Beyond the Thanksgiving Myth
Rethinking the Pilgrim Tale
Rethinking the Pilgrim Tale
Who came first? The Clovis people? Recent evidence suggests people were here long before.
The Thanksgiving Myth and Our Eternal Recurrence
Why do we swallow the Thanksgiving tale whole without chewing on the gristle of its historical complexities? We’ve been fed and stuffed a simplistic narrative: Pilgrims, seeking religious freedom, sailed to the New World and, with the help of Native Americans, celebrated a bountiful harvest.
This heartwarming story is served with a side of colonization and oversimplification, glossing over the brutalities and nuances of history. But let’s push the boat out further into the murky waters of our past.
Were the Native Americans really the first to set foot on this land, or were they, too, participants in a cycle of human migration and colonization?
The discovery of footprints at White Sands National Park in New Mexico, dating back a staggering 23,000 years, throws a wrench into our neatly constructed historical narratives. This evidence suggests that the Americas were inhabited much earlier than previously thought, challenging the widely accepted theory of the Clovis people being the first settlers.
So, who were these pre-Clovis inhabitants, and what does their existence mean for our understanding of history and, more pointedly, for the Thanksgiving narrative?
Friedrich Nietzsche’s concept of eternal recurrence might offer a philosophical lens to view this conundrum. This idea posits that all events in history repeat themselves, in a never-ending cycle of rise and fall, birth and death.
Applying this to the history of human migration, we might speculate that waves of people have been arriving and settling in new lands, including the Americas, for far longer than we’ve acknowledged. The Pilgrims were just one link in an ancient, unbroken chain of human movement and displacement.
But let’s not stop there. If we accept that the Americas were populated long before the Clovis people, then the Native Americans encountered by the Pilgrims were not the ‘first’ inhabitants but rather successors in a long line of predecessors.
This revelation doesn’t diminish their suffering or the injustices they faced.
Rather, it underscores the complex, often brutal nature of human history, a constant flux of migration and conquest.
This new perspective shakes the foundations of the Thanksgiving story. If the land was not ‘new’ to the Native Americans, and they too had predecessors, then the Pilgrims were not pioneers in a virgin wilderness but the latest in a series of migrations. This notion rattles the cage of our understanding, forcing us to reconsider the concept of ‘firstness’.
Who gets to claim a land as theirs? Is it the first to arrive, the last, or those who hold it now? Are there living pre-Clovis people. separate from the Clovis or did they combine to make up the Clovis people as a whole?
Moreover, if we entertain the idea of eternal recurrence, we might ask: Are we doomed to repeat the mistakes of our ancestors indefinitely? The Thanksgiving narrative, with its veneer of harmony and cooperation, masks a history of conquest and displacement that is not unique to the Americas but a pattern repeated across the world.
The real question then becomes, can we break this cycle, or are we trapped in Nietzsche’s eternal recurrence, doomed to reenact the same tragedies and triumphs of those who walked before us?
In questioning the sanctity of the Thanksgiving story, we’re not just poking holes in a holiday; we’re challenging our understanding of history itself. Are we sure about our ancient past, or are we merely participants in a long, unending dance of human migration, conquest, and survival?
The footprints at White Sands National Park beckon us to reconsider not just who we are, but how we arrived here, and most importantly, what lessons we can learn from the silent tales etched in ancient soil.
As we sit down for our Thanksgiving feasts, let’s digest more than just turkey and pumpkin pie. Let’s ruminate on the rich, complex, and often unsettling history that brought us to this moment.
Perhaps in doing so, we can step out of the eternal recurrence of history and forge a path that acknowledges and learns from the past, rather than simply repeating it.
Footprints Across Time
Our Cosmic Dance With Earth’s Rhythmsmedium.com