"I understand Native Americans being like 'Thanksgiving?
Yeah, fuck you guys.'" Um... does anyone actually read history anymore? The indians were the ones who broke all the treaties first. Pocahontas's people repeatedly betrayed the English settlers after peace treaty after peace treaty. Governor Ratcliffe was portrayed as a mindless, genocidal racist in the Disney film; in real life, he was criticized for being too trusting, too forgiving after multiple betrayals, and too generous because he kept giving away the colony's trade goods (beads, mirrors, knives, muskets, blankets, etc) that they only had limited numbers of because he wanted to secure the friendship of the local tribes. Know what happened to him? The indians sent a messenger with an offer to sell corn to the colony during a winter food shortage. He left with a group of men, paid the indians for baskets of corn to take back to the colony, and shortly after leaving the village, his men discovered the baskets had false bottoms and they'd been ripped off, paying for far more corn than they'd actually received. While they stood and argued about what to do, the indians launched a surprise attack and massacred most of them; the only survivors being a man who managed to flee back to the boats they'd traveled in, a man who hid in the bushes and then followed the indians back to their village to see what happened to Ratcliffe, and Ratcliffe himself. The indians captured Ratcliffe, took him back to the village, tied him to a stake, and the women SKINNED HIM ALIVE with mussel shells, threw his face into a fire while he watched, and then they cooked him alive and ATE HIM. All because he trusted them and tried to win their friendship by being as generous and merciful as possible. And Disney shit all over him by portraying him as a villain.
Oh, Pocahantas? After yet another betrayal by her father, the chief, the English captured her and held her for ransom, demanding her tribe agree, once and for all, to stop robbing and murdering people. A YEAR LATER, with zero response to the colonists's demands, one of her brothers showed up to negotiate a trade agreement and was completely indifferent when she confronted him and demanded to know if her father was ever going to do anything to get her back. She was so pissed off at being treated like she was subhuman for being a woman (typical for many tribes), she publicly denounced her own people, adopted the English name Rebecca, married a tobacco planter named John Rolfe, converted to Christianity, and moved to England (where she was treated as a celebrity and was a guest of nobility), because she refused to have anything further to do with her own people and family, because they were assholes.
Several years later, her father and his tribesmen schemed to betray the colonists YET AGAIN, and in 1622, after several years of peaceful relations and trade between Jamestown and his people, they launched a sneak attack, infiltrating villages under the guise of trading food, furs, and other goods and then murdering men, women, and children with whatever weapons they could get their hands on. They murdered AN ENTIRE QUARTER OF THE POPULATION and intended to commit genocide against the entire colony, but weren't allowed inside Jamestown itself because they'd stabbed the colonists in the back (literally and figuratively) too many times, and their massacre was stopped in its tracks by the town walls and its defenders.
So, yeah. Thanksgiving is a celebration of survival, the English colonists praising God for helping them survive after nearly dying of disease, starvation, and violence, and they shared it with the natives who traded with them and showed them how to make it through the winter. And in return, they were just betrayed, robbed, raped, and murdered again and again and again. If anyone has the right to say "no, fuck you", it's the descendants of the people who survived what Powhattan and the other indians did to them after countless attempts at peaceful coexistence.
turnnoffyourmind
dailybridgerton
