A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving

So after a long and wonderful day feasting with friends and family, I cleaned the kitchen, packed up the leftovers for later and snuggled up on the couch with my son to watch A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. The cool thing was, there was a bonus cartoon after called This is America, Charlie Brown - a Charlie Brown cartoon I had never seen? Awesome....

It's not surprising that I had never seen it because it was aired originally as an eight part mini-series in 1988 and I was much too busy doing teenager things to care about a Charlie Brown cartoon. Funny how now, 20 years later I was more than happy to watch it and just relax. Here is the other funny thing....as we were watching the Charles Shultz version of the pilgrims landing and subsequent salvation due to the kindness of the local Indian Tribe....I felt myself being vindicated. Here I and my fellow blogger have been berated on the local cesspool topix as a racist, a liar and an Indian hater. Wow.....all because Gladys Kravitz blogged about the true history of the pilgrims landing and how it was not the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe that welcomed them.....and I commented on her blog about some of the not so nice past actions we have read about over the past year regarding Mashpee Tribal leaders and members. How horrible of Gladys to debunk the Mashpee Tribe's claim to fame as being the tribe that met the pilgrims and how absolutely scandalous of me to remind everyone of the only times we hear anything about the Tribe....heck, it's not like they have come to any public forums and talked to the the community about their casino-resort plans....but I digress.

So I am watching this new to me Charlie Brown cartoon and guess what??? According to Mr. Shultz in 1988, it was not the Mashpee Tribe who met the pilgrims. Huh.....go figure....but hey, it is just a cartoon, right?

Could Charles Shultz have gotten it wrong too?






Happy Thanksgiving everyone. I hope your day was full of good times, close family and good friends. I am truely thankful for all of you who continue to fight for our quality of life, get the real stories out there, and never ever give in to our adversaries.

Here is a little update for my dear flying monkey friends who seem to think I take history lessons from cartoons. Well, at least I don't take history lessons from the Mashpee Wampanoag website....by the way, it would seem that Charlie Brown is smarter than a flying monkey....go figure.

It was an ordinary day when a cry suddenly went out among the settlement of “Indian!” Everyone became on guard. The figure of a lone Indian came walking towards them. What could this Indian want? They were all shocked when the Indian began speaking to them in English! How had this Indian from this wild land come to know English? He introduced himself as Samoset and told them his story: Samoset was a chief of the Algonquins of Maine. He had been exploring these parts for the Council of New England, having begged a ride with a Captain Thomas Derman, an English sea captain. Samoset had learned English over the years from the various sea captains who had ported in Maine, and he had a love for travel.

It was Samoset who told the Pilgrims of the Patuxet tribe who had lived on the very place the Pilgrims had settled but had been wiped out by a mysterious illness four years before. It was they who had cleared the land. No other tribe would live on this ground because of how the Patuxets had been wiped out. Their nearest neighbors were the Wampanoags, fifty miles west. The Pilgrims then wondered who it was that had attacked them upon their landing on the shore. Samoset told them it was the Nausets. They hated the white man because of the trickery of an English sea captain named Thomas Hunt. Hunt had deceived several Patuxets into coming aboard his ship. He then took them to Spain to be sold into slavery.

Samoset left the Pilgrims but returned a week later with yet another English-speaking Indian. This Indian’s name was Tisquantum, or Squanto, as he is better known. Squanto had quite a story to tell the Pilgrims: He had been taken captive, along with four other Indians, by Captain George Weymouth. They were taken to England and taught English so they could be questioned as to the best places to settle in the New World. Squanto spent nine long years in England until he met a Captain John Smith of Jamestown,VA. Captain Smith returned Squanto to his village on his 1614 voyage. The former mentioned Thomas Hunt was sailing with Smith on a separate vessel. Smith had ordered Hunt to stay behind while Smith attended to some business elsewhere. But, alas, Thomas Hunt had something else up his sleeve! No sooner had Squanto returned home than he was captured again! Squanto, along with 19 other Patuxets were of those who were lured aboard Hunt’s ship under the pretense of trading beaver pelts only to be captured again! So once again Squanto was taken to Spain and sold into slavery. How discouraging it must have been for Squanto. But God’s providence was at work. Some local friars bought (rescued) a few of the Indians, including Squanto. They introduced them to the Christian faith. Squanto later left the monastery, found a way to England, and attached himself to a wealthy merchant there. He lived there until he departed with a Captain Dermer in 1619. It was on this trip that he first met Samoset, who was traveling with Dermer. They were both dropped off at Plymouth just six months before the Pilgrims would be arriving. But it was then that Squanto learned of the tragic end of his tribe. Squanto, having no one, attached himself to the neighboring Wampanoag tribe. However, once he found the Pilgrims, he had found a new home and family. He stayed with the Pilgrims and as Bradford wrote, “was a special instrument sent of God for their good, beyond their expectation.” (1) It was Squanto who taught the Pilgrims many things about living in the wilderness, such as planting corn with fish for fertilizer, hunting, and many other life-saving skills. http://www.americandestiny.com/settlement.htm

Oh, and if this website causes the flying monkeys to start throwing poo again, I can certainly provide many other links to this time in history that also reference Samoset and Tisquantum as helping the pilgrims, such as this one and this one. Then again, according to monkey philosophy, every historian who writes about the first meeting with the pilgrims must be wrong and a lying, racist, indian hater because it had to be the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe that met the pilgrims....they said so.

- be the change you want to see in the world -