Thanksgiving as a Ritual of Endurance

The centerpiece of the American Thanksgiving meal is a linguistic error. The bird we eat is named after a country it never came from. Yep. European merchants confused the American fowl with the guinea hen imported through Turkey. The native Wampanoag people called the bird Neyhom. The English settlers landed in a place they did not understand. They saw a wild forest. The Wampanoag saw a managed landscape. They used fire to clear underbrush and encourage nut trees to feed the Neyhom.

In Turkeys, Pilgrims, and Indian Corn, Edna Barth notes that the colonists survived because they adopted the agricultural technology of their hosts. They planted corn and beans and squash together in mounds. They also borrowed the words for these crops. The English language had no word for the green cucurbit growing in the fields. They took the Narragansett word Askutasquash. They shortened it to Squash. Many of us use this fragment today without knowing it describes a vegetable eaten raw back in those days.

The story of the 1621 feast is often told as a domestic family dinner but mind you, it was actually a political meeting. Massasoit arrived with ninety men. The Indigenous guests outnumbered the English survivors by nearly two to one. The Wampanoag brought five deers to feed the crowd. The English provided the venue and their own construals. We often picture Pilgrims with buckles on their hats and shoes. This is a fabrication of nineteenth-century artists.

Buckles were actually expensive fashion items. The settlers were poor and wore laces and we repeat these visual errors to avoid the reality of the settlement. For, the village of Patuxet was a graveyard. A plague had killed over 90% of the population before the Mayflower arrived. In sum, the fields were clear because the farmers had died.

The English had to reshape their language to fit this new continent. They called the native grain Indian Corn to distinguish it from wheat. They learned to process it using wood ash to prevent nutritional deficiencies in a process today called Nixtamalization (From Nāhuatl Nixta + Tamal). They adopted the Powhatan word Uskatahomen which became Hominy. They prepared Nasàump which became Samp. They baked Appone which became Pone.

The landscape was full of animals and trees they could not name. They borrowed the words Skunk and Moose and Hickory and Raccoon from the Algonquian speakers. Even the name Pilgrim is a later invention. Governor Bradford referred to his people as Strangers or Old Comers. The idea of a religious Thanksgiving holiday was also distinct from the 1621 event. That feast was a secular Rejoicing with military drills and games.

Our translation agency often deals with this kind of cultural density when working with languages from the Pacific. We know that agricultural terms are difficult to translate because they contain specific local knowledge. A yam in English today is simply a starchy tuber. In the Sepik region of Papua New Guinea, it is actually a being with political influence.

There, the Abelam people view time differently than Westerners do. Richard Scaglion writes that they see history as a series of episodes rather than a straight line. The cycle of growing the ceremonial long yam regulates their lives. They call this yam Waapi. It is different from Jaabi, a small yam used for daily food. The Waapi has a spirit. It can sense human emotions and prefers peace and quiet.

The village becomes quiet during the growing season. The community suppresses conflict and loud noises. People abstain from sexual activity because they believe the yams dislike the heat it generates. The language of the village shifts to accommodate the needs of the crop. A farmer performs a ritual called Waapiké Yapévu (blowing on the yams). He transfers his own life energy to the tuber. The harvest is a competition where men grow yams that can reach nine feet in length. They do not eat these yams, they give them to their rivals. Eating your own ceremonial yam would be a shameful act.

We see similar patterns in the breadfruit cultures of Eastern Polynesia and Micronesia, where the breadfruit tree is a staple that produces a great deal of food but which is also sensitive to drought. The Marquesas Islands, for instance, have a history of severe droughts that led to famine and the language of the harvest reflects this danger. The people distinguish between the fresh fruit called Mei and the fermented paste called Ma.

The Ma is a survival tool. Eikichi Ishikawa describes how the islanders digged pits called ʻŌpuʻa Ma. They line the pits with leaves and bury the fruit. The fruit ferments and turns into a sour paste. This paste can stay edible for many years. The word Ma appears across the Pacific. It is Masi in Samoan, Mahi in Tahitian, Mahe in Tongan, etc. This shared vocabulary maps the movement of people and their technology.

In the Hawaiian Islands, the harvest season was called Makahiki. It lasted four lunar months. The political structure changed during this time. The god Lono presided over the season. The word Makahiki itself refers to the rising of the Pleiades constellation. This connects the farming cycle to the stars. War was Kapu (sacredly forbidden) during these months. The people celebrated with a festival called Hoʻolauleʻa. The root of this word is Lauleʻa. It means a restoration of friendship and peace. This peace was necessary for the chiefs to collect taxes.


Mark McCoy explains that the Royal Centers in the Kona district were built to handle this wealth. The Makahiki procession moved around the island. It stopped at the border of each Ahupuaʻa (land division). The people paid tribute to the Lono image. The feast served as a receipt for their taxes. The culture also used sport to challenge authority. The chiefs proved their Mana through the Hōlua sledding competition. They rode narrow wooden sleds down stone tracks where they would reach very high speeds.

The Hōlua track was a major construction project. The track at Keauhou was built by King Kamehameha I. It was nearly a mile long. The slope was steep enough to generate dangerous velocity. This sport showed that the ruler had control and courage. It demonstrated his right to rule and to control the surplus food. The vocabulary of the Hōlua is about risk and skill. It reminds the people that the harvest supports the power of the chiefs.

Well, modern holidays often hide these high stakes. In our commodified lifestyle, we buy food at the grocery store and forget the risks involved in growing it, let alone where it grows. The Wampanoag managed their forests to ensure the turkeys had food. The Marquesan family buried their breadfruit and hoped it would save them when the rain stopped. In fact, we have separated the words we use for food from the fear of hunger.

The linguistic evidence shows that the harvest was a contract. The words for corn, yams and breadfruit and gods were part of a negotiation. If a farmer broke the rules, the crop might fail. If the Waapi heard noise or the Ma was not properly sealed, the food would spoil. Hunger was the penalty for breaking the contract and the joy in these traditions is the relief of survival.

We can learn from these words. They remind us of the work required to stay alive. The first Thanksgiving was an alliance between people who had lost their families to disease and people who were starving in a strange land. The Ma of the Marquesas proves that people plan for the future. The silence of the Abelam garden shows respect for the source of food. For, the earth does not care about our holidays, it just responds to our actions.