On the First Thanksgiving in 1621 what plants did the Pilgrims consume?
Through the years, there has been a lot of controversy and debate about exactly what did the Pilgrims and American Indians eat on the first Thanksgiving? As a kid in elementary school, I always enjoyed learning and discussing the first Thanksgiving. I wrote a poem in the first grade about the Pilgrims and Indians first Thanksgiving celebration, and it was published in the local newspaper!
There are written records that have survived the centuries documenting their cuisine. They didn’t eat turkey, but got their fill of meat with roasting five deer. It is possible wild birds like duck and geese filled with onions and nuts were also on the menu. There were plenty of walnuts, chestnuts, and beechnuts. Also, there was an abundance of shellfish.
The Pilgrims were very lucky to have the help and knowledge of the local native Indians, who helped them grow a variety of fruits and vegetables. They had an abundance of potatoes, onions, beans, spinach, lettuce, cabbage, carrots, and corn. In those days, corn was removed from the cob and turned into cornmeal. The cornmeal was boiled and turned into a thick mush. Sometimes this was sweetened with dark molasses. The tuber roots of the wildflower, Jerusalem Artichokes, known as Sunchokes were boiled and eaten.
They gathered local fruits such as blueberries, plums, grapes and raspberries. Cranberries grew wild in the New England marshes. Historians think they probably ate cranberries at the first Thanksgiving but had not yet made sweets or relishes from them.
The local Wampanoag tribe introduced pumpkins to the pilgrims. At that point in time, the Pilgrims lacked wheat, butter, and other ingredients to make pumpkin pie. It is felt the colonists poured milk, honey, and spices in the hollowed-out pumpkins and roasted it in hot coals, a precursor to the modern pumpkin pie!
They washed it all down with hard cider and homemade beer.
The surviving Pilgrims felt very blessed and thankful for what they had accomplished and endured, and were very grateful for their new Indian friends. On that first three-day Thanksgiving celebration in the autumn of 1621, they invited the chief Massasoit and 90 men. Only 50 colonists had survived to celebrate the first Thanksgiving. There were 22 men, 4 women, and 25 children and teenagers, and a couple of pet dogs.
On this Thanksgiving 400 hundred years later, lets us all take time to be thankful of all our abundant blessings before digging into the roasted turkey and cranberry sauce!
Image by Larry White
