A Last Stand for the Xingu

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Suisunes

Tragic demise of “People of the West Wind”

Entire tribe commits suicide during battle with Spaniards

History by Kris Delaplane Conti

Stone Age people were the first inhabitants of Solano County. This is known through artifacts found in Green Valley some years ago and dated by archaeologists to 2000 B.C. The next residents that we know of were the Patwin Indians. These people were the southern branch of the Wintun group and they lived in the region for a thousand years or more; some figures are as high as 4,000 years.

Telling the story of these native people is riddled with uncertainties as nothing was ever chronicled. What has been recorded is based on what was known of similar Indian groups, lore and best guess. Spellings vary from record to record, as these names were written phonetically.

How many Patwins inhabited the section Solano County between what is now Suisun, Vacaville and Putah Creek? Estimates put the number between 2,500 and 5,000. These were the Southern Patwins and they formed themselves into small tribes - Ululatos (Vacaville), Labaytos (Putah Creek), Malacas (Lagoon Valley), Tolenas (Upper Suisun Valley) and Suisunes (Suisun Plain).

The relations between tribes were generally good and trade routes were well established with Indian tribes farther away. Occasionally, however, the tribes became hostile toward one another and the usual argument was over poaching on another’s land for game or fish.

When clashes would break out, it was “take no prisoners” and women suffered the same fate as the men. However, just as often peace was negotiated before things came to this.

Most accountings show that each tribal village consisted of 100 people; nevertheless, at least one account says 1,500.

No on-site sketches were made, but it is believed that the Patwins of this region lived in conical-shaped huts made of tule thatch. A separate house was constructed for women in menstruation or childbirth.

For social gatherings there was a sweathouse for the men. This would be beside a stream or river and the ritual was much like a Finnish sauna; bake in the sweathouse, then jump in cool water.

Food was plentiful; the diet varied. The people were hunters and gatherers. The main staple of their diet was the acorn, which they would leach with sand and ash-water to take out the bitterness and poison and make it palatable for meal or flour for bread.

(Here’s a recipe for acorn mush: Shell dry acorns. With a meat grinder, process acorns into find flour. Put flour into a muslin-lined colander and run warm water through, stirring occasionally, until flour loses its bitterness. Squeeze out excess water. Dry flour. Cook 4 cups of flour to 12 cups of cold water, stirring constantly at a slow boil for 1/2 hour. Reduce heat and cook another 1 1/2 hours. Eat hot or cold. Add dash of salt if you wish. Bon appetit!)

Other foods were the buckeye ball, pine nuts, juniper and manzanita berries, blackberries and wild grapes. Sunflower, aliflaria, clover, bunchgrass, wild oat and a yellow flower provided seeds that were dried and pounded into a meal. Brodiaea bulbs and tule roots were some other plant foods collected and stored. Bulbs were baked or boiled.

The people were, of course, adept at stalking local game: deer, antelope, tule elk and bear. They also had the hunt of wild duck, geese, and quail. Fish were abundant in Suisun Bay and rivers and sloughs that prevailed.

They built canoes out of tule rushes and fished for salmon with spears. Nets were strung between the tule reeds in narrow waterways and sloughs to gather other fish. The deer meat and salmon were sun dried and pulverized into a meal to be stored.

Basket weaving was a highly developed art among the Patwins. Some uses of baskets were to hold babies and as pots for cooking. They were also adept at making tools. Local rocks were shaped into implements. Points and diggers were fashioned from basalt near Vacaville.

Indians of this area made due with little clothing; a loincloth, an apron woven with tule rushes or made of rabbit skins did the trick. Shell beads and feather headdresses were much the fashion. Dances and rituals were a deep part of their culture. To this, women tattooed their faces and men painted themselves excessively.

Europeans were to make their presence known by the early 1800s. However, as early as 1775 they were here. The vessel San Carlos entered San Francisco Bay and for several weeks Jose de Canizares went exploring. For one night he and his men found shelter in a bay at Benicia. No contact with the Indians was made. We can only wonder if the local Indians saw this alien presence.

In the early 1800s, Spain controlled California and the building of the missions was well under way. Indians from various tribes along the way were captured, removed form their native places and while becoming “civilized” labored to build missions, pueblos and presidios. The first mention of the Suisun Indians in any records is a baptismal record at the San Jose Mission dated 1807. By 1810 and 1811 the number recorded is much larger. Other small tribes - Tolenas Malacas and Ululatos - appear in San Francisco and San Jose records in 1816, 1817 and 1819.

