Part I

• I think the first reading is closest to what I learned as a child about the first Thanksgiving. All three of them had similarities and they each explained in a bit more detail other pieces of the history. The First was more traditional, the second reading was told in more of a religious tone and the third went into more detail about the couple years after the first Thanksgiving.
• The first article comes closest to my current understanding of the events that took place. The reason is because it doesn’t seem to go into as much detail as the other two and is more traditional.
• I don’t think my understanding of the events have changes as after elementary school I don’t remember learning much more about any of the events. The way I celebrate it has changed as I now celebrate it with my husband and his family. They have many traditions and are a bigger extended family than I had growing up. I also have come to enjoy family get-together’s and now that I have children of my own we have started our own traditions and I try and teach and learn with them and make memories.

Part 2

• I find these interpretations very interesting. The reason I find these interpretations interesting is because it is a different spin on the actual meaning of the first Thanksgiving. I have come to understand as an adult that as children we are sheltered from a lot of harsh realities of life and never told the “truth”. We become adults and are unprepared for how “hard” life really is, and we have to find out on our own that life is not a fairytale.
• As with anything else if you read or hear about something from multiple sources or multiple times you are bound to be influenced or believe some part of the content. I think this information did change my understanding of the post first thanksgiving time and let us know that initially the Pilgrims were contracted to try and make socialism work and they came to realize that it didn’t, so they changed to a free market and this (along with knowledge from the Native Americans) is the reason for their long term success.
• The first author was a high school professor but couldn’t find any title that would give a clear explanation of his views so he came up with his own titles and wrote his own books. He encompassed bits and pieces from other titles and names to come up with his way of looking at things. He has a libertarian perspective and writes in epistolary form. The second author is a radio talk show host who is a conservative political commentator. The third seems to be a business man, religious, served under President Bush, a professor and has written a couple of books. Looks like he is trying to bring the Christian worldview to the body of Crist. Lastly, this one doesn’t seem to have a specific author but more the website is the America Institute for Economic research and the founder was E.C Harwood. He was a military man and intensively studied economics.
• My views did not change with the research of the authors and the website but I do have reservations when it comes to reading anything anyone writes as I know their bias and agendas are part of their writings and they want you to believe what they have come to understand as their truths.

Part 3

• I found these readings to be just as interesting as the readings in step two because they looked more at the Native American aspects. It did go over some of the same information the step two presented, which was the pilgrims starting out with a socialist society and converting to capitalism because socialism wasn’t working. Then in started to bring up a new side that the pilgrims did not change to the free market because they were staving and having other problems or else they would have never had the “first thanksgiving” feast. They changed because they wanted to try something new. Also, interesting was looking at different ways to teach about the origins of Thanksgiving in the classroom.
• I do find these reading to be compelling as they bring up alternate views from the reading in step two and brought up the Native American side. I think that it makes you think how a simple story can have many different meanings, sides and versions depending on what and who you are talking about or to. These readings have changed my understanding, as now I know that the event wasn’t as simple as it seemed to be and there are different things to consider based on who is writing this information.
• The first readings author is a National correspondent at the New York Times and has done extensive coverage of the Tea Party Movement. The second audio was done by NPR’s Bob Edwards who was with NPR for 24 years before going over to Sirius XM radio to host a show. The third article was by Gary Hopkins who is the Founder, Editor in Chief at education world his responsibilities include planning the content of student and teacher editions and managing the teams that produce them. The fourth reading looks to be from Russell M. Peters who is Wampanoag and sits on several councils in the state, local and national level. Lastly, is the suppressed speech written by Frank James, who was a Wampanoag.
• Researching the authors didn’t necessarily change how I viewed the interpretations but it solidified which ones I think are factual versus political views.

Part 4

• I think that a historian would have to do a lot of reading from both first hand and second hand sources, complete fact checking with other known accounts from around that time period, have multiple discussions with other historians that are looking at the same event. Another aspect is to have many proofreaders so that it is considered from many different points of view. I do believe as with anything else that it is very hard to be objective and accurate because everyone interprets events different depending on their our own life experiences. This applies to the Governor of New Plymouth’s account, others interpretations of his account and the historians interpretations of sources.
• The average person would do a lot of Internet research and would most likely come to a conclusion based on the views that they have adapted over the years. I think for the most part these articles where all providing similar accounts of the information provided but interpreting it in a different way based on the views of the author or company they are working for.
• I think you could get a primary source about the first Thanksgiving from a historical museum, library, or from an Internet search from a reliable source.
• I feel like I would look at the library or an Internet search from a reliable source.

