9 Myths About Thanksgiving That Are Actually Problematic — And The Facts Behind Them

According to the stories you heard in history class, the Mayflower sailed to the New World and started a new life on Plymouth Rock. What your teachers didn't tell you is that the Mayflower ended up in the wrong place, according to History. The settlers were supposed to go to Virginia, but they ended up in Massachusetts.

Not only that, Plymouth Rock originally wasn't unoccupied. Normally, when Europeans sailed to New England in the mid-1610s, it was so packed with Native American communities that there wasn't any room for new settlements, says National Geographic. But an epidemic — which is still unexplained to this day — wiped out the Native American coastal communities about three years earlier, so the settlers basically landed in a cemetery and immediately began raiding it for food and supplies, according to National Geographic.

When the pilgrims first arrived in New England, they were actually called Saints or Separatists, according to History. Coming to the New World wasn't entirely about religious freedom, says History, because the settlers had found that in Holland, where they were free to practice their religion without fear of persecution or violence. The so-called pilgrims actually came to the New World because they thought Holland's secular life with its "easygoing, cosmopolitan atmosphere" too seductive for their children, History reports. It was at the colony's bicentennial in 1820 when orator Daniel Webster used the term "Pilgrim Fathers," says History, that the settlers were officially called pilgrims.

Historians believe the "first" Thanksgiving in 1621 was just a regular English harvest celebration, which is why there's very little historical record of the event, according to National Geographic. The Thanksgiving Americans celebrate didn't even become a national holiday until President Lincoln declared it as one during the Civil War, says National Geographic.

While there's historical evidence that a feast was held in 1621, there's no evidence any Native Americans were invited, according to Fortune. If any Native Americans did attend, says Fortune, historians believe it's either because members of the Wampanoag tribe, who lived nearby, heard the settlers firing warning shots toward their tribe, or because the the Wampanoag leader was making a diplomatic visit to the settlers' village.

There's no real evidence that the 1621 event with the Wampanoag tribe and the settlers that is commonly cited by myths is the first Thanksgiving anyway, according to ThoughtCo. Other historical records from the New World indicate there were other proclamations of "Thanksgiving" celebrating special harvests or events, with one dating back to 1541, says ThoughtCo.

The so-called pilgrims were super unprepared for life in New England, so they compensated by raiding the graves and storehouses of the same Native American tribe — the Wampanoags — they later asked for help, according to National Geographic. It's not really surprising relations between the pilgrims and the Wampanoags deteriorated soon after Thanksgiving, says Fortune, leading to the Pequot War.

Tisquantum, who is often referred to in Thanksgiving stories as Squanto, did a ton to help the Pilgrims, like translate for them, help them with trade and teach them how to plant corn, according to The New York Times. But what most kids don't learn in history class, says The New York Times, is that Tisquantum was captured by the English and sold into slavery in Spain. By the time he escaped and returned to the New World, his entire tribe had died of smallpox, The New York Times reports.

The 1621 event between the settlers and the Wampanoag tribe — which, again, may or may not have happened — was a one-time deal, according to Fortune, and relations between the pilgrims and Native Americans deteriorated shortly after. What is believed to be an annual tradition either didn't happen at all or ended after that "first" year. (Which, again, was probably not the "first" Thanksgiving.) A few years later, in 1637, the settlers attacked the Wampanoag tribe in retaliation for a murder the settlers believed the Wampanoag committed by burning a nearby Wampanoag village, says Fortune. The settlers killed around 500 Native Americans that day, and the governor of Plymouth reportedly wrote that every Thanksgiving Day would be in honor of that bloody "victory," Fortune reports.

This is probably the biggest Thanksgiving myth of all. According to Business Insider, the nation likes to remember Thanksgiving as a peaceful harvest celebration that brought two communities together. But the reality is that relations between the Wampanoags and the Seperatists were tenuous at best, and if they did dine together, it might not have even been willingly; further, what followed that dinner was a few hundred years of violent colonization and oppression of Native people in what's now America, the effects of which are still visible to this day.

History classes have taught the same, sanitized version of the origin of Thanksgiving for decades. And while some might argue that protects children from difficult subjects, all it really does it spread misinformation and hides the colonizing past of this country. The more America knows about its past, the less likely it is to repeat it.