Masses of Indians were caught in the convert-or-else net in the missions in San Jose and San Francisco. Needless to say, a number of Indians were reluctant converts. The main village, Yulyul, of the Suisuns, the “People of the West Wind,” is believed to have been where Rockville is today. The distance of the Suisun tribe from the missions appealed to those Indians unwilling to take up the faith and give up their native ways. These “rebels” stole horses to seek their freedom and a return to the natural ways by joining up with the Patwin tribes of the Solano County region.

With the stolen horses in hand, slowly but surely the Suisun Tribe hod a serious increase in horse herds and by the early 1800s a small cavalry developed that launched angry attacks on various mission outposts.

This was not taken lightly by the Spaniards and in May 1810 Gabriel Moraga and 17 soldiers crossed the Carquinez Strait to launch an attack on the hostile Indians. They were met by 125 warriors and a fierce battle took place.

Outmanning the Spaniards was of no avail. The Indians were driven into three huts. Those in the first two huts were killed. The Indians in the third hut set themselves afire. This is, we gather, a Spanish accounting of the event. A supposed Suisunes version reads that, as the Suisunes proved to be unwilling prisoners, they were fired upon and flaming torches were tossed on their huts.

In 1817 the commandant of the Presidio of San Francisco was Jose DeArguello. He sent his lieutenant Jose Sanchez, with a small army to conquer the Indians of the Suisun Tribe. The exact battle site is lost to time, but it is assumed to have been in the low-lying hills behind Benicia. A poisoned arrow pierced the air, and the war was on. How long it lasted, how many lives were lost is for us to wonder about. What is known is that the Spaniards gained ground to what is Fairfield and Suisun today. This was where the main village of Chief Malica, sachem of the Suisun Tribe, was located, and where the Chief Malica chose to meet his death and that of the “People of the West Wind.”

A mass suicide took place before the Spaniards’ very eyes. The conical huts, rush-built wickiup, burst in flames one by one. The chief, singing his own death song, leaped into the burning rush. Braves of the tribe followed. Soon the entire village took up the droning chant till their voices rose higher and higher, ending in shrieks of pain. Hut after hut burst into flame. Women with babes in arms or children clinging to their hands, singing their death songs, plunged to their doom.

The sight horrified the Spaniards. They rushed in to save the frenzied Indians, but their efforts were in vain. A few Indians fled their fate and sought refuge in the nearby hills, but as a whole, the “People of the West Wind” perished.

Sem Yeto, at 6-foot-7, was an imposing young brave of the Suisun Tribe. He purportedly was in line to become chief by virtue of his noble birth. One story has him off hunting at the time of the battle and ensuing mass suicide. Another tale is that chief Malica convinced Sem Yeto to flee and take his rightful place as leader of the remaining tribe. Exactly when he was captured and what numbers of the Suisun people remained is not substantiated. Perhaps he fled to the hills with a small group for the next six years. Perhaps he was captured and living at mission outposts. We get a fix on him through the missionary baptismal records.

The Franciscans established their last mission in Sonoma in 1823, and it was given the name San Francisco de Solano. Shortly thereafter, Sem Yeto was baptized and given the name Francisco Solano. Thus it is for this Indian chief that Solano County was named. The converted Sem Yeto lived in Sonoma and Suisun Valley outposts.

The Suisun tribe had represented the eastern wing of the Sonoma tribe, which was scattered through Napa, Sonoma, Lake and Solano counties. It was Sem Yeto, a man of peace and not war, who would bring under his command all the Sonoma Indians and bring about peace between the remaining Indians and the Spaniards. Sem Yeto was also to be of great assistance and became a friend to Gen. Mariano Vallejo in the ensuing years. He and Vallejo are often mentioned together in history of Solano County; theirs was as friendship and an alliance.

Though a converted man and basically a man of peace, Solano was often influenced by the instincts of his past. Stories cropped up that he would occasionally join a band of Indians and attack the Spaniards; but he was always foreign and bought back onto the fold.

Chief Solano’s position came to an abrupt end at the Bear Flag Revolt in 1846, when Gen. Vallejo was taken prisoner by Americans form Sutter’s Fort. Though only jailed, rumor was widespread that the general had died. Believing this, Sem Yeto, wanting to avoid the same fate, fled north and traveled form tribe to tribe in Oregon and Washington and possibly Alaska.

