that so we might after a special manner rejoice together after we
had gathered the fruits of our labors. They four killed as much
fowl as with a little help beside served the company about a week.
At which times among other recreations we exercised our arms, many
of the Indians coming amongst us, and among the rest their greatest
king Massasoyt with some ninety men, whom for three days we
entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five deer
which they brought and bestow'd on our governor, and upon the
captains and others."
As Governor Bradford specified that during that autumn "beside
waterfoule ther was great store of wild turkies," we can have the
satisfaction of feeling sure that at that first Pilgrim Thanksgiving our
forefathers and foremothers had turkeys.
Thus fared the Pilgrims better at their Thanksgiving than did their
English brothers, for turkeys were far from plentiful in England at that
date.
Though there were but fifty-five English to eat the Pilgrim Thanksgiving
feast, there were "partakers in plenty," and the ninety sociable Indian
visitors did not come empty-handed, but joined fraternally in provision
for the feast, and probably also in the games.
These recreations were, without doubt, competitions in running, leaping,
jumping, and perhaps stool-ball, a popular game played by both sexes, in
which a ball was driven from stool to stool or wicket to wicket.
During that chilly November week in Plymouth, Priscilla Mullins and John
Alden may have "recreated" themselves with this ancient form of
croquet--if any recreation were possible for the four women of the
colony, who, with the help of one servant and a few young girls or
maidekins, had to prepare and cook food for three days for one hundred
and twenty hungry men, ninety-one of them being Indians, with an
unbounded capacity for gluttonous gorging unsurpassed by any other race.
Doubtless the deer, and possibly the great turkeys, were roasted in the
open air. The picture of that Thanksgiving Day, the block-house with its
few cannon, the Pilgrim men in buff breeches, red waistcoats, and green
or sad-colored mandillions; the great company of Indians, gay in holiday
paint and feathers and furs; the few sad, overworked, homesick women, in
worn and simple gowns, with plain coifs and kerchiefs, and the pathetic
handful of little children, forms a keen contrast to the prosperous,
cheerful Thanksgivings of a century later.
There is no record of any special religious service during this week of
feasting.
The Pilgrims had good courage, stanch faith, to thus celebrate and give
thanks, for they apparently had but little cause to rejoice. They had
been lost in the woods, where they had wandered surbated, and had been
terrified by the roar of "Lyons," and had met wolves that "sat on thier
tayles and grinned" at them; they had been half frozen in their poorly
built houses; had been famished, or sickened with unwonted and
unpalatable food; their common house had burned down, half their company
was dead--they had borne sore sorrows, and equal trials were to come.
They were in dire distress for the next two years. In the spring of 1623
a drought scorched the corn and stunted the beans, and in July a fast
day of nine hours of prayer was followed by a rain that revived their
"withered corn and their drooping affections." In testimony of their
gratitude for the rain, which would not have been vouchsafed for private
prayer, and thinking they would "show great ingratitude if they
smothered up the same," the second Pilgrim Thanksgiving was ordered and
observed.
In 1630, on February 22d, the first public thanksgiving was held in
Boston by the Bay Colony, in gratitude for the safe arrival of
food-bearing and friend-bringing ships. On November 4, 1631, Winthrop
wrote again: "We kept thanksgiving day in Boston." From that time till
1684 there were at least twenty-two public thanksgiving days appointed
in Massachusetts--about one in two years; but it was not a regular
biennial festival. In 1675, a time of deep gloom through the many and
widely separated attacks from the fierce savages, there was no public
thanksgiving celebrated in either Massachusetts or Connecticut. It is
difficult to state when the feast became a fixed annual observance in
New England. In the year 1742 were two Thanksgiving Days.
Rhode Islanders paid little heed in early days to Thanksgiving--at any
rate, to days set by the Massachusetts authorities. Governor Andros
savagely prosecuted more than one Rhode Islander who calmly worked all
day long on the day appointed for giving thanks. In Boston, William
Veazie was set in the pillory in the market-place for ploughing on the
Thanksgiving Day of June 18, 1696. He said his king had granted liberty
of conscience, and that the reigning king, William, was not his ruler;
that King James was his royal prince, and since he did not believe in
setting apart days for thanksgiving he should not observe them.
Connecticut people, though just as pious and as prosperous as the Bay
colonists, do not appear to have been as grateful, and had considerable
trouble at times to "pick vppon a day" for thanksgiving; and the
festival was not regularly observed there till 1716.
Thanksgiving was not always appointed in early days for the same token
of God's beneficence. Days of thanks were set in gratitude for and
observance of great political and military events, for victories over
the Indians or in the Palatinate, for the accession of kings, for the
prospect of royal heirs to the throne, for the discovery of conspiracy
for the "healing of breaches," the "dissipation of the Pirates," the
abatement of diseases, for the safe arrival of "psons of spetiall use
and quality," as well as in gratitude for plentiful harvests--that "God
had not given them cleannes of teeth and wante of bread."
