What Did the Pilgrims Eat?

Was wild turkey the main meat at the first Thanksgiving (which btw would giving thanks to the Lord God Almighty for preserving their lives in a hostile wilderness)? Penny Colman, author of Thanksgiving: The True Story, says they ate copious amounts of seafood. “The only firsthand report mentions deer and many fowl. The fowl could have been ducks, geese, ruffed grouse, bobwhites, heath hens and passenger pigeons.”

And what about that “first” part? Did the pilgrims celebrate the first Thanksgiving in the New World? “(On) May 29, 1541, Francisco Vasquez de Coronado’s expedition, to Palo Duro Canyon, celebrated a Thanksgiving Mass to mark finding food and shelter after a harrowing journey,” she said. There was a similar thanksgiving mass conducted Sept. 8, 1565, in St. Augustine, Florida, as I recall. But did the Spanish go on to found this country? I don’t think so.

0 thoughts on “What Did the Pilgrims Eat?”

  1. For “first Thanksgiving celebrated by the folks from the country that went on to found this country” you need only turn to Virginia.

    “Visit Virginia’s Berkeley Plantation to see where English colonists first held a thanksgiving celebration, one year and 17 days prior to the landing of the Pilgrims in Massachusetts!”

    http://www.virginia.org/site/features.asp?featureid=50

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