Carbolic Flashback: November 27, 1623: “The First Thanksgiving Heralds Thousands of Years of Peace and Brotherhood Between the White Man and The Indian”

Commentary by Carbolic Smoke Ball Editor, The Honorable Winthrop Peckham

Rejoice, my brothers, for the harvest is rich, and our men have labored mightily.  My lone regret is that I was unable to participate in the back-breaking labors attendant to the harvest this year, inasmuch as I was felled by the gout, coincidentally,  just as I was last year at the time the physical labor was most intense.  But, just as last year, miraculously, now that the harvest is ended, I am entirely well, and I shall not want this winter thanks to the labors of others.

Tonight, in profound THANKSGIVING for this bounty, I invite Squanto, he of the Patuxet tribe, and some 90 braves to join us for a feast of turkey, eel, and fowl that I fervently pray will become an annual rite of thanksgiving for the gifts spread at our feet. Fittingly, I have resolved to call this annual rite “THE FEAST OF TURKEY, EEL AND FOWL.”

I anticipate that in years to come this feast will be celebrated with parades that include giant balloons, senseless family squabbling, inexplicable overeating, and the solidification of rigid gender roles which dictate that the women serve the men, who shall do nothing but eat and fart.

Most important, I am convinced that this feast shall herald centuries of uninterrupted peace and brotherhood between the white man and the red man, two races — one highly advanced in culture, the other downright comical in its backwardness — living together in bliss under one firmament, intermarrying, melding and assimilating to the point that they shall be but one race by the year 1750 at the latest.  I have coined a phrase for this inevitable harmony between these two disparate peoples: “Manifest Destiny.”

Tonight, I intend to memorialize this harmonious relationship in a solemn written pact that will be forever enforceable in our courts and which shall insure, beyond any question, peace between the two peoples for all times. Never will either race commit atrocities against the other, and you heard it here first.

As a gesture of the white man’s affection for the Indian, I intend to bestow upon each one of our Indian guests at the conclusion of tonight’s meal a special blanket that I have been saving for this very occasion. These blankets will keep the Indians warm throughout the winter, and I am assured by my wife, Jezebel Peckham, that the smallpox that previously infested each of these blankets was driven out by good, old-fashioned Christian prayer. We bestow this gift because we must be careful never to do anything to bring enmity between our peoples. Of course, we will not handle the blankets personally, because of the smallpox and all.

It promises to be a wonderful evening! And so I say to each of you, Happy Feast of Turkey, Eel and Fowl!

Nov 25