Unit 4

• First Families: New Worlds and Everyday Lives
• Manitou and Providence: New England’s Dual Spiritual Realms
• Plymouth and America’s Holiday

In this unit, students will investigate the only surviving eyewitness account of the 1621 harvest feast and use other complementary sources to deepen their understanding of the spiritual world views, particularly around gratitude, which formed the foundation of events over the three days. Students will also explore how the 1621 harvest feast came to be known as the First Thanksgiving over the next 200 years and how the meaning of the holiday changes as new meaning is layered.

1. There is only one English eye-witness account of the 1621 harvest feast and no contemporary Wampanoag historical records to suggest their perspective on the event. Many details about the events are unknown.
2. Harvest feasts and celebrations were well-established parts of both traditional English and Wampanoag cultures and were practiced in the 17th century.
3. Spiritual and religious practices and beliefs about gratitude and thanksgiving shaped how the English and Wampanoag communities defined and celebrated “thanksgiving” in the 17th century.
4. In addition to celebrations and expressions of gratitude, the 1621 harvest celebration can also be seen as part of a series of diplomatic and political encounters between English colonial and Indigenous communities explored in Unit 2.

In this unit, students will:

• Read and compare eyewitness accounts of the 1621 harvest celebration to understand how the Wampanoag and English colonists may have interacted during the event
• Understand different Wampanoag and colonial English cultural practices of gratitude and how communities gave thanks in the 1600s and for generations in memorial.
• Explore and describe similarities and differences in the ways various cultural groups meet similar needs and concerns.
• Give example of how information and experiences may be interpreted differently by people from different cultural groups
• Demonstrate how holding different values and beliefs can contribute or pose obstacles to understanding between people and groups
• Describe interactions between and among individuals, groups, and institutions
• Identify and describe examples of tensions between and among individuals, groups, and institutions
• Show how groups and institutions work to meet individual needs and promote or fail to promote the common good.
• Analyze conditions and actions related to power, authority, and governance that contribute to conflict and cooperation among groups and nations or detract from cooperation

• How did the Wampanoag and the English colonists interact during the harvest celebration of 1621?
• How did the American tradition of celebrating the holiday of Thanksgiving begin?
  
• Why did Americans start telling the story of the “First Thanksgiving”? Why do some keep telling it?
  
• What is the past? How is “the past” different from “history?”
  
• What role do we have in creating history?
  
• How do historians use primary sources and educated guesses to research the past and create history?
  
• How can we celebrate Thanksgiving respectfully?

Upper Elementary/Grades 3-6

• Tell the events of 1621 harvest celebration from a Wampanoag point of view. Since Wampanoag histories are passed down orally as stories or using images such as wampum belts, we encourage students to illustrate the story or do a jigsaw and share stories. How do the stories change from one group to the next? What does this tell us about how history is written? How can historians make sure all voices are included?
• Invite students to use what they learned to create their own poem, play, artistic piece, etc. that tells the story of the 1621 harvest celebration.
• Bring a taste of the 17th century into your classrooms. Explore the 17th-century recipe for nasaump. Compare the Wampanoag and English ingredients and cooking methods. What do you notice? Challenge students to prepare the dish and see how it tastes.
• Use this Homework Help essay to learn more about Wampanoag and English games in the 17th century or test your students’ wit with some 17th-century riddles.
• Read the Winslow letter as a class or in small groups and use keywords to create a menu for the 1621 harvest celebration based on primary sources. Use this essay about English and Wampanoag food to help students expand their understanding about how diets change in the different seasons.
• Take a virtual trip to the 1621 harvest feast. This virtual field trip produced in partnership with Scholastic features Plimoth Patuxet’s expert staff discussing the lives of both the Pilgrims and Wampanoag people, their collaboration, and the first Thanksgiving.

Middle and HighSchool/Grades 6-12

• In groups or as individuals, students choose 2-3 probing questions from this list and use artifacts from this data set to formulate an answer based on evidence.
• Using what they’ve learned, ask students to represent the recount the events of 1621 harvest celebration from a Wampanoag point of view. Since Wampanoag histories are passed down orally as stories or using images such as wampum belts, we encourage students to illustrate the story or do a jigsaw and share stories. How do the stories change from one group to the next? What does this tell us about how history is written? How can historians make sure all voices are included?
• Imagine you are a reporter covering the 1621 harvest celebration for the local media outlet. What would be your headline? Write a script and shoot an “on location” news spot or write a news story about what happened.
• Use this Homework Help essay or listen to this podcast episode to learn more about Wampanoag and English games in the 17th century. Using what you’ve learned, translate one of the games described in the sources into modern English. Do your best to outline the rules and try to play. What can you learn by recreating a game from the past?