A Brief History of the Pilgrims and Thanksgiving Day: From Plymouth Rock to Pumpkin Pie

What Will You Learn About the Pilgrims and the Origins of Thanksgiving?

The Thanksgiving story most of us carry around in our heads is a kind of warm blur. Buckled hats, a big turkey, grateful colonists, helpful Native Americans, and a long table somewhere in the woods. The real history of thanksgiving is more complicated than that, and in many ways more interesting.

This article walks through the actual sequence of events: who the Pilgrims were, why they left England, what happened during that brutal first winter at Plymouth, and how Wampanoag aid, particularly from a man named Tisquantum, shaped the colony's survival and the harvest feast of 1621. From there, we trace how scattered local observances became the national Thanksgiving holiday formalised by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863, and what that origin story means when we sit down to eat in November today.

• The Pilgrims' identity, beliefs, and reasons for crossing the Atlantic
• How the Wampanoag people and Tisquantum (Squanto) helped the colonists survive
• What actually happened at the 1621 harvest feast
• How Thanksgiving Day became a fixed American holiday, and why Lincoln's proclamation mattered
• Which popular traditions reflect history and which are later simplifications

Who Were the Pilgrims?

The word "Pilgrim" conjures a single, tidy image. In reality, the group who sailed on the Mayflower in 1620 were a mixed company with complicated motives. At their core were English Protestant Separatists, people who had concluded that the Church of England was beyond reform and that their only honest path was to separate from it entirely. This was a radical, dangerous position in early 17th-century England, where religious conformity was enforced by law.

The Separatists were families, not lone adventurers. They worshipped together in small, close-knit congregations, often meeting in private homes to avoid detection. Their leaders included William Bradford, who would go on to serve as governor of Plymouth Colony for more than thirty years, and William Brewster, their elder and spiritual guide.

It matters to note that not everyone aboard the Mayflower shared these convictions. Roughly half the passengers were what Bradford called "Strangers," people recruited by the voyage's financial backers to make the venture commercially viable. The Pilgrims were not a monolith; they were a community held together by faith, family ties, and necessity.

Term	Who They Were	Key Distinction
Pilgrims (Separatists)	English Protestants who broke entirely from the Church of England	Sought full separation from the established church
Puritans	English Protestants who wanted to reform the Church of England from within	Remained nominally within the church; arrived in Massachusetts primarily from 1630
"Strangers"	Non-Separatist passengers on the Mayflower	Joined for economic or personal reasons, not religious conviction

The confusion between Pilgrims and Puritans is one of the most common stumbles in early American history. They were related movements, products of the same Protestant Reformation currents, but their approaches differed sharply. Puritans arrived in larger numbers a decade later, founding the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The Pilgrims' Plymouth Colony was smaller, poorer, and eventually absorbed by its neighbour.

Why Were They Called "Pilgrims"?

The label did not stick immediately. William Bradford, writing in his manuscript Of Plymouth Plantation, described the departing congregation as "pilgrimes" in a spiritual sense, travellers on a faith-driven journey with no fixed earthly home. The term echoed biblical language, especially Hebrews 11:13, which speaks of strangers and pilgrims on the earth.

• Bradford used "pilgrims" in his manuscript to describe their identity as spiritual wayfarers
• The term gained wider public use in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, particularly after a 1793 celebration at Plymouth where the word was prominently invoked
• By the mid-1800s, "Pilgrims" had become the standard label in American memory, shaping how the Thanksgiving story was taught, painted, and passed on

Why does the name matter? Because "Pilgrim" carries a weight of purpose and devotion that shapes how we read everything that followed. It frames the Atlantic crossing as a spiritual act, not just an economic migration. That framing is partly true and partly a choice made by later generations who needed a clean origin story for their national identity.

Why Did the Pilgrims Leave England for the Netherlands, and What Happened There?

Before the Mayflower, there was Leiden. The Separatists' first attempt at religious freedom took them not west across the Atlantic but east across the English Channel, to the Dutch Republic. England under James I was hostile to religious dissent. Attending unauthorised worship services could lead to fines, imprisonment, or worse. Several members of the congregation were arrested and harassed before they managed to leave.

