I think my experience with Native American mythology surrounding Thanksgiving and Pocahontas is probably a little non-traditional. I’ve never seen Pocahontas and in school we certainly did not do a Thanksgiving play with pilgrims and Indians. However, that doesn’t mean my knowledge of these events and people was accurate in any way. I think what really continues to stand out to me is how little I’ve learned about this history at all. I did American history in elementary school at least enough to cover the Oregon Trail twice (with a simulation of the Oregon Trail each time) and in seventh, eleventh, and twelfth grade but we failed to ever learn the depth of any Native American history. I’ve never even heard of King Philip’s war, nor have I ever learned about Ousamequin or Samoset. I’ve heard of Tisquantim, but only ever as Squanto. I feel like learning more about this early American history isn’t quite overwriting what I’ve learned before, but filling out in depth a part of history that I’ve never learned about before. I also definitely have to confront some of the reactions I do have and unpack where they come from—in this week’s reading from Encounters at the Heart of the World, when I was learning about the Okipa (pages 122-130) and looking at the illustrations, I was shocked by some of the aspects of the ceremony and I had to recognize that it’s just unfamiliar to me. Similarly, when we were talking about the myth of the vanishing Indian, I realized that I really don’t associate Native Americans with the east coast—but really, they’re Native Americans, and they inhabited all of what is now the United States of America, and I definitely had to do some thinking about why I don’t associate Indigenous peoples with the east coast.
I think it’s important to grapple with the complexity of history because it’s so easy to imagine that history was clear-cut and exactly the way it’s written in textbooks when it really wasn’t. Remembering the history that’s complicated is important to not allowing textbook history cover up what actually happened. Real history is not simple and poses lots of questions to those who study history, and to ignore those questions in favor of a cut-and-dry answer is a poor practice.
Hi Daphne!
It’s interesting to read about your experience and in some ways I’m glad that you didn’t have to deal with the brunt of mythology around Pocahontas or the first Thanksgiving! For me it has been interested reading students’ responses and how many people haven’t seen Disney’s Pocahontas or recall Thanksgiving related festivities/reenacting as kids. Growing up in the late 90s/early 2000s, the Pocahontas movie was still pretty new and as I mentioned in my previous comment we had a Thanks giving play in second grade.
Your post addresses another key point– the extent of erasure surrounding Native Americans in “early American history.” Whether or not we look at the myth-making aspect, the historical record shows the active erasure of Native peoples– including creating literature and art that either minimized or completely erased the presence of Native people in New England. It is a complex narrative, and we must dig deeper into our sources to reconstruct the lives of Native Americans, especially east of the Mississippi!