THE ORIGINS OF THANKSGIVING IN
AMERICA
Plymouth Rock Landed on Us: The Truth About the Pilgrims
Every year Americans go through the
thoughtless rituals of Thanksgiving Day, without actually knowing anything
about the Pilgrims, the Mayflower Compact, or the society the Puritans
established in modern day Massachusetts. In an ironic twist of fate, millions
of Americans sit down to a turkey feast, in order to celebrate the religious
freedom of early settlers who came to the New World precisely for the purpose
of creating a Zion in the Wilderness, a utopian place where absolutely NO
religious freedom would be allowed.
Several years before the Mayflower
arrived with the first boat-load of illegal immigrants, Puritan separatists
fled England for the Netherlands, soon deciding to relocate altogether in the
Americas. However, these Puritans did not so much seek freedom,
as much as they sought to escape what they thought was a permissive
environment, fostered by the Church of England. The migration of the Pilgrims
in 1620 was the beginning of a larger migration of Europeans to the New World.
The increasing interest in the New World as a source of easily exploitable
wealth enabled the Pilgrims to obtain financing through the assistance of a
group of investors called the London Adventurers. The agreement was that
the Adventurers would put up the money, and the settlers would perform the
labor, and they would divide the profits equally. Needless to say, this venture
-- while historic -- was not profitable. The original decision had been
to land within the domain of the Virginia charter, but as a result of bad
weather, they wound up in what is today Massachusetts. The Mayflower Compact,
the document that was signed by those first settlers, was not intended to imply
that the settlers were agreeing upon any new or radical democratic system of
government. It was actually a modified form of customary church covenant
to meet a temporary crisis in an unfamiliar situation. This first European
state in the New World, at Plymouth, was a theocratic dictatorship. It was a
throwback to the 1200s, with a pillory and public stockade for those who gave
in to temptation, and engaged in any disallowed activity. The Mayflower Compact
guaranteed that the colony would remain under the iron control of the Pilgrim
Fathers for the first 40 years of its existence.
After Plymouth was settled, other
people started to settle in the area around Boston Harbor. A small fishing
company tried to establish a foothold on Cape Ann, which was the forerunner of
a much more significant colonizing movement than had as yet taken place in
north America. In Europe, the social scene was restless, from religious,
political and economic causes. The Puritans came to dominate New England, and
they represented a movement of Christians within the Anglican Church who felt
that a more thorough reformation was necessary than that provided for by the
Elizabethan religious settlement. The term "puritan" originated as an
epithet of contempt, as a pejorative. Some of the Puritans did not like the
idea of waiting for the Church of England to see the light, and reform itself,
so they struck out on their own. This was the main distinction between the
Plymouth Puritans, and the Massachusetts Bay Colony Puritans: Plymouth being
dominated by a Separatist Puritan sect, and Massachusetts being dominated by a
Non-separatist sect.
Massachusetts Bay was the strongest
colony in New England, and it had been founded in 1629, by a charter granted
to, "The Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New
England." It was clear that the intention of the Crown had been to charter
an ordinary stockholder-type commercial venture, but through shrewd and illegal
maneuvers, the benefactors of the charter transferred the management and the
charter itself to the New World, to Massachusetts itself. This not only made it
possible for the Company to exert local control over the chartered area and its
residents, but it became the foundation for the unwarranted assumption that a
mere charter for a commercial concern was actually a grant of plenipotentiary
powers of government, with an undefinable dependence
upon the legitimate Government of the Mother Country. The settlers of
Massachusetts came to America to have freedom to worship for themselves, but
they had no intention of creating a refuge for others to look to as a sanctuary
for democratic freedom. In fact, the leaders of Massachusetts fought
religious liberty with every weapon at their disposal. Such leaders as
Winthrop, Dudley, Endecott, and the Rev. John Cotton, were strongly opposed to
democracy, were fanatical in their zealousness to prevent any independence in
religious views, and had NO trust in the people at large. Of course, like
Hitler's totalitarian regime, there developed an underground resistance, which
became known when individuals were caught breaking the regime's
"rules."
The test of any culture's level of
civilization is how it treats its criminals. "Criminals" are people
who have broken laws, but government's have been known
to stretch this a bit, when they shorten the trial process, or corrupt the
charging process, by which an individual is accused of lawlessness. The mark of
an unjust state is when it will charge people with wrongdoing without going
through the customary process of proving a case in court, under the principles
of law. This is the mark of a totalitarian state, as that which existed under
Adolf Hitler in Germany, or Mussolini in Italy, and the Puritans in
Massachusetts. The first to be banished from the "Zion in the Wilderness", was Roger Williams, who founded Rhode Island in
1636. Another religious dispute resulted in the banishment of Anne Hutchinson.
The leaders of the colony were seriously criticized in England for their
repressive measures, which continued for another generation until they were
halted by the intervention of royal authority.
