Yesterday was Thanksgiving.

For the majority of Americans, it was an opportunity to engage in a the traditional kitsch of a national holiday.  School children dressing up as “Pilgrims” and “Indians,” turkeys and buckled hats adorning doors, windows, and lawns, and a gigantic feast, representing the first Thanksgiving meal- the union of the natives and the puritans, coming together to celebrate a successful harvest.

The reality is, sadly. very different.  The truth is that shortly before the colonists arrived at New Plymouth. a plague had ravaged the native population, destroying entire villages.  The truth is that Squanto, friend of the pilgrims, had been sold into slavery in Spain, and managed to return to him home to find everyone he knew was dead.  The truth is that Squanto found the pilgrims essentially squatting in the ghost villages of his people, surviving by picking the food off the overgrown and untended farms of the natives, and dying of disease and starvation.

Squanto helped them, he taught them to farm and hunt in New England, to survive the harsh winters.  He helped them communicate with the surviving Pequot and Wampanoag people.  The first Thanksgiving was, as has been fabled, natives and pilgrims both bringing food to the table, but the food the pilgrims brought was the food of Squanto.

Just a few short years after this Thanksgiving, the Pilgrims massacred Squanto’s people.  They mercifully waited until after his death, but nonetheless the story of the puritans and the natives is not a happy one.

So take a moment today to think about the native peoples of this land, the peoples who have been abused and neglected since the time Europeans first colonized this soil.  Think about them today, and give more than thanks.  Ask forgiveness for our sins, sins that yesterday we gathered to celebrate.