The early Thanksgivings were not always set, upon Thursday. It is said
that that day was chosen on account of its reflected glory as lecture
day. Judge Sewall told the governor and his council, in 1697, that he
"desir'd the same day of the week might be for Thanksgiving and Fasts,"
and that "Boston and Ipswitch Lectures led us to Thorsday." The feast of
thanks was for many years appointed with equal frequency upon "Tusday
com seuen-night," or "vppon Wensday com fort-nit." Nor was any special
season of the year chosen: in 1716 it was appointed in August; in 1713,
in January; in 1718, in December; in 1719, in October. The frequent
appointments in gratitude for bountiful harvests finally made the autumn
the customary time.
The God of the Puritans was a jealous God, and many fasts were appointed
to avert his wrath, as shown in blasted wheat; moulded beans, wormy
pease, and mildewed corn; in drought and grasshoppers; in Indian
invasions; in caterpillars and other woes of New England; in children
dying by the chincough; in the "excessive raigns from the botles of
Heaven"--all these evils being sent for the crying sins of wig-wearing,
sheltering Quakers, not paying the ministers, etc. A fast and a feast
kept close company in Puritan calendars. A fast frequently preceded
Thanksgiving Day, and was sometimes appointed for the day succeeding
the feast--a clever plan which had its good hygienic points. Days of
private as well as of public fast and thanksgiving were also observed by
individuals. Judge Sewall took the greatest satisfaction in his
fastings, and carefully outlined his plan of prayer throughout the fast
day, which he spent in his chamber--a plan which included and specified
ministers, rulers and magistrates, his family, and every person whom he
said "had a smell of relation" to him; and also every nation and people
in the known world. He does not note Thanksgiving Day as a holiday of
any importance.
Though in the mind of the Puritan, Christmas smelled to heaven of
idolatry, when his own festival, Thanksgiving, became annual, it assumed
many of the features of the old English Christmas; it was simply a day
of family reunion in November instead of December, on which Puritans ate
turkey and Indian pudding and pumpkin-pie, instead of "superstitious
meats" such as a baron of beef, boar's head, and plum-pudding.
Many funny stories are told of the early Thanksgiving Days, such as the
town of Colchester calmly ignoring the governor's appointed day and
observing their own festival a week later in order to allow time for the
arrival, by sloop from New York, of a hogshead of molasses for pies.
Another is recounted of a farmer losing his cask of Thanksgiving
molasses out of his cart as he reached the top of a steep hill, and of
its rolling swiftly down till split in twain by its fall. His helpless
discomfiture and his wife's acidity of temper and diet are comically
told.
There is in the possession of the Massachusetts Historical Society a
broadside announcing a thanksgiving for victory in King Philip's War;
and during the following year, 1677, the first regular Thanksgiving
proclamation was printed.
But Thanksgiving Day was not the chief New England holiday. Ward,
writing in 1699, does not name it, saying of New Englanders: "Election,
Commencement and Training Days are their only Holy Days."
It was natural in New England, a state planted by men of exceptional
intelligence, that all should think as one minister said, "If the
college die, the church cannot long live;" and in the Commencement Day
of their colleges they found matter of deep interest, of pride, of
recreation. Judge Sewall always notes the day at Harvard, its exercises,
its dinner, its plentiful wine, and the Commencement cake, which he
carried to his friends. The meagre entries in the diaries and almanacs
of many an old New England minister show that Commencement Day was one
of their proudest holidays. After 1730, Commencement Day was usually set
for Friday, in order that there might be, as President Wadsworth said in
his diary, "less remaining time in the week to be spent in frolicking."
Training Day may be called the first New England holiday, though
Hawthorne thought the day of too serious importance in early warlike
times to be classed under the head of festivals. At the first Pilgrim
Thanksgiving they "exercised their arms," and for some years they had
six trainings a year; no wonder they were said to be "diligent in
traynings." The all-powerful Church Militant held sway even over these
gatherings of New England warriors. The military reviews and exercises
were made properly religious by an opening exercise of prayer and
psalm-singing, the latter sometimes at such inordinate length as to
provoke criticism and remarks from the rank and file, remonstrance which
was at once pleasantly rebuked by pious Judge Sewall. Religious notices
were also given before the company broke line. A noble dinner somewhat
redeemed the sobriety of the opening exercises, a dinner given in Boston
to gentlemen and gentlewomen in tents on the Common; and the frequent
firing of guns and cannon further enlivened the day.
