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It's arguable that the US Thanksgiving tradition is itself a starvation myth, given that the 1629-21 winter killed off half the Plymouth pilgrims. From Wikiped
by churchill 1y ago
It's arguable that the US Thanksgiving tradition is itself a starvation myth, given that the 1629-21 winter killed off half the Plymouth pilgrims.
From Wikipedia...
>Squanto taught the Pilgrims how to catch eel and grow corn and served as an interpreter for them until he too succumbed to disease a year later. The Wampanoag leader Massasoit also gave food to the colonists when supplies brought from England proved insufficient. Having brought in a good harvest, the Pilgrims celebrated at Plymouth for three days in the autumn of 1621.
Another episode: Out of the 500 settlers at the Jamestown outpost, roughly 440 (88%) starved to death through the winter of 1609, and survivors had to resort to eating rats, mice, snakes, dogs, shoe leather, and belts, and even some cannibalism.
And that's before you get to the Great Depression and Dust Bowl era that gave us The Grapes of Wrath, migrant agricultural workers eating boiled weeds or flour mixed with lard, Hoover Stew, etc.
Not quite on the scale of Ukraine's Holodomor or Ireland's Great Famine, but it's interesting how the narrative around Thanksgiving has developed over time.
- alganet 1y agoI don't consider Thanksgiving a starving myth because it has coalesced in a ritual that celebrates abundance. There's something about a simple dish made with simple cheap ingredients that makes it require no Wikipedia to pass on memory. You know what it is all about immediately. People starved, came up with clever ways to survive, and made those into culture. Poisonous plants that require arduous processing (like cassava or lupin beans), then make into crops, also carry that memory. > And that's before you get to the Great Depression and Dust Bowl era that gave us The Grapes of Wrath, migrant agricultural workers eating boiled weeds or flour mixed with lard, Hoover Stew, etc. That's more likely. I had never heard of these.
- pyman 1y agoHi Paul ;)
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]