wesfrye53
Bronze Member
THE FIRST FEAST
One of the misconceptions about the first feast is that it was a thanksgiving feast. The Separatists didn't celebrate holidays - any holidays (not even Christmas or Easter). This was one of the reasons they left England in the first place, because the church was trying to force them to celebrate religious holidays and ceremonies. Thanksgiving to them was simply a harvest festival.
The first festival took place in October to celebrate the September harvest. The Indians were invited as a gesture of friendship and brought with them 90 men (there may have been women present also, but only the men are counted). The separatists were not prepared to feed that many people and so Massasoit sent some of his men back to their village to bring food. The feasting lasted for 3 days.
"This is the way the feast was described in a first-hand account presumably by a leader of the colony, Edward Winslow, as it appears in Mourt's Relation:
'Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a special manner rejoice together after we had gathered the fruit of our labors. They four in one day killed as much fowl as, with a little help beside, served the company almost a week. At which time, amongst other recreations, we exercised our arms, Many of the Indians coming amongst us, and among the rest their greatest King Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five deer, which they brought to the plantation and bestowed on our governor, and upon the captain and others. And although it be not always so plentiful as it was this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want that we often wish you partakers of our plenty.' "
HA! Happened in Virginia, FIRST; on the James River...NORTH of Jamestown. "Google" FIRST THANKSGIVING WAS IN VIRGINIA 
