going into the fields to plant corn. Three times the amount of corn was planted that year under the new system.

After getting rid of socialism, the Pilgrims traded their surplus food for furs from the Indians.  The Pilgrims then traded those furs for luxury goods, including sugar and molasses from Europe and the West Indies. Only then did they enjoy comfortable lives which would later be known as the American dream and have plenty to be thankful for.

Lesson #2: Roughly 90% to 95% of American Indians died from disease. Very few were killed by attacks or wars with European settlers.?

Even most “mainstream” high school and college textbooks written by Obama/Clinton Democrats admit this.  The Enduring Vision is a U.S. History typical hate America textbook used by many colleges including Atlantic Cape Community College in Mays Landing, Atlantic City, and Cape May Court House, New Jersey.  However, even this biased text admits:

“Although Indians began to recover from the initial epidemics, by the mid 1600”s (European) settlers brought new diseases such as diphtheria, measles, and tuberculosis as well as new outbreaks of smallpox, which took heavy tolls. New England’s Indian population fell from 125,000 in 1600 to 10,000 in 1675.”

Most historians agree that 90% to 95% of American Indians died from diseases such as smallpox which made Europeans sick, but which were almost always fatal to American Indians. See: http://www.pbs.org/gunsgermssteel/variables/smallpox.html

Many left-wing history texts claim European settlers deliberately infected Indians with deadly diseases.  It is true that during the French and Indian War of 1756-1763, one British army officer bragged in his journal that he deliberately caused smallpox infected blankets to be delivered to Indians he was fighting.   However, there is no evidence that any Indians got sick or died from his efforts, let alone enough to decimate whole native American communities.

In particular, almost all Indians near Plymouth, Massachusetts died from a mysterious plague several years before the Pilgrims arrived. In 1605, Tisquantum (Squanto), a young man from the Patuxet tribe was brought to England, where he learned English, but was later kidnapped and sold into slavery. Later he escaped, and was brought back to Massachusetts in 1619, one year before the Pilgrims arrived.?? There he learned that his entire tribe had died of disease and hunger, and that all the fields and houses in his village were empty.? He then went to live with the nearby Wampanoag tribe until the Pilgrims came.

Lesson #3: There were many brutal and often genocidal wars between American Indian tribes long before Europeans arrived.

In Mexico, the Aztecs brutally and systematically attacked, kidnapped, and murdered thousands of men, women, and children from nearby tribes to be killed as human sacrifices.

In Virginia, Maryland, and North Carolina, Indians led by Chief Powhatan were also brutal and aggressive to neighboring tribes long before the English arrived. In 1585 English scholar Thomas Harriot came to Virginia with settlers of the “lost” colony of Roanoke. Before leaving in 1586, Harriot learned the Algonkian Indian language and took detailed notes of his many conversations with Indians from that area. Harriot included them in the book he later published called “A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia”.  See http://docsouth.unc.edu/nc/hariot/summary.html. In it, he included these descriptions of wars between Indian tribes long before the English arrived:

“The most successful chieftains were wily and deceitful and thought nothing of using subterfuge to destroy their enemies. One tribe invited all the leading families of a nearby village to a feast, and when they were altogether merrie and praying before their idol, the captaine or lorde of the town came suddenly upn them and slew them every one. Such cruell and bloodie violence and drastically reduced the population and the people are marvelously wasted, and in some places the country is desolate. . .”

“Their manner of warres amongs themselves is either by sudden surprising one another. This is most commonly done about the dawning of the day, or moone light, or else by ambush or some other suttle devises.

In his book, Big Chief Elizabeth?, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/518853.Big_Chief_Elizabeth, historian Giles Milton summarizes the tactics of these ambushes.? He then summarized those tactics and presented other facts to make a compelling case that the Powhatan Indians wiped out the “lost” Colony of Roanoke just as they had wiped out other nearby Indian villages before the English arrived.

The ambush must have come without any warning: a hail of arrows, a scream from the forest, and a ferocious and terrifying assault. The Indians would have formed themselves into small bands whose task was to single out the roughest of the English. These poor victims would have been seized and bound before tribesmen “beat out their braynes” with wooden clubs. Only when the strongest men had been slaughtered would they have turned their attention to the weak, the sick, the women and children. Some, perhaps, were “broiled to death?–slowly burned on a bed of charcoal.”  Others would have been stripped and skinned alive. Only the fortunate would have been killed in the initial onslaught on the village.

One reason Squanto and leaders of his adopted Wampanoag tribe befriended the Pilgims was that they needed allies to protect them from stronger, aggressive Indian tribes who lived nearby.

One of the most brutal and genocidal wars between Indian tribes were the “Beaver Wars” where the Iroquois Indians nearly wiped out the Huron tribes between 1648 and 1657.

Enduring Vision the “mainstream” Progressive/Democrat U.S. History text used by Atlantic Cape Community College describes these wars as follows:

“Between 1648 and 1657, the Iroquois, in a series of bloody “Beaver Wars”  dispersed?(emphasis added) the Hurons and other French allies, incorporating many members of these nations into their own ranks. They also attacked French settlements along the St. Lawrence River. “They come like foxes, they attack like lions, they disappear like birds”, wrote? a French Jesuit about the Iroquois.

To say the Iroquois “dispersed” the Hurons between 1648 and 1657 is like saying the Germans “dispersed” the Jews of Europe during the Holocaust of 1939-1945!

2021-0927-blog-disclaimer

 LibertyAndProsperity.com is a tax-exempt, non-political education organization of roughly 200 citizens who mostly live near Atlantic City, New Jersey.  We formed this group in 2003. We volunteer our time and money to maintain this website. We do our best to post accurate information. However, we admit we make mistakes from time to time.  If you see any mistakes or inaccurate, misleading, outdated, or incomplete information in this or any of our posts, please let us know. We will do our best to correct the problem as soon as possible. Please email us at info@libertyandprosperity.com or telephone (609) 927-7333.

Also, because Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms falsely claim our posts violate their “community standards”, they greatly restrict, “throttle back” or “shadow ban” our posts.  Please help us overcome that by sharing our posts wherever you can, as often as you can.  Please click the social share links below.  Also copy and paste the link to the “comments” section of your favorite sites like Patch.com or PressofAtlanticCity.com and email them to your friends. Finally, please subscribe to our almost weekly email updates on this website, or by emailing us.  Thanks.

Seth Grossman, Executive Director

LibertyAndProsperity.com

info@libertyandprosperity.com

(609) 927-7333