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.