Then, lonely for his native land, he returned in 1850. He died of pneumonia soon after at the old Yulyul village site in Rockville. True to custom, this old Indian chief was buried by his people secretly. The precise burial place of Chief Solano is unknown, but legend is strong that his bones rest at the entrance of what is today Solano Community College.

---

Published February 26, 1995 in the Vacaville Reporter

A Birthplace of Native Americans

Studying DNA, at least one major birthplace of Native Americans appears to be in the Altay Region, Southern Siberia, just west of Mongolia:

Is This Russian Landscape the Birthplace of Native Americans?

The Kayapo in Pictures

Pictures: Amazon Belo Monte Dam and the Kayapo People

Uncontacted Trribes of the Amazon Rainforest

BBC News - First film footage of remote Amazon rainforest tribe

Nanti Indians, Peru

First Ever Aerial Footage of Members of the Nanti, an Uncontacted Amazon Tribe

released 4 February 2011


Extraordinary film footage narrated by movie star Gillian Anderson has launched Survival International’s new campaign to protect some of the world’s last uncontacted tribes:



New film footage released today shows uncontacted Indians on the Brazil-Peru border in never-seen-before detail. It is the first-ever aerial footage of this uncontacted community.

Ms Anderson said today, ‘What comes across very powerfully from this amazing footage is how healthy and confident these people appear. I hope they can be left alone – but that will only happen if the loggers are stopped.’

The footage was filmed by the BBC in collaboration with the Brazilian government, for the new BBC 1 ‘Human Planet’ series (broadcast 3 Feb). The Brazilian government has authorized Survival to use the footage as part of its campaign. Photos of the tribe were published worldwide by Survival earlier this week.

Global coverage of the story has already pushed the Peruvian authorities into action – they have announced they will work with Brazil’s Indian Affairs department (FUNAI) to protect the area more effectively.

The Indians’ survival is in jeopardy as an influx of illegal loggers invades the Peru side of the border. Brazilian authorities believe the influx of loggers is pushing isolated Indians from Peru into Brazil, and the two groups are likely to come into conflict.

Survival Director Stephen Corry said today, ‘The very dangerous future for uncontacted tribal peoples should be of worldwide concern. Gillian Anderson’s help here will draw more attention to it – vital if the world is finally going to call a real halt to the centuries of destruction.’

Ask Peru's president to protect uncontacted tribes including the Nanti Indians. Sign the petition at the end of the video or go to the bottom of the page at Survival International: Uncontacted Tribes

Oil workers and illegal loggers are invading the lands of uncontacted tribes in Peru. They risk introducing infectious diseases which could wipe the Indians out. They won’t survive unless the invasions stop. The petition reads:

"President Garcia: Oil drilling and logging in uncontacted tribes' territories could wipe the Indians out. Please protect these peoples' right to live in peace and security – stop the loggers and oil companies from entering their land."

California Geoglyphs Endangered

An old friend of mine, Mike Boyd, recently wrote: :I have also been working on a project with wife Patty [who is a archeologist by profession] on a huge native cultural complex located next to and including Blythe California. Blythe was named after an Englishman who was a carpet bagger who stole the land from the Indians who lived there. Our friend Alfredo Figueroa has found the location of the Cradle of Aztlan and we are trying to protect it from destruction by carpet baggers; this time by solar thermal energy developers who want to pave over the whole area."

La Cuna de Aztlán (With Updated Comments By Chemehuevi Tribal Chairman, Charles Wood. from Robert Lundahl on Vimeo.

"The video is posted here: http://www.vimeo.com/13650564 . It has comments from Chemehuevi Tribal Chairman Charles Wood at the end. Very appropriate to the subject and the presentation. Cinematography for both videos is by Robert Lundahl, Advocacy Films, www.advocacyfilms.com 415.205.348--Direct"

Additional Resources:

Geoglyphs (Mysteries of the Ancient World)

Pre-Columbian Geoglyphs, Norte Grande, Arica, Chile, South America Photographic Poster Print by Ken Gillham, 12x16

Geoglyph the Very Best of

Locations in Aztec Mythology: Mictlan, Popocatépetl, Tlalocan, Iztaccíhuatl, Tlillan-Tlapallan, Tamoanchan, Aztlán, Culhuacan, Chicomoztoc

