On September 6, 1620, 102 Europeans set sail from England to escape religious persecution. When the Pilgrims arrived on Plymouth Rock in December, they were in bad shape. It was cold, they had no crops, and were not skilled in hunting and fishing. In the winter of 1620, they began to starve. They were poor and had been battered by disease.

An english speaking Native American named Squanto, who had been sold as a slave to the Spanish but had escaped to England and finally returned to America, knew firsthand of the white people's destruction and extensive Native American slave trade. Nonetheless, he found compassion in his heart and led his Wampanoag people to share food with the starving Pilgrims. This saved the Pilgrims' lives during the harsh winter of 1620/21. However, it was not from this gracious act that the holiday of Thanksgiving was born.

In 1621, the Pilgrims invited the Wampanoag nation to what would later be called the original Thanksgiving feast (in which the Native Americans actually brought most of the food). As it turns out, they were invited for the purpose of shmoozing them into a treaty that would secure the lands of the Plymouth Plantation for the Pilgrims. At this time, Native Americans very much outnumbered Europeans. The balance of power was certainly not on the colonists' side. The Puritans were, in fact, waiting for things to shift as many more colonists were expected to arrive in the coming years.

Here's the part you don't hear too often.

The Puritans began to launch a campaign to decimate the Native Americans by giving them the blankets from smallpox wards. As a result, the smallpox epidemic nearly wiped out the natives, who had no natural immunity. By 1623, a Pilgrim leader named Mather the Elder, actually thanked God for killing the "heathen Indians" whom he thought were instruments of the Devil. He gave praise for the destruction of the "chiefly young men and children, the very seeds of increase, thus clearing the forests to make way for a better growth," ...Growth being the Puritans. The balance of power had begun to shift.

Beginning around 1630, mass emigration brought tens of thousands of Europeans who looked down upon the Native Americans as savages. These new emigrants did not respect any of the previous land treaties. They needed more land and took it by whatever means necessary. In 1675, the estimated number of European settlers in the area was nearly 50,000. While, in 1600, there had been an estimated 12,000 Native Americans living in the area, by 1675 there were less than 1,000.

Between 1675 and 1676, formal war broke out between the Europeans and the Native Americans. At the end of this conflict, the remaining natives not exterminated had either fled to Canada or been sold into the slave trade of the Carolinas. By the way, this Indian Slave Trade was so profitable that many Puritan ship owners began raiding the Ivory Coast of Africa for black slaves to sell in America.

With the successful "clearing" of land for European occupation, the American real estate boom had begun.

...Which makes me recall Rama once saying, [sic] "The two greatest things about America are it's movies and it's real estate."

But, anyway...this Thanksgiving got me thinking about the consciousness of America. Where is our consciousness? We judge other countries so righteously for their own internal conflicts yet refuse to recognize the genocide that we committed here in the past 400 years...by the way, leading right up until the present with nuclear testing and dumping on native land and peoples.

So, with this terrible atrocity, how could I be happy? I'm happy because our individual consciousness can transcend the muck of humanity. This potential is within each one of us. It's funny how the little things can make life beautiful. Despite all odds, and despite all the hatred and pain that is part of being human, you can find happiness. Not in someone else or some external condition. You find happiness in yourself...when you sit in the moment of meditation...when you watch a plant grow...when you hear a funny joke...when you realize that our lives are a passing moment in Eternity. If we choose, we can see that we are not separate from the everything else. We are part of Enlightenment itself.

I am thankful for knowing Rama. I am thankful for life. I am thankful for the beauty of Eternity.

So, everybody, have the best Thanksgiving yet!

Louise.

 

 

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