Thanks to the Writer's Almanac for this post "Today is Thanksgiving Day . In the fall of 1621, the Plymouth colonists had barely survived the previous winter and had lost about half their population. The Wampanoag people and their chief, Massasoit, were friendly toward the Pilgrims and helped teach them how to live on different land with new food sources. A man known as Squanto, a Patuxet living with the Wampanoag tribe, knew English because he had been a slave in England. He taught the settlers how to plant corn, beans, and squash and how to catch eel and shellfish. The Pilgrims built seven houses, a meeting place, and storehouses full of food, so they invited the Wampanoag Indians to feast with them. Harvest festivals were nothing new; both the English and the Wampanoag had similar traditions in their culture. At the first Thanksgiving, they didn't eat mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie, and they probably didn't even eat turkey. The only two foods that are a...