Tsenacommacah

Tsenacommacah is the native name for the land around and of which Jamestown, Virginia, is a part. Here are two reviews of books written in recent times about this area and its history:

Natalie A. Zacek - The Newest New World - Reviews in American History 34:2


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View Larger Map


The Newest New World

by Natalie A. Zacek, in "Reviews in American History," 34.2 (2006) 150-155, John Hopkins Press


Books Reviewed:

Robert Appelbaum and John Wood Sweet, eds. Envisioning an English Empire: Jamestown and the Making of the North Atlantic World. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005. xi + 368 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, and index. $59.95 (cloth); $24.95 (paper).

James Horn. A Land as God Made It: Jamestown and the Birth of America. New York: Basic Books, 2005. xi + 289 pp. Illustrations, notes, and index. $26.00 (cloth); $15.95 (paper)


It is easy to imagine that many American historians will feel an urge either to shrug their shoulders or to roll their eyes when hearing of the publication of two new books with "Jamestown" in their titles. Over the past few years, the place which John Smith called "a misery, a ruine, a death, a hell" has seemed inescapable. In March 2004, the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture sponsored a four-day conference on the subject of "The Atlantic World and Virginia, 1550–1624," at which no fewer than sixty-five scholars presented papers, nearly all of which dealt at least in part with Jamestown. Historical and tourism organizations throughout coastal Virginia have committed to an ambitious program of events to celebrate "America's 400th Anniversary," and state residents can apply for commemorative license plates, spend state quarters featuring an image of the three ships of the initial English expedition, and reap the benefits of transit improvements around the newly named "Jamestown corridor." Even the local multiplex has jumped upon this bandwagon, with heartthrob actor Colin Farrell donning John Smith's doublet and boots in Terrence Malick's The New World. But it would be a considerable shame should historians of colonial America and the Atlantic choose to pass by either of these volumes, as both rise far beyond quadricentennial hype and provide a host of insights, not only about the Jamestown venture itself but also about the wider political, social, and cultural world in which that venture was carried out.

James Horn seizes the reader's attention within the opening lines of A Land as God Made It. Rather than beginning his account of the colony with the all-too-familiar narrative of the arrival in 1607 of the Susan Constant, the [End Page 150] Godspeed, and the Discovery in the Chesapeake Bay, or with a discussion of the "lost colony" of Roanoke, Horn announces that "the English were not the first Europeans to discover Virginia" (p. 1). In the summer of 1561, a Spanish ship was driven by storms into the Bay. Proceeding inland, the Spaniards anchored along a river in order to gather supplies and repair their vessel, and there, on the banks of what may have been the Chickahominy, they encountered a small group of Indians, two of whom apparently agreed to board the ship and sail back to Europe with its crew. One of these two, Paquiqueneo, was given the name of Don Luis de Velasco, under which title he was presented at Philip II's court in Madrid. Anxious to return to his homeland, Don Luis sailed to Mexico, where he accepted the Christian faith and spent several years living amongst Dominican friars. Expressing a desire to establish a mission among his own people, Don Luis gained the support of the governor of Florida, Pedro Menendez de Aviles, and in 1570, accompanied by dozen Jesuits, he at last returned to his home. Once resettled among his people, Don Luis soon turned his back upon the missionaries, who struggled to survive a harsh winter, and in February 1571 the apostate and his supporters attacked the mission, killing all but one of its residents. An enraged Menendez dispatched an expedition against his former comrade; unable to find Don Luis, he settled for unleashing a "chastisement" upon the Indians before returning to Florida. But although the Spanish mission met a quick and brutal end, in Horn's view it cast a long shadow over future relations between Europeans and Virginia Indians. Menendez's attack acquainted the Indians with the fearsome nature of European warfare, and simultaneously served as a warning to rival European powers that Spain had laid its claims to North American territories as well as those to the south. Perhaps more importantly, this moment of contact gave rise to tantalizing tales of the alleged wealth of this land, which Spanish mariners claimed was filled with easily accessible lodes of jewels and precious metals. All of these results were to have significant impact upon the next century's English colonial endeavors.

