Miss Pat decided to use the coming Thanksgiving holiday to teach a history lesson about life in the American colonies.
She invited Jay, since he is an American Indian, to tell the story of what the early colonists ate at that first Thanksgiving meal.
“Hi,” said Jay. ”What I am going to tell you about today I learned from reading and listening to the History Channel on TV.
What did the Pilgrims and their Native American guests eat that first Thanksgiving day? Well, lots of what they called fowl caught by hunters. There were ducks and geese eaten on the first Thanksgiving. Historians don’t know for sure if they had wild turkeys. They may have.
If the Pilgrims had cranberries, they would not have been sweet. Colonists didn’t start to boil cranberries with sugar for another 50 years.
They didn’t have potatoes either. The colonists were not growing white or sweet potatoes back then. They didn’t have sweet pies for dessert since they didn’t have butter and flour for pie crust and there was very little sugar for pie filling.
They did have lobsters, mussels, white and red grapes, black and red plums, and flint corn. And that’s what I know about what they ate on that first Thanksgiving.”
Everyone clapped and Miss Pat said, “Thank you Jay for sharing all that you know about that first Thanksgiving!”
