Primary school textbooks have much to say about the first
Thanksgiving, but few tell the real story. There are two reason
for this: until the rediscovery of the diaries of Governor
William Bradford it had been forgotten, and by the time it was
found it was a very awkward and inconvenient truth for those who
write the scripts for our children. The story commonly told is
that the colonists nearly starved because they didn’t know how
to work the land in the New World, and that they were saved in
1621 by skills taught them by the native American Indians. But
that’s not how it happened. The original colony at Plymouth Bay
had been founded by Puritans who hoped to emulate the early
Christians by keeping all their worldly goods in common. They
forgot St. Paul’s admonition that only those who worked should
be fed from the common store. Idleness and theft of provender
were rife; actual work to provide it was very scarce. For two
years (1621 and 1622) this continued, and the colony was on the
edge of starvation. Still,