PLYMOUTH, Mass. -- Before you bite into that turkey leg, you might want to chew on this:
Much of what we celebrate at Thanksgiving is based on myth, not fact.
The Pilgrims, for instance, did not wear buckled hats. And the Indians, often painted as a few chiefs and braves at a long table, outnumbered the settlers three to one.
In fact, the harvest feast, which lasted three days, was probably a "diplomatic moment" where the Wampanoag Indians and the English settlers assessed each other as potential allies -- or enemies, says Kathleen A. Curtin, a historian at Plimoth Plantation, a living museum in Plymouth, Mass.
"It wasn't the lovey-dovey, hand-holding, kissy-kissy story we tell our children," adds Nancy Eldridge, education manager for the Wampanoag program at Plimoth.
The two women are part of a growing number of researchers who are revising -- or rediscovering -- the real Thanksgiving story.
At Plimoth Plantation, where actors help to recreate a 1627 New England village, the two women have put their work on display in an exhibit called "Thanksgiving: Memory, Myth & Meaning." A red sign at the entrance says, "Warning: Stereotypes Ahead."
The two researchers say they don't want to ruin the holiday. But perhaps no other American celebration has better reflected the mood of a nation over the last 300 years than Thanksgiving Day, they say.
Worried about the Civil War, immigrants and crowded factories, Americans have used the First Thanksgiving to celebrate various ideas -- piety, the American work ethic and a woman's place in the home -- as part of an evolving civics lesson.
It's also a day seen very differently by Native Americans.
"We have our own Thanksgiving stories," says Narragansett Chief Sachem Matthew Thomas. The early settlers "invited us to a feast. Then they shot us."
The story begins with the arrival of the Separatists, later called Pilgrims, on Cape Cod. After building crude houses at Plymouth Colony, they celebrated their first harvest in 1621. It was a secular event, says Curtin.
"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 fruits of our labors," wrote Edward Winslow, a Plymouth colonist.
Alarmed by the shooting, the Wampanoag Indians who lived in the area notified the tribe's leader, Massasoit.
Already, there was friction between the two groups. For years, European explorers had kidnapped Indians and sent them overseas. And smallpox, carried by the Europeans, had devastated many tribes.
Massasoit, who attended the celebration with 90 men, "had the upper hand at that point. There were thousands of Wampanoags and 52 English," Curtin says. The Wampanoags built shelters near the English and stayed for three days.
They may have eaten wild turkey, but it wasn't the main dish, Curtin says. More likely they ate duck, geese, shellfish, corn, pumpkin, berries and venison.
The English -- as a form of entertainment, and perhaps a show of technological superiority -- marched and fired their muskets in the air.
Artists in the 19th and 20th centuries painted a very different picture.
In Edward Percy Moran's 1920 painting, "The First Thanksgiving in Plymouth," the Indians -- in western-style headdresses -- are few in number. Crimson leaves cling to the trees; a purple sky shines behind yellow-white clouds.
That's a typical view of later artists, Curtin says. "The natives are subdued and not really a part of the event."
The idea of thanksgiving wasn't new to the English. But thanksgiving days were marked by lengthy religious services, not celebrations. The first recorded thanksgiving in Plymouth occurred in 1623. The colonists thanked God for rain after a two-month summer drought. There was no feasting.
According to researchers, Thanksgiving started as a New England holiday. It was a celebration of family and community, based on the Puritan practice of fasting and festive rejoicing. Different colonies and states celebrated the event at different times.
Then, in 1841, Alexander Young, a historian, rediscovered Winslow's early account. He called it the First Thanksgiving and linked it to the New England holiday, thereby merging family, feasts, Indians, Pilgrims and religion.
"As far as what happens in 1621, no one really thinks about it" for 220 years, Curtin says. "The event could have been completely lost."
It wasn't. Instead, Sarah Josepha Hale, the editor of Godey's Lady's Book, a popular woman's magazine, lobbied to make Thanksgiving a national holiday.
Hale, who set trends in fashion and cooking, saw the holiday as a way to celebrate the domestic skills of women. Thanksgiving, she wrote in 1864, "is in its very nature a religious and domestic holiday. It belongs to the alter and the hearth, at which every woman should ever be present."
During the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln declared two national Thanksgivings. The first commemorated the Battle of Gettysburg. The second, in November, was to give thanks for "general blessings."
The holiday got a modern twist -- pious Pilgrims in black hats -- in the late 1800s, when waves of European immigrants came to America. At the same time, the Industrial Revolution was changing rural America. Both posed a threat to a passing way of life.
How could these foreigners become good Americans?
They could follow the example of the Pilgrims, who were model immigrants and citizens. Dressed in stark black clothes, their faces turned to heaven, they embodied ideal concepts of piety, cooperation and hard work. By the 1900s, researchers say, Thanksgiving became a tool to teach immigrants and schoolchildren about America.
A century later, the Pilgrims still exert an influence.
At the Clayville Elementary School in Rhode Island, fourth and fifth graders each fall build English settler and Indian villages in the thick woods behind the school. Students and teachers have been doing it for 12 years.
"It's a good kickoff to Rhode Island history," says Betty Angelotti, the teacher who started the program. In some ways, her mission echoes the one at Plimoth Plantation. "My main goal was to teach students about the feelings the Indians have for the environment," she says.
Some Indians even celebrate the traditional holiday, although the emphasis isn't on Pilgrim piety.
"We've been submerged in the culture," says Everett Weeden, whose Indian name is Tall Oak. Weeden is a Wampanoag and Mashantucket Pequot Indian who lives in Charlestown. "We've all grown up behind the turkey."
For Native Americans, the Plymouth story does not end well. In the 1600s, thousands of Indians were killed by European diseases or by colonists. Massasoit's son, Metacom, also called Philip, was killed and his young son enslaved.
In 1970, Weeden and other Indians started the National Day of Mourning. Held each year in Plymouth, the vigil was launched after a state official asked to edit a speech by Frank James, a Wampanoag Indian scheduled to speak at a dinner in Boston during Plymouth's 350th anniversary.
"Five hundred Indians came from all parts of the country," Weeden remembers. "We buried Plymouth Rock. Some of the Indians climbed" the mast of the Mayflower replica in the town's harbor.
Weeden no longer attends the Plymouth protests. "We all have to move on," he says. "My energies are still focused on changing attitudes, but I don't have to march through the streets to do it. I work in the schools now, with teachers and students."
At Plimoth Plantation, some visitors complain the museum is too politically correct. "This history isn't dead," Curtin counters. "The stereotypes are still playing out in our communities."
The Wampanoags have held thanksgiving ceremonies for thousands of years, adds Eldridge. But people forget that the native people were a part of America's story before the English arrived, she says. "We tell people today, Don't feel guilty. Just become aware of the native people. With awareness, changes can occur."
