The original Thanksgiving was marked by prayer and thanks for the untimely deaths of most of the Wampanoag Tribe due to smallpox contracted from earlier European visitors. They were both Puritans, they both probably said it.įacing West: The Metaphysics of Indian Hating & Empire Building “‘Thanksgiving Day’” was first proclaimed by the Governor of the then Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1637,” as from Newell, which was John Winthrop.īut “William Bradford became the governor of Plymouth after the first governor died in 1621.”Īnd in “1631, John Winthrop (1588-1649) became the first elected official in America-governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.” Without having the book or being able to see it online, the proclamation appears, according to Richard Drinnon, to have come from William Bradford. –The very next day the governor declared a Thanksgiving Day….For the next 100 years, every Thanksgiving Day ordained by a Governor was in honor of the bloody victory, thanking God that the battle had been won.” “Thanksgiving Day” was first proclaimed by the Governor of the then Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1637 to commemorate the massacre of 700 men, women and children who were celebrating their annual Green Corn Dance…Thanksgiving Day to the, “in their own house”, Newell stated. Newell, a Penobscot Indian and former chairman of the Anthropology department at the University of Connecticut, says that the first official Thanksgiving Day celebrated the massacre of 700 Indian men, women and children during one of their religious ceremonies. And out of that heightened violence came the massacre for which Thanksgiving is named.