All the little elementary kids dressed as Pilgrims and Indians, celebrating Unity and Thanksgiving.  What a pretty picture!  But  this sanitizing of History, though now an accepted practice, has little basis in fact.  The gathering of People's and food shared by Chief Massosoits' people and the Pilgrims was more a treaty parlay than a 'thanksgiving' and the prayer given by William Bradford at this occasion specifically gave thanks for  "saving us from the ravages of the savages". The same 'savages' that saved them from starvation!
      But this was not the first 'official' Thanksgiving Day.
          In Groton, Connecticut, near Stamford, 700 Pequots gathered to celebrate the annual "Green Corn Dance". It was a day of thanksgiving. This highly prized region was one the settlers wanted, so in typical 17th century Christian fashion, English and Dutch mercinaries  attacked the Village Longhouse.  Those that followed the order to come out were shot.  The rest were burned alive in the Longhouse.  The churches of Manhattan announced a day of "thanksgiving" to celebrate victory over the heathen savages.  During the feasting, the hacked off heads of Natives were kicked through the streets of Manhattan like soccer balls.
           The attacks against "the heathen" grew to a  frenzy, with days of thanksgiving being held after each successful massacre. Even the friendly Wampanoag did not escape. Their chief was beheaded, and his head placed on a pole in Plymouth, Massachusetts -- where it remained for 24 years.
        Each town held thanksgiving days to celebrate their own victories over the Natives until it became clear that there needed to be an order to these special occasions. It was George Washington who finally brought a system and a schedule to thanksgiving when he declared one day to be celebrated across the nation
as Thanksgiving Day.
        It was Abraham Lincoln who decreed Thanksgiving Day to be a legal national holiday during the Civil War -- on the same day and at the same time he was ordering troops to march against the Sioux in Minnesota ..... (and subsequently ordered 38 Santee Sioux hung on Christmas Eve for leaving the reservation in search of food after promised supplies never materialized)
        As Americans began to become more civilized history was whitewashed and the present fable inserted in books.  But the 'officiality' of the Day remains. Unknowingly, the American people still celebrate these 'civilized' celebrations of death.
        American Indins know the story and remember.  To us, this  day is for celebrating our survival, and remembering the Pequots and the past.
        Those cherished Pilgrims migrated here to establish their own sovereign forms of government, practice their religion, and enjoy their own individual ways of life.   First People's today wish no less.  Why have those lofty ideals, so desired by Americans then, become less acceptable today for this country's original Peoples?