African

Yet again a holiday for mass delusion about “Pilgrims and Indians” looms. It is a day when practically nobody seated around tables piled high with big dead birds and assorted platters of carbohydrates gives even a passing thought to Massachusetts Bay Colony Governor John Winthrop’s 1637 journal entry calling for “…a day of thanksgiving kept in all the churches for our victories against the Pequots.” Plymouth Colony Governor William Bradford provided a detailed account of the so-called victories over an estimated 700 members of an indigenous community: “Those that scraped the fire were [slain] with the sword; some hewed to [pieces], others [run] [through] with their rapiers, so as they were quickly [dispatched], and very few [escaped]…It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the [fire], and the streams of blood quenching the same, and horrible was the [stink] and [scent] thereof, but the victory seemed a [sweet] sacrifice...