The Puritans believed that they were
the "select," and they intended to establish their ideal
Christian paradise in the New World, "a city set on a hill," as an
example to the rest of the world of "righteousness." In Massachusetts
they established a Bible based theocracy, in which only church members had any political
rights. Church membership, on the other hand, was dependent upon the individual
being certified as "regenerate," or a child of a
"regenerate" who "own(s) the covenant." Religious
uniformity was fanatically enforced, dissenters being warned that they had the
"right" to stay away, or to take up land of their own outside the
boundaries of Massachusetts, in an early version of the "Get out of Dodge
at Noon," mentality. The clergy was the driving force in the political
structure of the Puritan theocracy, but the system worked against itself, as
all fascist systems ultimately do. The banishment of Roger Williams, and his
founding of Providence, led to the development of Providence as a safe harbor
for dissidents escaping the regimented Orwellian state of the Massachusetts Bay
colony. The succeeding generation witnessed a decline of religious zeal, and
when the clergy tried to whip it up again, in the dying gasp of the theocracy
to keep a death-grip on political power, by interpreting recurring scandals and
misfortunes as signs of divine wrath against a sinning public, the public
rejected it. The replacement of the original commercial charter with a genuine
crown charter in 1691, put to rest for the time, the
aspirations of the clergy to rule. Of course, that harshness of rule,
narrow-mindedness and self-satisfaction which was characteristic of
Massachusetts which was not attributable to the Puritan mindset,
was motivated by the desire for profit.
The mid-1600's
saw a great wave of immigration from Europe into north America, and areas like
Massachusetts began to expand, as new illegal European immigrants invaded the
defenseless lands of the native Americans. This brought on troubles with the native Americans, who rightfully felt wronged by the
pioneers who answered questions of right with a bullet between the eyes. In
1637, a war with the Pequots practically annihilated
that tribe. (In the same year, a synod of the clergy held in Boston, listed 82
blasphemous, erroneous or unsafe opinions held by people in the
colony).
In 1644, the good Christian folk of
Massachusetts showed what they mean't by Christian
love, when they adopted laws against the Baptists, who were treated with
genuine cruelty. The Quakers were also persecuted mercilessly, four being
murdered; and many others whipped, imprisoned, branded or banished. At the time
of the English Civil War and the Regicide, Massachusetts pretty much became a
law unto itself, its leaders arrogating to themselves almost absolute power.
For the next 30 years, London pretty much had its hands full with the Cromwellian regime, and a European war, and Massachusetts
was able to avoid any formal sanctions through basically evasive and delaying
tactics. However, the colonists were pursuing a grasping land policy which was
causing the native American Indians increasing degrees
of desperation, as the encroaching White Man deliberately penned them in. One
of the most powerful driving forces among the white people was pure greed,
something that is justified today with the capitalist ideological-moral that if
it makes money, it is good.
King Philip's War was only one in a
long string of wars between European settlers and native
Americans, and while the white people won the war, they lost one in every 16
males of military age due to the heavy fighting. This War, however, brought
Massachusetts to the Crown's attention, which, as a result of the colonial
leader's evasive tactics, suspended its charter in 1684, thereby freeing the
residents from the unlawful arrangements the clergy had imposed upon them. The
Puritans really had no friends anywhere, and both Plymouth Colony and
Massachusetts Bay Colony ceased to exist, with no one in London to defend them,
to be replaced with a new charter in 1691, which incorporated Plymouth into
Massachusetts, along with Maine, under a new regime of professionals, who were
sent out from London. The English king of America put the theocracy to an end,
and provided for a stable colonial administration, showing that the Crown is
one of the most progressive and vital institutions of government known to
mankind.
It is a serious mistake to practice
holidays based on a false history. The young people find out on their own that
they are involved in a lie, and it makes them rage with fury and contempt. To
watch a whole society practice empty rituals that celebrate horrible people,
while deceiving ourselves into justifying what those horrible people did, is an
abomination. It should surprise no one that after raising children honoring the
memory of the Pilgrim fathers, that they grow up to hate freedom as much
as the Forefathers did. It should surprise no one that a society that worships
the Pilgrims -- who ruthlessly scalped the Indians (teaching them how to
do it), who indiscriminately torched Indian villages, and murdered their women,
children and elders in the precursors of total war, and holocaust -- should
produce children who grow up to join street gangs, and who seek the experience
of murdering other human beings for kicks.
It is also true that just because
some fascists were involved in the origins of America, it does not mean that
America is a captive legacy. The flag, the symbols of national identity, they
go deeper than the memory of a few old cronies, and their corrupt and
mean-spirited domination. Indeed, Americans can salvage the Day of
Thanksgiving, as a day of personal atonement. A day when the
individual looks within, and takes stock of his or her actions, to warrant to
one's own self that one is true to one's own convictions. Ancient honor
looks within. We must summon courage, and be bold, and conceive of something
that we can do in service to the nation. It is empty pomposity to merely
celebrate some ancient myth; the very falsity of the myth, and its very exaggeration of the motives of the protaginists, making it almost the equal of blasphemy. Far
better that Americans celebrate the good things in America, such as the ancient
customs that guarantee them freedom, despite eras of institutional domination,
which must be checked by that ancient and venerable institution, the crown of
law.
The Pilgrims were
FASCISTS
HAPPY THANKSGIVING!