From this arresting opening, Horn moves on to examine the principal players and events that led to and followed the arrival of the small English fleet in 1607. He analyzes the statecraft of Wahunsonacock (whom the English knew as Powhatan) and Opechancanough, the pre-eminent leaders of the region that the Powhatans called Tsenacommacah and he provocatively argues that Opechancanough may have been none other than Don Luis/Paquiquineo and lauds the skill by which these two brothers gained control of "great and spacious Dominions" (p. 20). The book's central chapters present a detailed and convincing picture of the many challenges faced by Christopher Newport's initial colonizing venture, which included not only an unfamiliar landscape and an indigenous people whose leaders appeared alternately as friend or foe to the English but also vituperative disagreements between the leaders [End Page 151] of the expedition. For the English, "survival depended on a deadly game of keeping one step ahead of their enemies," and the only man who succeeded in this game was Captain John Smith, who was scorned and hated by many of his fellow colonists because of what they considered to be his low birth and his refusal to accept the decisions and policies of his alleged betters, both in Jamestown and at the Virginia Company's headquarters in London (p. 75). Horn does not accept Smith at their valuation, nor at his own, aware as he of Smith's penchant for viewing and portraying himself as an English hero, "acutely aware of the epic proportions of [his] voyages," but he lets the reader understand how important Smith was to the survival of the settlement, due not only to the military and cartographic skills that he had acquired though his youthful exploits as a soldier of fortune but also to his ability to keep Wahunsonacock, Opechancanough, and their people guessing about the abilities and aims of the newcomers (p. 86). The balance of power shifted continually between the English and the Indians, and these changes were simultaneously the cause and the result of the ever-changing balance of power between Smith and his opponents in both Jamestown and London.

Horn is at his strongest when narrating and analyzing the course of diplomacy and hostility between the Indians and the English, and the ways through which each group came to understand—or misunderstand—the other. But A Land as God Made It has more to offer, in particular a nuanced and persuasive account of the motivations and actions of the Virginia Company in the years following the first expedition. Although the Company was determined to keep the struggling settlement alive and to fend off potential Spanish incursions in the Chesapeake, throughout the 1610s it was far from clear what the investors hoped to gain from the colony. In the absence of mineral wealth, what profit might Jamestown generate for its investors? And what was the ideal relationship between the English and the Indians, mutuality and respect or hostility and eventual English dominance? Of course, the answers to these questions are familiar; by the early 1620s, the English settlers would have begun to produce tobacco, survived a devastating attack by Opechancanough and his allies, and taken the first steps towards the development of the political and economic institutions through which, in Edmund Morgan's words, "the rise of liberty and equality in America [were] accompanied by the rise of slavery."1 What is noteworthy in Horn's depiction is his ability to make this well-known and much-analyzed material new, and to allow the reader to comprehend the fragility, randomness, and contingency of these much-studied events

There are some small ways in which this book might have been made still more valuable. The illustrations, particularly the several maps, are well-chosen, with a high quality of reproduction, but readers would have been well served by the inclusion of a list of principal actors, particularly among the ranks of the colonists and the Virginia Company officials. Horn reserves some of his [End Page 152] most original ideas for the epilogue, but including them in the introductory chapters might have allowed the reader to better understand some of his aims before plunging deeply into complex narratives. Nonetheless, A Land as God Made It immediately earns its place upon the shelf of essential accounts not only of Jamestown, but also of colonial British America.

An article extracted from Horn's book is the first essay in Robert Appelbaum and John Sweet's Envisioning an English Empire, and it is easy to imagine Horn vigorously agreeing with Karen Ordahl Kupperman's contention in her introduction that "the history of Jamestown and the beginnings of English settlement in America is better served when we view it in an Atlantic frame" (p. xi). As Sweet states in his perceptive introduction, "the purpose of this volume is to better understand the various visions that shaped early Virginia," and to do so by enlisting both historians and literary scholars in this endeavour (p. 2). To accomplish this laudably ambitious goal, Appelbaum and Sweet adopt a three-part perspective, one that emphasizes first the early encounters between Indians and English in Virginia, then the international relations that influenced English imperial ideology and practice, and finally the ways in which settlers' and natives' visions of Virginia altered over the course of the seventeenth century.