Part 1:

For me the closest to my childhood understanding was easily the third article. “The Pilgrims and America’s First Thanksgiving.” The one out of the three articles the one closest to my current understanding has to be the same article. My understanding has developed from being seen as a historical time in history to a fantastic way to get away from work and/or school and enjoy the little things with friends and family.

 

Part 2:

I found that all of the articles so far to be interesting, however knowing that a socialist experiment went on in the first american colonies is a bit new to me. Thus making these four articles very interesting. The funny thing about the first article mentioned in this section was the line “colonists were lazy thieves.” To be quite honest I’m not surprised these people that came over didn’t have the mindset to be laborers, they were the higher ups.

In all curiosity not actually from it being required I looked up all the others. Author Richard J. Maybury who wrote “The Great Thanksgiving Hoax” is author of many books some for young adults others for more mature readers. Either way he is a writer with many experiences and factual evidence to help support his claims on a plethora of topics.

Now for Rush Limbaugh the third, He has a interesting life in radio talk shows. For me  being and working on radio shows, I know this doesn’t qualify me to talk on any subject. For Mr. Limbaugh his background in historical research is a bit scarce. However he is fantastic at understanding trends in the media due to his number of listeners on his shows. He is a man who he himself does not contribute research but rather is a wizard at collecting the information from those who have.  

Moving on now, Del Tackett is a religious man with a interesting political past. He assisted President George W. Bush during one of his two terms. However the information on Mr. Tackett is all rather bias seeing as the top 10 search results from google are his or part of his organization. Needless to say they state that he is a man of higher education in what I don’t know. Most of all he has written and published a few of his works.

Looking at the author of the last article I can see that they are of of higher education due to their writing style, unfortunately I was having difficulty finding the author and the information about them. However due to the nature of AIER and the requirements that are needed to have an article published results in the author being knowledgeable about the historical events. With all information you may want to take it with a grain of salt. Knowing the background of all of the authors helps me gauge which one I want to trust more than others. In other words it changed slightly but not very.

 

Part 3:

In all seriousness the articles for the step 2 were significantly more interesting. I feel this could be due to the information starting to be repetitive and already in my own viewpoint. The interpretations are yes compelling but for me they restate very similar facts. From my prior steps I can tell you that not all the information stated in the articles were all completely true. My main take is they are building off of my current understanding of  the “First Thanksgiving” and really I have to give credit to my older family members for instilling a more truthful story no matter how grim or advanced the information was for me at that time.

Looking at the background of each author they are all published from fairly websites and publishers. Taking a quick look at the author of “The Pilgrims Were … Socialists?” Kate Zernike has in total 1,154 articles published with The New York Times. Just taking a look at that this article is not her first rodeo. Digging deeper she has a lot of investigational articles along with up and coming news along with some of the pros and cons of each topic. Most having to do with some type of political situation.

Now for the audio recording for publish by the NPR. Bob Edwards was the radio host explaining a common explanation of the first thanksgiving and how it is being taught in school. First off Bob is a well credited radio show host with a few awards to his name. Due to the nature of his shows he does not need to avoid being extremely child friendly, resulting in his show being more in depth on a mature level.

Gary Hopkins author and Editor in Chief at the Education World has been a substantially credible source. I stress credibility since the information being stated can easily be altered due to simple bias. When looking at Gary Hopkins I can see that his background is with professional writing, according to his Linkedin page he has about 25 to 26 years in professional writing careers.

When reading the Pilgrim Hall Museum article, the author was never mentioned, which is quite common for this type of publishing. The author does however state facts that are backed by the actual speech given by Frank B.  James. The interesting parts about this article are how the lack a serious bias towards the events that happened that lead to the National Day of Mourning. continuing through the website I noticed the information published is not from one or two authors but rather 33 different authors.

When reading the the speech given by Wamsutta it’s interesting to see that his aggressive yet valid point of view on this matter. Wamsutta was an avid protesters of fighting for the more accurate depiction to be in schools. Along with schools just everywhere in general he wanted society to understand and be rid of the fairy tale story that is so commonly known.

After searching through and understanding the background of each individual it’s nice to see a little less biases in the author’s writings whereas the step two the authors involved could have simply altered the story based off of the environment they have been in.

