Actually, the Pilrims invited the Indians to the celebration they were
having. Harvest festivals have been held for thousands of years. The
biblical version of this is the Feast of Booths or Tabernacles. Other
cultures have similar festivities. The celebration was for a successful
harvest thus staving off famine for another year.

The Pilgrims nearly wiped themselves out by that Thanksgiving. They
discovered afterwards that their harvest wasn't quite as plentiful as
they had thought. Bradford had to cut their ration to half over the
winter. They had a very hard time for the next two years.

They also had peace with the indians until Mahomet and his
contemporaries had died out. Mahomet's son Philip went to war with the
Pilgrims wanting to drive them out. Pilgrims themselves had no desire
for war. Of course, other groups made up greatly for the Pilgrims lack
of war.

John Dunlop wrote:
>
> If I ever need to be reminded that this list is so USA dominated, this
> Thanksgiving holiday does it. Although I lived there for 8 years, I
> never could quite grasp the concept of Thanksgiving and why Americans
> make it such a big, important holiday especially so close to Christmas
> when they do it all again. To my understanding, and I would be glad to
> be corrected if my understanding is incomplete or wrong, the original
> festivities were to celebrate how wonderful the local Indians were to
> the original settlers who landed in America. They welcomed them with
> open arms and provided food and shelter etc for them. This is all very
> well, but then, in later times, the "white men" did their level best to
> wipe out all the Indian inhabitants of America and didn't get far from
> achieving this objective. Is this really something to carry on
> celebrating? Surely it really represents something that should be
> remembered as America's shame, not a celebration?
>
> Just my $.02 and I am sure that this American-centric list will not find
> my views popular but I just wanted to present an International viewpoint
> to the Thanksgiving thread.
>
> Cheers,
>
> John Dunlop
>
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