The first section, "Reading Encounters," covers the material most obviously linked to the Jamestown settlement. Alden T. Vaughan's "Powhatans Abroad: Virginia Indians in England" provides a lively and intellectually stimulating account of the Virginia Indians, most famously Pocahontas, who served as "cultural intermediaries" between colony and metropole, and Horn's "The Conquest of Eden: Possession and Dominion in Early Virginia" shows how the English and the Powhatans' consistent misunderstanding of each other's ideas of sovereignty rendered "a bloody struggle for possession . . . inevitable" (pp. 51, 48). In "John Smith Maps Virginia: Knowledge, Rhetoric, and Politics," Lisa Blansett applies textual strategies to a cartographic source, in a manner much influenced by the work of Richard Helgerson and Tom Conley, while Emily Rose's "The Politics of Pathos: Richard Frethorne's Letters Home" sheds light upon the production and dissemination of the heartrending letters through which indentured servant Frethorne described the miseries of his experiences in 1620s Virginia.2

The second section, "The World Stage," locates early Virginia within the wider world of Elizabethan and Jacobean international politics and contains some of the most insightful and provocative pieces. In "The Specter of Spain in John Smith's Colonial Writing," Eric Griffin delineates the "conflicted attitude toward Spain that pervades much of the colonial writing" of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England (p. 112). Griffin propounds a convincing argument that John Smith's writing betrays an "intense Anglo-Hispanic identification" by which Smith "construct[s] himself as the model English conquistador" [End Page 153] (p. 133). Pompa Banerjee's piece on "Turkey and Virginia in John Smith's True Travels" not only "point[s] to the rhetorical function of Turkey as a resonant subtext" to Smith's account of his Virginia adventures, but also reads both texts and images circulated by Smith to posit his existence as a "white Othello," a picaresque figure who charmed his readers, particularly women, with his tales of romantic and military endeavors (p. 135). Susan Iwanisziw's "England, Morocco, and Global Geopolitical Upheaval" discusses what she sees as a triangular diplomatic and imperial relationship between Protestant England, Catholic Spain, and Islamic Morocco, and Andrew Hadfield's "Irish Colonies and America" offers a spirited critique of those scholars, such as David B. Quinn and Nicholas Canny, whom he believes are too quick to view the relationship between English colonial activities in Ireland and America as "part of the same process, with the one leading to another" (p. 174).

The final section's title, "American Metamorphosis," is vague, and perhaps intentionally so, as the essays therein are less clearly connected to one another than those in the previous sections. Robert Appelbaum's "Hunger in Early Virginia" could as easily have been placed in the first group, dealing as it does with the nature of English and Indian understandings of the presence and absence of food in human society. But regardless of its textual location, Appelbaum's essay is one of the two or three best in the volume; it expertly blends historical, literary, and anthropological analysis of texts and images depicting surfeit and dearth, and would be an excellent reading selection for an undergraduate seminar on European-Indian encounters. Jess Edwards's "Between 'Plain Wilderness' and 'Goodly Corn Fields': Representing Land Use in Early Virginia" historicizes seventeenth-century English rhetoric about appropriate forms of land use and dovetails neatly with Peter C. Herman's " 'We All Smoke Here': Behn's The Widdow Ranter and the Invention of American Identity," which centers upon the creation of new forms of cultural practice in late-seventeenth-century Virginia. One might wonder how much more there might be to say on the much-debated topic of the origins of African slavery in Virginia, but Michael J. Guasco's "Settling with Slavery: Human Bondage in the Early Anglo-Atlantic World" yields interesting and valuable insights into seventeenth-century English understandings of states of unfreedom, including villeinage, servitude, and the enslavement of captive English mariners in North Africa.

As is so often true in volumes of this nature, some of the essays seem better suited than others to the putative subject of the collection, and many readers may opt to pass over individual pieces due to their lack of interest in specific topics or particular methodologies. But, as we see from Constance Jordan's conclusion (an unusual but most welcome practice in edited collection), these dozen highly diverse essays allow open-minded readers to reconceptualize Jamestown as a "world…neither new nor old but both at once," one which [End Page 154] was the product both of very historically and culturally specific negotiations between small groups of Indians and English and of a much wider-ranging series of histories, theories, and encounters (p. 288). In company with A Land as God Made It, Envisioning an English Empire shows just how much more we can learn about "the birth of America," and how new the New World can still be to scholars and students alike.


Natalie Zacek, lecturer in history and American studies, University of Manchester, is completing a monograph on the development of white societies in the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English West Indies.


