The Legacy of the Pilgrims Depends on their Motives

   It is said, those early Thanksgivings were little more than celebrations for slaughtering American Natives -- celebrations of conquest, celebrations of what sometimes amounted to genocides.

  I'm new to this debate about the founding of Thanksgiving, and a few hours study will not catch me up with those who have been discussing it for years.

  Still, I have some thoughts. If you are at war, and your society's survival depends on a favorable outcome, you should thank your God when he delivers you from the hands of your enemies. Whether this is what happened, I may not be entirely certain. But, I wonder.

  On the flip side of the argument, I wonder at how the natives were captured for slavery, for while you might not have heard, Native Americans reportedly were taken and sold off to slavery. Now, what does that have to do with protecting yourself against the enemy? My thoughts jump to the African-American slavery, and I note that of all the slave cultures in world history, America's is among the foremost.

   I cannot think entirely fondly upon a people who rank among the most enslaving people in history. And, out of this grew freedom?

   Who started King Philip's War, the American-Indian war at the time, and the bloodiest war in American history (in terms of percentage of  population killed)? What were the motives? Did we seek only to protect ourselves? Or did we see the natives as people to be annihilated? Did we see them as lesser humans, or perhaps not even quite worthy of the designation of "humans"? Did we view them only as savages, people to be swept off the face of the earth?
   I do not know the motives of the American colonists. I only say if their motives were honorable, their history was honorable. But, if they sought to administer death to a people they could have lived among, what they did, indeed, is a stain upon our nation.

(Note: Some editing and adjustments were made and a new head added the morning of 11/24/18/)