 

Part 4:

When a historian starts off, knowing the simple story is the best place. Clearly ending there would not benefit in any way, but knowing it will help get the ball rolling. Once the simple story is understood dive more into the commonly known facts and understand what will they all have in common that is where some truth will shine through. In all seriousness the steps needed to take would be all of them. I say this since each step gathered more and more truth to the event that happened we call thanksgiving. Within each step knowing where the information is coming from can substantially aid in the most accurate interpretation possible. Along with knowing the source of the information, gathering as much as you can would be in the best possible favor for the author and their final interpretation.

Answering the second question on this step is a rather tough one. The average person ranging from 18 to 30 will find different parts of each article compelling. Looking back at the articles its simple to see that the repetitiveness I mentioned above is actually the information everyone can agree on. Knowing what each person agrees on helps build to the final story. After reading all of articles, the one that resides best with the 18 to 30 year old hopefully will be the one with the most credible sources backed by many variations with the most common facts throughout all of the articles. This is the best way to encourage the average person to pursue the more compelling interpretation.

If I was asked to find a primary source related to all of this would be google, why? It’s simple and can give you grounds to search on the more you develop the and understand everyone’s interpretation. Once hitting the end of my possible sources I would either end there or I might take it to the library I would first hit the campus then once that ended I would move to libraries and historical articles I could find. I say this in all seriousness, not trying to blow smoke up your butt or anything.

Knowing that I would be looking for a secondary source I would do the same steps stated above however without going to historical articles. My final step would most likely be the closest library or even google since they have a fantastic library of pdf files.

 

Step 1

I would say that the third article is the closet to what i learned about Thanksgiving. A lot of the terms spurred thoughts of my childhood. Names like John Smith and Governor Bradford sounded very familiar. I remember hearing about the Mayflower Compact but never being told what it really pertained to. My understanding of the first Thanksgiving has never really been challenged because i have never looked into the history of it.  I find it very interesting that Thanksgiving wasn’t even made a national holiday until 200+ years later by Lincoln.

 

Step 2

I found these articles very compelling. They have not completely changed how i view the “pilgrims”. These articles don’t really explain the interactions between the Native Americans and the settlers. They are based heavily around the fact that socialism or a commonwealth idea, doesn’t work.  I do find that as primary source, Bradford himself, states this almost 400 years ago, but still to this day we have presidential candidates trying to legitimize socialism as a good idea.  I feel author of the third article “Pilgrims, Socialism and Thanksgiving” is not as credible as some of the other authors. He doesn’t use direct quotes or paraphrase from any sources. His article feels like it is just his opinion of how it all went down. The first article written by Richard J. Maybury is much more backed in research. After researching about Maybury he has a degree in economics. He also taught economics as a public school teacher for many years. Based on this research i feel that his viewpoint is sound and not too biased. I also feel the last article “The Real Meaning of Thanksgiving…” to be very accurate. After researching about AIER and learning that they are a nonprofit who only cares about providing accurate information.

 

Step 3

I found this set of articles interesting but they did not change my view of Thanksgiving either. The story that every child is told is not completely wrong or right. It has been washed down to a happy story about prosperity and giving thanks. I felt that these articles were more built around how to be more politically correct during the Thanksgiving time. There was only 1 article that actually helped understand Thanksgiving from the Native American’s viewpoint. That was the “The Suppressed Speech of Wamsutta”. The “The Pilgrims were…Socialists?” by Kate Zernike was a great article to counteract the previous section of articles. After reading up about the author and her previous works. She sets herself apart by being fair and unbiased even though she speaks from a Liberal agenda.

 

Step 4

In order to be a truly objective historian, you would need to put your opinions and previous understandings of the situation aside and research every side as thoroughly as possible.  To be as accurate as possible you would need to kind of stitch together all the information into a bigger picture to fully understand it. I felt that the second and some of the third set of articles were to politically biased, right against left type stuff. In order to build the big picture you need to separate the chaff from the grain. While it is interesting that the Pilgrims lived under a kind of socialist system, it doesn’t really bear any weight to “the first Thanksgiving”. I would start with the original telling of the first thanksgiving and build from there, trying to see if that information was accurate. If i were to look for primary sources i would start with Bradford’s journal/diary. Does Governor Bradford’s diary tell more about the first thanksgiving or is it just about the economic systems they used in those times? Were there other journals from Pilgrims that could fill in some holes? Did the Native Americans keep any journals as well?  Looking into secondary sources should be fairly easy, making sure they are accurate and reliable would be more difficult. I would look into Wamsutta more to find a starting point and work my way backwards. Also any museum exhibits and books would be a decent source to start looking into.