Historians delve into first Thanksgiving

November 24, 2011|By Emily Sweeney, Globe Staff

Plimoth Plantation staff portraying Lucretia Brewster and her father-in-law,… (Photos by Pat Greenhouse/Globe…)

PLYMOUTH - What did they serve at the first Thanksgiving dinner?

One thing is certain: The feast shared by the Pilgrims and Wampanoag in autumn 1621 was nothing like the turkey dinner most American families enjoy today on the last Thursday of November.

There were no forks. No cranberry sauce. No potatoes. No apple pie. No pumpkin pie. Water was the beverage of choice, because there was not much else. Venison and fowl were the main items on the menu, and some of the dishes probably contained guts or innards, such as deer heart, liver, and lung.

And that momentous occasion popularly referred to as the “first Thanksgiving’’ was no afternoon meal finished in one sitting - it lasted three days.

“Three days of feasting - three days!’’ said Kathleen M. Wall, the Colonial foodways culinarian at Plimoth Plantation, her eyes widening.

To this day, myths abound about the origins of the American holiday that we call Thanksgiving, and the Pilgrims 1621 harvest celebration. Historians at Plimoth Plantation say there’s a lot more to what really took place then between the Wampanoag and the English Colonists in early 17th-century Plymouth.

For a more realistic depiction of the 1621 celebration, said Wall, “We’ve got to put the guts back into Thanksgiving.’’

Acting as real-life history detectives, Plimoth Plantation staffers have conducted culinary experiments in re-created 17th-century kitchens in an attempt to figure out not only what the Pilgrims and Wampanoag ate, but also how they cooked and prepared food. In one such experiment, potters at Plimoth Plantation used fragments of a broken vessel found in an archeological dig to replicate a dripping pan that the Pilgrims presumably used when roasting meat in front of a fire.

The autumn feast of 1621 celebrated a successful fall harvest. Neither the Pilgrims nor the natives called it Thanksgiving.

One of the only eyewitness accounts of the event is a letter written by Edward Winslow, who states that the Colonists celebrated by entertaining Massasoit (the Wampanoag leader) and 90 of his men for three days. Winslow wrote that they feasted on five deer and a lot of fowl (he doesn’t specify what kind).

“There’s so many fowl to choose from, it’s really hard to say,’’ said Wall. They might have eaten ducks, geese, swans, wild turkeys, quails, pigeons, or partridges. “Turkey is certainly on the list of possibilities,’’ she said.

When preparing the deer, the first dishes to be served would most likely have contained internal organs (heart, lung, liver, etc.) because those parts of the animal typically need to be cooked right away, according to Wall. She said the Colonists probably used them to make different types of sausage, such as blood pudding or livering (a type of sausage made from liver).