Endnotes

1. Edmund Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia (1975), 4.

2. See Richard Helgerson, Forms of Nationhood: The Elizabethan Writing of England (1992); and Tom Conley, The Self-Made Map: Cartographic Writing in Early Modern France (1997).

Looking for Co-Author(s)

Friends,

The NATIVE AMERICAN WISDOM website has existed since 2004 with what I feel has been a high degree of quality information on American Indian history, culture and -- yes, wisdom.

During its most popular period, this site averaged over 200 unique visitors a day. That number has fallen to about 80 unique visitors a day, mostly due to my inability to spend the time necessary to add new content.

So, rather than let the website just wither away, I am seeking a co-author who could work with me to keep adding important educational, historical, cultural and spiritual material particular to Native American Peoples.

My co-author would have a high level of independence. Coding and specific technological expertise is not necessary. I can help with that. The person (or persons) I am looking for should really only have a desire to share Native American Wisdom to the Earth, at large, and have the time to regularly post to the website.

If you are interested in becoming a co-author, please email me at malcolm @ legendarysurfers.com -- I have stretched the email out to thwart the spammers, but I'm sure you can figure out what the real address is. I look forward to hearing from you!

( Ko'o'shup, Chumash cave painting site about an hour's drive away )

Thanksgiving Origins & Menu

To learn more about Thanksgiving Day, please go to:

Teaching About Thanksgiving





Where Did Thanksgiving Come From?

American Indian peoples, Europeans, and other cultures around the world often celebrated the harvest season with feasts to offer thanks to higher powers for their sustenance and survival.

In 1541 Spaniard Francisco Vásquez de Coronado and his troops celebrated a "Thanksgiving" while searching for New World gold in what is now the Texas Panhandle.

Later such feasts were held by French Huguenot colonists in present-day Jacksonville, Florida (1564), by English colonists and Abnaki Indians at Maine's Kennebec River (1607), and in Jamestown, Virginia (1610), when the arrival of a food-laden ship ended a brutal famine.

(Related: "Four Hundred-Year-Old Seeds, Spear Change Perceptions of Jamestown Colony.")

But it's the 1621 Plimoth Thanksgiving that's linked to the birth of our modern holiday. The truth is the first "real" Thanksgiving happened two centuries later.

Everything we know about the three-day Plimoth gathering comes from a description in a letter wrote by Edward Winslow, leader of the Plimoth Colony, in 1621, Monac said.

It had been lost for 200 years and was rediscovered in the 1800s, she added.

In 1841 Boston publisher Alexander Young printed Winslow's brief account of the feast and added his own twist, dubbing it the "First Thanksgiving."

In Winslow's "short letter, it was clear that [the 1621 feast] was not something that was supposed to be repeated again and again. It wasn't even a Thanksgiving, which in the 17th century was a day of fasting. It was a harvest celebration."

But after its mid-1800s century appearance, Young's designation caught on—to say the least.

U.S. President Abraham Lincoln declared Thanksgiving Day a national holiday in 1863. He was probably swayed in part by magazine editor Sarah Josepha Hale—the author of the nursery rhyme "Mary Had a Little Lamb"—who had suggested Thanksgiving become a holiday, historians say.

In 1941 President Franklin Roosevelt established the current date for observance, the fourth Thursday of November.


What Was on the First Thanksgiving Menu?

Little is known about the first Thanksgiving dinner in the Plimoth (also spelled Plymouth) Colony in October 1621, attended by some 50 English colonists and about 90 native Wampanoag men in what is now Massachusetts.

We do know that the Wampanoag killed five deer for the feast, and that the colonists shot wild fowl—which may have been geese, ducks, or turkey. Some form, or forms, of Indian corn were also served.

But Jennifer Monac, spokesperson for the living-history museum Plimoth Plantation said the feasters likely supplemented their venison and birds with fish, lobster, clams, nuts, and wheat flour, as well as vegetables such as pumpkin, squash, carrots, and peas.

"They ate seasonally," Monac said, "and this was the time of the year when they were really feasting. There were lots of vegetables around, because the harvest had been brought in."

Traditional Thanksgiving fare that certainly wasn't on the table: potatoes, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie.

If you want to eat like a Pilgrim yourself, try some of the Plimoth Plantation's recipes, including stewed pompion (pumpkin) or traditional Wampanoag succotash.

[ The above from National Geographic: Thanksgiving Facts