The Miracle of the First Thanksgiving
On Dec. 21, 1620, a group of weary people waded ashore. They left behind them—an ocean away—everything they had known. They had been part of European society, but they deeply believed in the Bible and the law of Moses. They saw Europe’s sinful society as Egypt, the king of England as the “British pharaoh,” the Atlantic Ocean as the Red Sea, their perilous crossing of it as an exodus, and this desperately sought-after shoreline as New Israel. They had reached dry land. They now possessed the religious freedom for which they had sacrificed so much. And they had no way to survive.
Strong winds had blown their ship 200 miles off course. They had planned to land near the mouth of the Hudson River near what is now New York City. Instead, they were near Cape Cod. Those 102 potentially doomed men, women and children had to wade from the Mayflower through frigid waters up to their thighs. For many, this initial obstacle proved fatal. A total of 45 pilgrims (including my 12th-great-grandfather, William White) contracted hypothermia or other fatal conditions and died within four months of setting foot on that snow-covered Massachusetts shoreline.
The 57 survivors had little of the knowledge and few of the skills they needed to survive in the wilderness. The tiny colony was dying. The entire colony of Roanoke, in what is now North Carolina, had disappeared several years earlier without a trace. We still don’t know what happened to them.
Would this be the fate of these pilgrims?
Some wanted to return to Europe. Some thought they would die here. Some thought that their quest to establish New Israel was over. Then a Patuxet man walked out of the forests and into Plymouth Colony.
His name was Tisquantum—and he spoke perfect English.
The pilgrims had spent months starving. They had spent months fishing—and caught exactly one fish. But, for reasons they did not understand, this native man wanted to help them.
Tisquantum knew how to fish, plant corn, plant pumpkins, stalk deer, skin beavers, and determine which berries were edible. He also convinced the chief of the Wampanoag confederacy, Massasoit, to befriend the pilgrims so they could help protect him from his enemies.
Who was this man? Where did he come from? Why did he arrive at such a time and place as this? What are the odds that the wind that blew the pilgrims off course would have blown them to the one Native American in the New World who spoke English fluently, understood English customs, ate English foods, knew all the woodcraft of the Wampanoag people, was willing to teach it to the English, and even had the ability to sway the chief to refrain from finishing off this tiny and weakened colony? What are the odds that the Plymouth would survive the next winter, let alone become an absolute rock of the American founding, tradition and way of life for centuries to come?
The odds are even greater than you think.
Tisquantum had been to England already—twice. In 1605, an English captain named George Weymouth kidnapped him and forcibly took him to London. There, he learned English. In 1614, he made his way back to Massachusetts with Captain John Smith. But before he could reunite with his people, Captain Thomas Hunt seized him and ultimately sold him into slavery in Spain. He was rescued by Franciscan monks who happened to teach him an interesting technique whereby fish can be used to fertilize crops. They eventually smuggled him back to London, where he joined a fishing expedition to Newfoundland. After working as an interpreter for several months, Tisquantum made it home about a year before the pilgrims arrived.
These experiences changed not only his life, but the lives of a people he had never met and the life of a nation that would learn his name for generations.
When Tisquantum finally returned to his village, he discovered his entire tribe had died in a disease epidemic. Stricken with grief, Tisquantum spent two years in Massasoit’s village, until he he heard that a group of Englishmen were trying to settle his old village. They were struggling.
Something in his experiences or in his character—or both—caused Tisquantum to make a choice. When he could have ignored, undermined or attacked them, he decided to help them. He lived with them and helped save their lives.
“He was the right man, at the right place, at the right time. Only God can do that!” wrote Kenyn M. Cureton in his “The Spirit of America” educational series. He compared this highly unusual historical figure to Joseph in the Old Testament. “[H]e was shaped and molded through suffering and slavery to become the instrument of God to literally keep the people of God alive.”
A second winter was about to descend upon the pilgrim colony. In it, they would have perished. But Tisquantum’s intervention had helped them gather enough food not only to survive, but to host.
The English settlers invited the man who had saved them and his adopted tribe to a feast. Tisquantum, who had been mistreated by Englishmen responded by bringing 90 other natives to Plymouth, not to attack or threaten but to feast, and to express gratitude toward the Great Spirit who created the universe.
God had saved the English by the capable and generous hand of Tisquantum. Just a year afterward, he contracted a deadly fever. He asked pilgrim leader William Bradford to “pray for him, that he might go to the Englishmen’s God in heaven” (William Bradford’s History of Plymouth Plantation).
Then, his good deeds done, his role in American history solidified forever, the man Bradford and the pilgrims called “Squanto” died. Bradford summarized that crucial time and that crucial man as “a special instrument sent of God for their good beyond their expectation.”
This instrument God used to change the course of history. This instrument was one of many God used—intriguingly, dramatically, against all odds—to make America great.
After Squanto’s death, Massasoit continued to honor his alliance with the pilgrims. Together they helped Roger Williams escape from the New England Puritans. Williams was treated well by the tribe and went on to found Rhode Island, the first place in the world to constitutionally guarantee freedom of religion. Many Sabbath-keeping Christians then began migrating to the New World to experience a life free from religious persecution. The descendants of these people and many other people now thank God every year on Thanksgiving Day, “the last Thursday of November next,” for the unprecedented blessings they possess—blessings not only of wealth and power but also of meaningful history and transcendent principles.
Americans may neglect it or forget it, but God performed manifold miracles to bring the pilgrims to New Israel, to deliver them from death, and to imprint the best parts of their influence on America’s future, a beacon of belief in God, sacrifice, commitment to establishing one nation under God, and freedom for peoples everywhere. Had the Mayflower landed in any other spot than Plymouth Rock, they would have almost certainly never met the “American Joseph” who helped them so much.
Squanto understood that the focus of Thanksgiving was neither white nor native, but God Himself. The true God was directing events toward a grander end than either Squanto or Bradford could realize.
This Thanksgiving Day, we should direct our gaze back to our forefather’s sacrifices and lift up our eyes to the one and only true hope for our nation, our ancestors, and all who have lived: New Jerusalem.