Boston mustered a very fair military force at trainings, even in early
days. Winthrop writes that at the May training in 1639 one thousand men
exercised, and in the autumn twelve hundred bore arms, and not an oath
or quarrel was heard and no drunkenness seen. The training field was
Boston Common. At these trainings prizes were frequently offered for the
best marksmanship; in Connecticut, a silk handkerchief or some such
trinket. Judge Sewall offered a silver cup, and again a silver-headed
pike; since he was an uncommonly poor shot himself, his generosity shows
out all the more plainly. With barbaric openness of cruel intent, a
figure stuffed to represent a human form was often the target, and it
was a matter of grave decision whether a shot in the head or bowels were
the fatal one. Sometimes the day was enlivened by a form of amusement
ever beloved of the colonists--by public punishments. For instance, at
the training day at Kittery, Me., in 1690, two men "road the woodin
Horse for dangerous and churtonous carig and mallplying of oaths."
The training days of colony times developed into Muster Days, the
crowning pinnacle of gayety, dissipation, and noise in a country boy's
life in New England for over a century.
We owe much to these trainings and these trials of marksmanship. In
conjunction with the universal skill in woodcraft and in hunting, they
made our ancestors more than a match for the Indian and the Frenchman,
and in Revolutionary times gave them their ascendency over the English.
Election Day was naturally a time of much excitement to New Englanders
in olden times, as nowadays. In fact, the entire week partook of the
flavor of a holiday. This did not please the ministers. Urian Oakes
wrote sadly that Election Day had become a time "to meet, to smoke,
carouse and swagger and dishonor God with the greater bravery." Various
local customs obtained. "'Lection cake," a sort of rusk rich with fruit
and wine, was made in many localities; indeed, is still made in some
families that I know; and sometimes "'lection beer" was brewed. In early
May the herb gatherers (many of them old squaws) brought to town various
barks and roots for this beer, and they also vended it on the streets
during Election week. An Election sermon was also preached.
Boston had two Election Days. "Nigger 'Lection" was so called in
distinction from Artillery Election. On the former anniversary day the
election of the governor was formally announced, and the black
population was allowed to throng the Common, to buy gingerbread and
drink beer like their white betters. On the second holiday the Ancient
and Honorable Artillery had a formal parade, and chose its new officers,
who received with much ceremony, out-of-doors, their new commissions
from the new governor. Woe, then, to the black face that dared be seen
on that grave and martial occasion! In 1817 a negro boy named William
Read, enraged at being refused the high privileges and pleasures of
Artillery Day, blew up in Boston Harbor a ship called the Canton Packet.
For years it was a standing taunt of white boys in Boston to negroes:
"Who blew up the ship?
Nigger, why for?
'Cause he couldn't go to 'lection
An' shake paw-paw."
Paw-paw was a gambling game which was played on the Common with four
sea-shells of the _Cypr[oe]a Moneta_.
The 14th of July was observed by Boston negroes for many years to
commemorate the introduction of measures to abolish the slave trade. It
was derisively called Bobalition Day, and the orderly convention of
black men was greeted with a fusillade of rotten fruit and eggs and much
jesting abuse. It was at one of these Bobalition-Day celebrations that
this complimentary toast was seriously given and recorded in honor of
the newly elected governor: "Governor Brooks--May the mantelpiece of
Caleb Strong fall on the hed of his distinguished Predecessor."
In other localities, notably on the Massachusetts coast, in Connecticut,
and in Narragansett, the term "Nigger 'Lection" was applied to the
election of a black governor, who held his sway over the black
population. Wherever there was a large number of negroes the black
governor was a man of much dignity and importance, and his election was
a scene of much gayety and considerable feasting, which the governor's
master had to pay for. As he had much control over his black
constituents, it is plain that the black governor might be made useful
in many petty ways to his white neighbors. Occasionally the "Nigger
'Lection" had a deep political signification and influence. "Scaeva," in
his "Hartford in the Olden Times," and Hinman, in the "American
Revolution," give detailed and interesting accounts of "Nigger
'Lection."
A few rather sickly and benumbed attempts were made in bleak New England
to celebrate in old English fashion the first of May. A May-pole was
erected in Charlestown in 1687, and was promptly cut down. The most
unbounded observance of the day was held at Merry Mount (now the town of
Quincy) in 1628 by roystering Morton and his gay crew. Bradford says:
"They set up a May-pole, drinking and dancing aboute it many days
togeather, inviting the Indian women for their consorts, dancing and
frisking togeather like so many fairies or furies rather." This May-pole
was a stately pine-tree eighty feet high, with a pair of buck's horns
nailed at the top, and with "sundry rimes and verses affixed." Stern
Endicott rode down ere long to investigate matters, and at once cut the
"idoll Maypole" down, and told the junketers that he hoped to hear of
their "better walking, else they would find their merry mount but a
woful mount."
