In the November of 1621, Edward Winslow, the former Governor of
the Plymouth Colony, penned, in what would become the classic
early American account, Mourt’s Relation: “Our harvest being
gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling (an archaic
term for bird and game hunting), that so we might after a
special manner rejoice together, after we had gathered the
fruits of our labor.” With these humble words, Winslow gave us
the first, firsthand account of Thanksgiving, a day of reverence
for and celebration of a beautiful and brutal North America and
its seemingly endless bounty. These pioneers were simply
thankful to be alive and that first feast represents the first
breakthrough in our collective and ongoing attempts to better
understand our homeland. As a national holiday, Thanksgiving got
off to a rough start. Proclamations meant to establish an annual
day of thanks from presidents Washington through Madison (though
curiously not Jefferson) fell on deaf ears. It wasn’t until
Lincoln, courtesy of an aggres