The Netherlands offered genuine religious tolerance. The Separatists settled in Leiden around 1609 and lived there for over a decade. They worshipped freely. But freedom came with its own difficulties:

• Economic hardship: most worked in textile trades for low wages, and the work was physically punishing
• Cultural assimilation fears: their children were growing up Dutch, drifting from English language and customs
• Military anxiety: the Twelve Years' Truce between the Netherlands and Spain was expiring, raising the prospect of war
• Community identity: they feared losing the distinctiveness that held them together as a congregation

These pressures, not a single dramatic event, pushed the group toward a more radical solution. A new settlement across the ocean, where they could govern themselves, raise their children in their own tradition, and worship without compromise. It was not a decision made lightly. Many members stayed behind in Leiden. The ones who left knew they were walking, as Bradford wrote, into "a vast and unpeopled country."

How Did the Mayflower Voyage and the First Winter at Plymouth Unfold?

The Mayflower departed Plymouth, England, in September 1620 carrying about 102 passengers and roughly 30 crew. The crossing took 66 days. It was cramped, cold, and seasick-making, the kind of journey you endure rather than enjoy. One passenger died at sea; one child was born.

They had intended to settle further south, near the mouth of the Hudson River in what was then the northern edge of the Virginia Company's territory. Instead, storms and currents brought them to Cape Cod in November. After weeks of scouting, they chose a site across the bay that they named Plymouth, after the English port they had left behind.

Before going ashore, the colonists drafted the Mayflower Compact, a short agreement to govern themselves by majority rule. It was a practical document, born of the fact that landing outside their patent's jurisdiction left them without legal authority. The Compact was not a constitution, but it was a notable early experiment in self-governance.

Then winter came. And it was devastating.

Nearly half the colonists died during those first months, succumbing to scurvy, pneumonia, and exposure. They had arrived too late to plant crops. Food was scarce. The healthy nursed the sick. William Bradford, writing years later, recalled that at times only six or seven people were well enough to care for the rest. The dead were buried quietly, their graves levelled to hide the colony's vulnerability from anyone watching.

Timeline	Event
September 1620	Mayflower departs Plymouth, England
November 1620	Pilgrims land at Cape Cod; sign the Mayflower Compact
December 1620	Plymouth Colony site chosen; construction begins
Winter 1620-1621	Severe illness and mortality; roughly half the colonists die
March 1621	First contact with Samoset and Tisquantum; alliance with Massasoit

How Did Tisquantum (Squanto) and the Wampanoag Help the Pilgrims Survive?

In March 1621, a man named Samoset walked into the Plymouth settlement and greeted the colonists in English. A few days later, he returned with Tisquantum, also known as Squanto, a Patuxet man whose life story is one of the most remarkable and painful in early American history.

Tisquantum had been kidnapped by English explorers years earlier, taken to Europe, and eventually made his way back across the Atlantic, only to find that his entire Patuxet community had been wiped out by an epidemic, likely introduced by earlier European contact. Plymouth Colony was built on the site of his former village. He was, in a very real sense, the last of his people standing on that ground.

Tisquantum became a critical intermediary between the colonists and the Wampanoag people, who were led by the sachem Massasoit. His practical help was enormous:

• He taught the colonists how to plant corn using local methods, including fertilising with fish
• He showed them where to find eels and other food sources
• He served as a translator and guide, helping navigate the political landscape of native communities in the region

Massasoit and the Wampanoag formed an alliance with Plymouth Colony, a diplomatic agreement that served both parties. The Wampanoag were contending with the rival Narragansett and saw the English as potential allies. The colonists, weakened and few, needed every advantage they could get. It was a relationship of mutual calculation, not simple generosity on one side.

Honest history demands we hold two things at once: the Wampanoag's aid was genuine and essential, and it occurred within a context of indigenous agency, strategic decision-making, and, eventually, devastating colonial violence against native communities. The Thanksgiving story has too often flattened indigenous people into supporting characters in someone else's narrative. The Wampanoag people were, and remain, a sovereign nation with their own history, their own losses, and their own memory of these events. Each year, many indigenous people observe a National Day of Mourning at Plymouth rather than a celebration, a reminder that the same history holds grief and gratitude in the same hand.

What Happened at the 1621 Harvest Feast Often Called "the First Thanksgiving"?

