Wampanoag Tribes

Long marginalized and misrepresented in U.S. history, the Wampanoags are bracing for the 400th anniversary of the first Pilgrim Thanksgiving in 1621.

Massacres, myths, and the making of the great November holiday.

The forgotten history of Thanksgiving.

In the 19th century, Native American nations were early pioneers in constitutional democracy.

Scholars are unraveling the myths surrounding the 1621 feast, which found the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag cementing a newly established alliance.

What happened in Virginia four months later mattered much more.

The island was once a place of working-class ingenuity and Black daring.

Historian John Turner tells the story of Plymouth Colony with nuance and care.

Descendants of the Pilgrims have highlighted their ancestors’ role in the country’s founding. But their sanitized version of events is only now starting to be told in full.

"I look back now and realize I was teaching a lot of misconceptions."

Thanksgiving is a holiday about food – but it is more specifically a holiday about food’s absence.

The short life and long legacy of the 19th-century reformer William Apess.

Indigenous Americans knew how to avoid starvation. Colonists were too hungry to notice.

The captivity narrative as creation myth.

In Massachusetts, the inclusion of Native American names and places in local geography has obscured the violence of political and territorial dispossession.

The 19th-century whale hunt was a brutal business. But between the frantic calls of “there she blows!”, there was plenty of time for creation too.

Returning the "three sisters" to Native American farms nourishes people, land, and cultures.

Why Pilgrims would be stunned by our "traditional" Thanksgiving table, and other surprising truths about the invention of our national holiday.