400 years since “the first Thanksgiving”

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By Olivia B. Waxman Staff Writer It’s been 400 years since the feast generally known as “the first Thanksgiving,” when the Wampanoag brought deer and ate with the Pilgrims in the Fall of 1621 in the Plymouth, Mass., area, then known as Patuxet. Four centuries later, the Wampanoag people still face some of the same challenges as their ancestors, such as maintaining control of their land. Brian Weeden, the 29-year-old chairman of the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe, talks to TIME about his community’s most pressing concerns and what Thanksgiving Day means to Native Americans. “I personally think that it’s just another reminder of all the horrible things that this nation has done to not only us, but all native people,” he says. Click here to read the full interview. Here’s more history to know:

HISTORY ON TIME.COM The ‘Vindicating’ Exoneration of 2 Men Convicted of Malcolm X’s Murder By Zaheer Ali On Nov. 18, Muhammad Aziz and Khalil Islam—convicted of the 1965 assassination of Malcolm X—were exonerated after serving more than 20 years in prison Read More » A Brief History of the Presidential Thanksgiving Proclamation—And Where Biden Fits In By Denise Kiernan Presidential Thanksgiving proclamations are always a reflection of the office, the country and the stakes of the given cultural moment Read More » The 'First Thanksgiving' Story Covers Up the All Too Real Violence in Early America By Peter C. Mancall How does our understanding of early American history look if we put conflicts between Indigenous and newcomers at the center of the story? Read More » The Tribe That Fed the Pilgrims at the 'First Thanksgiving' Is Still Fighting for Its Land By Olivia B. Waxman Many Wampanoag hoped that the 400th anniversary of the Mayflower landing would be a galvanizing event to remind people that they still exist Read More » The Way American Kids Are Learning About the 'First Thanksgiving' Is Changing By Olivia B. Waxman The typical Thanksgiving lesson reflects neither the 17th century truth nor the 21st century understanding of it Read More »

FROM THE TIME VAULT This week in 1966: Julia Child “Julia’s success as a showman has been to turn her contretemps into triumphs. When the prop men forgot to take the butter out of the refrigerator, she covered by saying: ‘I’m rather glad this happened because I can tell you what to do if you’ve left your butter in the refrigerator and you find it is much too hard to work with.’ With that, she took the butter, dumped it into a stainless-steel bowl, and heated it carefully on the stove. Again, when the apple charlotte that she was making began sagging, she patted it back together, [and] reassured her viewers: ‘It will taste even better this way.’ Her cardinal rule for hostesses: ‘Never apologize.’” (Nov. 25, 1966) Read More » This week in 1980: Saturn “Last week, while earthlings nearly a billion miles away marveled as they monitored its progress, an all-seeing but unmanned spacecraft no larger than a compact car completed the final and most spectacular phase of an epochal journey. Beating Buck Rogers and the faithful Wilma, sci-fi heroes of the pre-Star Trek generation by five centuries, Voyager 1 brushed past the ringed planet Saturn, second largest member of the sun's family, and provided the best images yet of that strange and wondrous world, a far-off realm in the solar system never before glimpsed with such glittering clarity. Said one scientist watching the incoming tide of images: ‘We have learned more about the Saturn system in the past week than in the entire span of recorded history.’” (Nov. 24, 1980) Read More » This week in 2013: 50th anniversary of JFK's assassination “We have lived with it for half a century, and still what happened that day in Dallas is shocking beyond almost anything else in American history—by shocking, I mean it hits like a blast of electrical current and stupefies. One minute the President of the United States is smiling and waving. ‘Mr. President, you can't say Dallas doesn't love you!’ Nellie Connally, wife of the Texas governor, calls from the limousine jump seat. A moment later, he stiffens and clutches at his wounded throat. Then his head explodes; blood and gore bathe the First Lady, who crawls onto the trunk lid of the moving car in a wild and hopeless attempt to collect the pieces…” (Nov. 25, 2013) Read More »

HIGHLIGHTS FROM AROUND THE WEB Overlooked history: Ken Burns’ documentary short for his website Unum delves into the relevance of the Sand Creek Massacre on Nov. 29, 1864, in what’s now Colorado. Justice: NBC News’ Erik Ortiz reports on a Florida circuit court judge posthumously clearing charges against the “Groveland Four,” four Black men who were falsely accused of abducting and raping a woman in 1949 in Lake County, Fla. A historian’s search: For the New York Times, historian Martha S. Jones describes touring landmarks in Paris to research the life of Abigail, an enslaved woman who came to France with one of America’s founders, John Jay, in 1783 and tried to win her freedom. Art: W Magazine’s Alexis Schwartz reviews an exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum that explores how Andy Warhol’s Catholic faith influenced his art. Photoshoot: On LIFE.com, browse a quirky LIFE magazine photo essay of turkeys in halter tops in Texas around Thanksgiving in 1954.

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