A Wampanoag woman prepares a meal as part of an exhibit at Plimoth Plantation in Plymouth, Mass.

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Plimoth Plantation

A few weeks ago, Trudie Lamb-Richmond was leading a school group through the Mashantucket Pequot Museum when a question from one of the kids brought her up short.

As she often does at this time of year, Richmond was explaining the origins of Thanksgiving from a Native American point of view — how the so-called “First Thanksgiving” was actually part of a much larger cycle of Native American thanksgiving festivals and how roast turkey, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie probably weren’t on the menu. (Instead, the Pilgrims and their Wampanoag dinner guests most likely sat down to a meal of venison served with dried corn and fruit).

But it was a number that Richmond had used — 13 — that really piqued the youngster’s interest.

“I told them that Native American groups like the Wampanoag often celebrated many different thanksgivings, sometimes as many as thirteen,” Richmond says. “And this young boy really thought that was strange. I think he had this image of a bunch of people sitting around eating turkey and watching football thirteen times a year — which, of course, would be pretty strange.”

Strange or not, Richmond’s experience is far from unusual.

In fact, a growing number of historic sites and museums now try to incorporate Native American viewpoints in their presentations of Colonial life and culture. And nowhere is that effort more visible — or more prone to moments of cognitive dissonance — than in programs and activities surrounding Thanksgiving.

“Sometimes it’s a challenge,” says Thomas Kelleher, a curator at Old Sturbridge Village in Sturbridge, Mass. “The traditional Norman Rockwell image of Thanksgiving is so strong that it can be hard to add anything new. But we’ve also found that people are also very interested in learning more about the history of the holiday, especially from the Native American point of view.”

At Sturbridge, a living history museum that evokes a New England village from the early 1800s, efforts to present a more balanced view of early American life take several forms.

For the past few years, the site has worked with Margaret Bruchac, a Native American author and historian who also performs as a traditional healer or “doctress.” Kelleher says Bruchac’s performances, which typically include a discussion of Native American farming and dietary practices, have been well received.

“Margaret does a great job at explaining Native American culture from a very human point of view,” he says. “And I think her discussions of Native American foodways, probably because food is something we all care about, are among the most popular parts of her presentation.”

Sturbridge also sponsors a series of “Country Village” dinners designed to showcase food that was typical of early 19th-century New England. The dinners, which cost $85 per person and feature delicacies such as mulled cider, stewed beets, roast beef with horseradish cream and “pounded cheese” (cheese mixed with butter), take place every Saturday night through March 5.

At Plimoth Plantation, the effort to incorporate Native American attitudes and viewpoints begins even before you visit one of the site’s famous Colonial-era attractions.

After buying their tickets, visitors are shown a short film that provides background information about both the English Pilgrims who settled in Plimoth (present-day Plymouth, Mass.) and the native Wampanoags, who were already living there.

Deputy executive director Richard Pickering says the film’s title, “One Story, Two Peoples,” sums up Plimoth’s approach to presenting early Colonial history.

“This is something we’ve been doing for a long time now — over 25 years,” Pickering says. “In fact, I think we were one of the first, if not the first, historic sites to really make an effort to bring Native American representatives into the planning process.”

Perhaps the most tangible sign of that collaboration is the Wampanoag Homesite, a re-creation of a Colonial-era Wampanoag homestead. Since opening in the early 1970s, the site, which is modeled on an actual dwelling that would have provided accommodations for an extended family of 14, has become one of Plimoth’s biggest attractions.

Like Sturbridge Village, Plimoth also offers a variety of Thanksgiving-themed dinners and other activities, including one that re-creates how a late 19th-century Victorian family might have celebrated Thanksgiving. (Note: many of the November meals are already sold out.)

By contrast, you won’t find many Colonial-era displays at the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center in Mashantucket, Conn. Part of the same complex that includes the mega-popular Foxwoods Resort and Casino, the museum exists mainly to tell the story of the Pequots, an Algonquian tribe that settled in what is now central and eastern Connecticut.

“We don’t really don’t do the whole Pilgrims-and-Indians thing here,” says Richmond, a member of the Schaghticoke Tribal Nation who serves as the museum’s programming director. “Like any museum, we try to insure that the information we present is fair and accurate. But we also have our own perspective.”

For visitors raised on the traditional Eurocentric view of Colonial life, that perspective can be an eye-opener, especially at this time of year.

A display devoted to European settlement of the New World, for example, makes no bones about the purpose of Colonial outposts such as Jamestown, Va., and the Massachusetts Bay Colony. While some colonists came to North American to find religious freedom, it explains, most had something else on their minds: profit.

Nor does the Pequot Museum go out of its way to celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday. Instead, museum guides are more likely to talk about thanksgivings — plural — to visiting tours and school groups.

“We don’t just give thanks one day and that’s the end of it,” Richmond explains. “In the Native American tradition, there are often multiple thanksgivings, depending on the time of year. At the museum, for instance, we celebrate four separate thankgsgivings — in April, June, October and December. We used to have as many as thirteen, but it got to be too much of a headache.”

bvansicl@projo.com