Sometime in the autumn of 1621, after a successful harvest, the Plymouth colonists held a celebration that lasted about three days. We know about it primarily from two sources: a letter by Edward Winslow, written in December 1621, and William Bradford's later manuscript. Winslow's account is brief but vivid.

He describes the colonists going out to hunt fowl, likely ducks and geese rather than turkey, and mentions that Massasoit arrived with about 90 Wampanoag men, who contributed five deer to the feast. The gathering was not a quiet, prayerful dinner. It was a harvest celebration with eating, games, and military exercises, closer in spirit to an English harvest festival than to the solemn meal we picture today.

What Was Likely Served	What Probably Was Not There
Waterfowl (duck, goose), venison (five deer from the Wampanoag), corn, shellfish, squash, beans	Turkey as the centrepiece, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie
Possibly cod, bass, or eel	Sweet potatoes (not native to New England)

This was not called "Thanksgiving" at the time. The Pilgrims' own tradition of thanksgiving was a religious observance involving prayer and fasting, not feasting. The 1621 event was a secular harvest celebration. The myth of the first thanksgiving, the idea that this specific meal was the origin point of the national holiday, was a construction of later centuries, assembled from fragments of Winslow's letter and a good deal of wishful thinking.

Did the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag share this first thanksgiving meal together? Yes, they ate together for about three days. That much appears well documented. But the event's meaning was different for each group, and the warm tableau of unity that later generations painted over it hides a more complex, more human reality.

How Did Thanksgiving Become a U.S. Holiday, and Why Did Lincoln's 1863 Proclamation Matter?

Thanksgiving did not spring into existence as a single, continuous national holiday. For nearly two centuries after 1621, days of thanksgiving were declared sporadically by individual colonies, states, and occasionally by national leaders. George Washington proclaimed a national day of prayer and thanksgiving in 1789, but it was a one-off event, not an annual tradition.

Not everyone was enthusiastic. Thomas Jefferson famously refused to declare a day of thanksgiving during his presidency, viewing it as an inappropriate entanglement of government and religion. Jefferson's objection was principled, rooted in his strict reading of the separation of church and state, though it also reflected the political tensions of his era.

The person most responsible for turning Thanksgiving into a fixed annual tradition was Sarah Josepha Hale, editor of Godey's Lady's Book and one of the most influential women in 19th-century American culture. Hale campaigned for a national Thanksgiving holiday for nearly two decades, writing letters to governors and presidents, publishing editorials, and promoting the idea relentlessly.

Her efforts bore fruit in 1863, in the middle of the Civil War, when President Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation designating the last Thursday in November as a national day of thanksgiving. Lincoln's language was deliberately unifying. In a nation tearing itself apart, he called on Americans to give thanks for blessings "which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come."

• Lincoln's thanksgiving proclamation established the tradition of an annual national Thanksgiving
• The timing, mid-Civil War, gave the holiday a deliberate tone of national reconciliation and gratitude amid suffering
• In 1941, Congress formally fixed the date as the fourth Thursday in November, where it remains

The holiday continued to evolve after Lincoln. The Thanksgiving feast became increasingly standardised around turkey, stuffing, and pie. Football arrived. Parades arrived. The Pilgrims' story was folded in as a founding myth, simplified and polished until it barely resembled the messy, mortal, often frightened community that had huddled through that first winter at Plymouth.

How Do These Origins Connect to Modern Thanksgiving Traditions in the United States?

Modern Thanksgiving in the United States is a layered thing. Some of what we do at the table carries genuine echoes of history: the harvest themes, the gathering of family and community, the impulse to give thanks for survival and plenty. These are old human instincts dressed in American clothes.

Other elements are inventions, or at least heavy embellishments. The myth of the first thanksgiving as a peaceful, interracial dinner party is a 19th-century creation, assembled to serve a nation that needed a feel-good origin story. The stereotypical pilgrim outfit, black with buckled hats, is largely a Victorian imagination. The Pilgrims wore the ordinary colours of their era: browns, greens, reds, and yes, sometimes black, but without the theatrical buckles.

