The only eyewitness letter mentions deer, not turkey

Claim

The first Thanksgiving was a turkey dinner

Catch

NOT A TURKEY DINNER

Verdict

The first 'Thanksgiving' was diplomacy, not dinner

Every Thanksgiving the same picture circulates: Pilgrims and Indians sharing a turkey dinner. The picture comes from almost nothing, and one eyewitness letter says less than you would expect.

1620: the winter that halved them

In December 1620 the Mayflower anchored in Cape Cod; the colonists settled at Patuxet (Plymouth). The first winter was brutal. Bradford wrote that "in 2. or 3. moneths time halfe of their company dyed … scarce 50. remained." When they gathered, they were a remnant — outnumbered by their guests.

March 1621: Samoset, then Massasoit

On 16 March 1621, a sagamore called Samoset walked into Plymouth alone, greeting the English in broken English learned from fishermen. He told them the place was Patuxet, "and that about four years ago all the inhabitants died of an extraordinary plague."

On 22 March 1621, the Wampanoag leader Massasoit — Ousamequin; "Massasoit" was his title, "great sachem" — came with about sixty men and made peace. The terms survive in Mourt's Relation: neither side would injure the other; if one warred or was warred upon, the other would help; weapons stayed behind on both sides. The Pilgrims noted Massasoit's motive: "he hath a potent adversary the Narragansets ... for our pieces are terrible unto them." The Narragansett had been spared by the plague; the coastal Wampanoag had not.

Autumn 1621: the feast

Twenty acres of corn went in that spring; it came up well. After the harvest, Governor Bradford sent four men fowling, "that so we might after a special manner rejoice together after we had gathered the fruit of our labors." Winslow recorded it in a letter sent with the Fortune, printed in Mourt's Relation (London, 1622):

"They four in one day killed as much fowl as, with a little help beside, served the Company almost a week, at which time amongst other Recreations, we exercised our Arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and among the rest their greatest king Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five deer, which they brought to the Plantation and bestowed on our Governour."

That is the whole of it from a witness. The date is not recorded; the guest list names no one else; neither the word "Thanksgiving" nor the turkey appears. Bradford, in Of Plymouth Plantation, notes that autumn "great store of wild Turkies, of which they took many, besides venison" — and never describes the feast.

The catch

The honest version is narrower than the myth. One letter survives; it names fowl and venison, never turkey. Nobody called it Thanksgiving, and no source attaches the word to 1621. It was not simple gratitude: it sealed a pact between two peoples halved and shattered by disease, against a common rival. Generations later, the same colony fought Metacom's War, and the Wampanoag world collapsed.

Many Wampanoag and other Native people mark the fourth Thursday in November as a National Day of Mourning, held since 1970 at Cole's Hill in Plymouth by the United American Indians of New England — a remembrance of the dead, and of what the peace cost.

Verdict

The first Thanksgiving was real, but small, unrecorded on the day, and about diplomacy — not a turkey dinner. The turkey came to the table afterwards.

Sources

• Edward Winslow, letter printed in Mourt's Relation (London, 1622), ed. Dwight B. Heath; Project Gutenberg eBook #66359. Feast passage; treaty terms and Samoset's account, 16 and 22 March 1621.
• William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation — quoted by Pilgrim Hall Museum, "Winter of 1621" and "The 'First Thanksgiving'".
• Pilgrim Hall Museum (pilgrimhall.org; November 2026) — the two-primary-sources point, the Great Dying 1616–1619, the diplomatic reading, Winslow's letter dated 11 December 1621.
• United American Indians of New England, National Day of Mourning (uaine.org; November 2026) — since 1970, Cole's Hill, Plymouth.

The images in the video are AI-generated illustrations, not archival photographs.

SOURCES

1. Edward Winslow, letter printed in Mourt's Relation: A Relation or Journal of the English Plantation Settled at Plymouth in New England (London, 1622; Project Gutenberg eBook #66359); quoted also by Pilgrim Hall Museum.
2. William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation (quotes "in 2. or 3. moneths time halfe of their company dyed ... 100. & odd persons, scarce 50. remained"; quoted by Pilgrim Hall Museum).
3. Pilgrim Hall Museum, "The 'First Thanksgiving'" and "Winter of 1621" (accessed November 2026).
4. United American Indians of New England, National Day of Mourning (since 1970; uaine.org; accessed November 2026).

The images in this video are AI-generated illustrations, not archival photographs.

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