The real Thanksgiving story.

Popular culture associates the holiday with happy Pilgrims and Indians sitting down to a big feast, but the reality is different. It all began in 1614 when some explorers sailed home to England with a ship full of Patuxet Indians bound for slavery. They left behind smallpox which virtually wiped out those who had escaped their raid.

 When the iconic Pilgrims got to Massachusetts Bay in 1620 they found Squanto, an Indian, that had escaped slavery and spoke some English. He taught them to grow corn, fish, and negotiated a peace treaty with the Wampanoag tribe. When word spread in England about this new world, some religious extremists (same as today), called Puritans, began arriving in large numbers.

Since there were no fences around the land, they seized it, captured strong young natives as slaves and killed the rest. But the Pequot Nation that had no peace treaty with the Puritans fought back in one of the bloodiest Indian wars on record.

In 1637, near present day Groton, Connecticut, over 700 men, women and children of the Pequot Tribe had gathered for their annual Green Corn Festival, just like our modern day Thanksgiving celebration. In the predawn hours, the sleeping Indians were surrounded by English and Dutch mercenaries who summoned them out, massacred all of them and burned alive their women and children inside the longhouse where they were hiding.

The next day the governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony declared "A Day Of Thanksgiving" to mark the occasion.

As for us, Thanksgiving is totally non-violent. It's just a family celebration that is marked by a delicious fondue and a heartfelt “thanks” for being together and in good heath.