• Turkey as centrepiece: Possibly present at the 1621 feast, but not confirmed as the main dish; waterfowl and venison were more prominent
• Cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie: Later additions; the colonists lacked sugar and ovens for pastry
• The "friendly first Thanksgiving" narrative: Oversimplifies a complex diplomatic relationship and obscures later violence against native people
• Black outfits with buckles: A myth; Plimoth Patuxet Museums offers more accurate depictions of Pilgrim clothing

When we celebrate Thanksgiving, we are participating in a tradition of thanksgiving that has been shaped and reshaped over four centuries. Understanding the real history does not require abandoning the holiday. It asks us to hold the story honestly, to remember the Wampanoag people's contributions and losses alongside the Pilgrims' courage and suffering, and to recognise that gratitude and grief have always shared the same table in American culture.

For many native communities, the fourth Thursday in November is not a celebration but a time to mourn what was taken, a day of mourning as much as a day of thanks. Both responses are legitimate. Both belong to the full history of this complicated, deeply American holiday.

FAQ: Common Questions About Pilgrims and Thanksgiving

Was the 1621 feast the first "Thanksgiving" in America?

Not in any strict sense. Spanish explorers held thanksgiving ceremonies in Florida and Texas decades earlier, and the Pilgrims themselves did not call their 1621 harvest celebration a "thanksgiving." Days of prayer and thanksgiving were common in English colonial practice. The 1621 event at Plymouth became the symbolic first Thanksgiving through later retellings, particularly in the 19th century, but other communities and native people had their own traditions of giving thanks long before the Pilgrims landed.

Did the Pilgrims wear the stereotypical black outfits with buckles?

No. This image comes from later artistic representations, mostly from the 19th century. Probate records and other documents suggest the Plymouth colonists wore practical clothing in earthy colours. Buckles on hats and shoes became fashionable later in the 17th century, after the Plymouth settlement was well established. Plimoth Patuxet Museums in Plymouth, Massachusetts, provides historically accurate recreations of Pilgrim and Wampanoag life.

What role did Squanto play in Plymouth's survival?

Tisquantum, known as Squanto, was a Patuxet man who served as translator, agricultural adviser, and diplomatic intermediary for Plymouth Colony. He taught the colonists to plant corn using local techniques, guided them to fishing and foraging sites, and helped facilitate the alliance between the colonists and Massasoit's Wampanoag confederation. His contributions were essential to the colony surviving beyond its first year. His own story, including kidnapping, enslavement, and the loss of his entire community, is a reminder of the human cost embedded in the founding narrative.

Why did Lincoln make Thanksgiving a national holiday in 1863?

President Abraham Lincoln issued his thanksgiving proclamation in October 1863, during the Civil War, in part to foster national unity and gratitude amid enormous suffering. He was also responding to a long campaign by Sarah Josepha Hale, who had lobbied for a permanent national Thanksgiving holiday for years. Lincoln designated the last Thursday in November as a national day of thanksgiving, establishing the annual tradition that Congress later fixed to the fourth Thursday in November in 1941.

Are Pilgrims and Puritans the same group?

No, though they shared Protestant Reformation roots. The Pilgrims were Separatists who believed the Church of England was irredeemable and left it entirely. The Puritans sought to purify the church from within. The Puritans arrived in Massachusetts in much larger numbers beginning in 1630, establishing the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Plymouth Colony, founded by the Pilgrims, was eventually absorbed into the larger Puritan-dominated colony in 1691.

What Should You Read or Do Next If You Want to Go Deeper?

If this article has left you curious, and I hope it has, there are several excellent places to continue.

• Primary sources: William Bradford's Of Plymouth Plantation and Edward Winslow's Mourt's Relation are the two firsthand accounts of Plymouth Colony's early years. Both are available in modern editions and online through archives.
• Plimoth Patuxet Museums: The living history museum in Plymouth, Massachusetts, offers reconstructions of both the Pilgrim village and a Wampanoag homesite, with interpreters who can answer the questions textbooks avoid.
• Wampanoag perspectives: The Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe's website and the United American Indians of New England provide indigenous perspectives on the Thanksgiving story and the National Day of Mourning observed each November at Plymouth Rock.
• Further reading: Nathaniel Philbrick's Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War is a thorough, readable account that carries the story well beyond the familiar founding myths.

The Thanksgiving story we inherit as children is simple. The real history is not. But the real history is better, because it is populated by actual human beings, afraid and brave and calculating and generous and flawed, doing what people do when they are trying to survive in a world that makes no promises. That, more than any myth, is worth sitting with.