Ben Franklin would have
had deeper problems. He believed the
turkey, not the eagle, should be honored as the national emblem of the U.S. He regarded eagles as carrion birds found
everywhere while turkeys were truly native to America. And a wild turkey, the only kind Franklin
knew, is one smart bird. Of course, it’s
hard to eat the bird you’re honoring, and turkeys are delicious. It might be
even harder these days declaring your national emblem to be a turkey. But the turkey on a platter, not a flagstaff,
goes back a long way in America, to that first Pilgrim Thanksgiving. At that point, the Pilgrims might have been
hungry enough to gnaw on the flagstaff, too, but the Indians rescued them with
lots of fixings as well.
That, though, was part
of an elaborate scam being run by the Indians, according to an article in Smithsonian magazine. It seems that those “ignorant savages” were
in fact quite sophisticated about Europeans.
They had been familiar for years with French and Spanish traders and trappers
up and down the coast. They were at the time having tense relations with a
larger tribe further north, and wanted the Pilgrims with their muskets to be an
ally against their enemies. That friendly ambassador, Squanto, had actually
travelled to Europe. Taken there as a
captive slave by the Spanish, who weren’t big on being friends, he had escaped
to France, later returning to America as a cabin boy. While in France, he had learned from peasants
the trick he showed the Pilgrims about planting beans and corn in hillocks with
a fish for fertilizer. So that First
Thanksgiving was, from the Indian point of view, sort of like taking a
potential client to an expense account restaurant – generous and friendly, but
with some further discussions in mind.
That doesn’t take away
from the wonder of the Thanksgiving myth.
C.S. Lewis observed that when a myth is realized in real life, that just
makes it better, accentuating the mythic truths. Think of Santa Claus, based on
the story of Nicholas of Cusa, who left money anonymously to families so poor
they were thinking of selling their daughters, or Robert the Bruce, who had
failed five times but was encouraged to continue on to victory over the English
by seeing a spider fail five times to spin a web, but succeed on the sixth try,
or of Johnny Appleseed, who in real life was a land speculator determined to make
properties more attractive for later sale by planting orchards but who in the
process covered the countryside with blossoming apple trees. Motivation isn’t everything. The Indians at that first Thanksgiving may
have had ulterior motives, but together with the Pilgrims, they created a myth
of kindness and acceptance of newcomers that has blessed the history of
America. We often forget, as in the current
immigration debate, but it’s there to remind us that we too were once “strangers
in a strange land.”
Over the years, I’ve
concluded that an important part of the art of becoming a decent human being is
how we select the myths we honor and those we ignore. Myths that build speak to our hopes and help
us grow; those that are mean and destructive call out our fears and demean us. The myth of the lone lawman destroying a nest
of bad guys once was useful to impart courage and a sense of active justice on a
dangerous frontier; nowadays, it leads to gun shows, and to solitary gunmen
killing with no reason. The conservative
myth of Obama not being qualified because of being born in Kenya or the liberal
myth that George W. Bush made some decisions because he had a “post-alcoholic
syndrome” simply make their believers smaller people. But the myth of that first Thanksgiving is a
great one, bringing out the best in us.
Happy
Thanksgiving! Have some more turkey.
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