To eat pancakes on Shrove Tuesday was held by the Puritans to be a
heathenish vanity; and yet, apparently with the purpose of annoying good
Boston folk, some attempts were made to observe the day. One year a
young man went through the town "carrying a cock on his back with a bell
in 's hand." Several of his fellows followed him blindfolded, and, under
pretence of striking him with heavy cart-whips, managed to do
considerable havoc in the surrounding crowd. We can well imagine how
odious this horse-play was to the Puritans, aggravated by the fact that
it was done to note a holy day. On Shrove Tuesday, in 1685, there was
"great disorder in town by reason of Cock-skailing." This was the
barbarous game of cock-steling, or cock-throwing, or cock-squoiling--a
game as old as Chaucer's time, a universal pastime on Shrove Tuesday in
England, where scholars also had cock-fights in the school-rooms.
The observance, or even notice, of the first day of the year as a
"gaudy-day"--of New-Year's tides in any way--was thought by Urian Oakes
to savor strongly of superstitious reverence for the heathen god Janus;
the Pilgrims made no note of their first New-Year's Day in the New
World, save by this very prosaic record, "We went to work betimes." Yet
Judge Sewall, as rigid and stern a Puritan as any of the earliest days,
records with some pride his being greeted with a levet, or blast of
trumpets, under his window, early on the morning of January 1, 1697;
while he himself celebrated the opening of the new century with a very
poor poem of his own making, which he caused to be cried or recited
throughout the town of Boston by the town bellman.
Guy Fawkes' Day, or "Pope's Day," was observed with much noise
throughout New England for many years by burning of bonfires, preceded
by parades of young men and boys dressed in fantastic costumes and
carrying "guys" or "popes" of straw. Fires are still lighted on the 5th
of November in New England towns by boys, who know not what they
commemorate. In Newburyport, Mass., and Portsmouth, N. H., Guy Fawkes'
Day is still celebrated. In Newcastle, N. H., it is called "Pork Night."
In New York and Brooklyn, the bonfires on the night of election, and the
importunate begging on Thanksgiving Day of ragged fantastics, usually
children of Roman Catholic parents, are both direct survivals of the
ancient celebration of "Pope's Day."
In Governor Belcher's time, in Massachusetts, the stopping of
pedestrians on the street, by "loose and dissolute people," who were
wont to levy contributions for paying for their bonfires, became so
universally annoying that the governor made proclamation against them in
the newspapers. Tudor, in his "Life of Otis," gives an account of the
observance of the day and its disagreeable features. He says the
intruders paraded the streets with grotesque images, forcibly entered
houses, ringing bells, demanding money, and singing rhymes similar to
those sung all over England:
"Don't you remember
The Fifth of November,
The Gunpowder Treason and plot,
I see no reason
Why Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot.
From Rome to Rome
The Pope is come,
Amid ten thousand fears,
With fiery serpents to be seen
At eyes, nose, mouth, and ears.
Don't you hear my little bell
Go chink, chink, chink,
Please give me a little money
To buy my Pope some drink."
The figure of the Pretender was added to that of the pope and devil in
1702; and on Pope's Day, in 1763, American politics took a share. I read
in a diary of that date, "Pope, Devil, and Stampman were hung together."
After the Revolution the effigy of Benedict Arnold was burnt alongside
that of Guy Fawkes.
Though we retained Pope's Day until Federal times, the Declaration of
Independence struck one holiday off our calendar. The king's birthday
was, until then, celebrated with a training, a salute of cannon, a
dinner, and an illumination.
Other holidays were evolved by circumstances. Anniversary Day was a
special festival for the ministers, who gathered together in the larger
towns for spiritual intercourse and the material refreshment of a good
dinner. It was originally held in Massachusetts at the May meeting of
the General Court. Forefathers' Day, the anniversary of the landing at
Plymouth, was celebrated by dinners, prayer, and praise.
Many other annual scenes of gayety were developed by the various food
harvests. Thus the time when the salmon and shad came up the rivers had
been a great merry-making and season of feasting for the Indian, and
became equally so for the white man. As years passed on it became also a
time of much drunkenness and revelry. Men rode a hundred miles for these
gay holidays, and went home with horses laden down with fish. Shad were
so plentiful that they were thrown away, would sell for but a penny
apiece, and no persons of social importance or of good taste would eat
them except in secret. Salmon, too, were so plentiful and so cheap that
farm-servants on the banks of the Connecticut stipulated that they
should have salmon for dinner but thrice a week, as the rich fish soon
proved cloying.
In many localities, in Narragansett in particular, the autumnal
corn-huskings almost reached the dignity of holidays, being conducted in
a liberal fashion and with unbounded hospitality, which included and
entertained whole retinues of black servants from neighboring farms, as
well as the planters and their families. Apple-parings, maple-sugar
makings, and timber-rollings were merry gatherings.
In Vermont and down the Connecticut valley the annual sheep-shearing was
a lively scene. On Nantucket there took place annually a like
sheep-shearing, which, though a characteristic New England festival, was
like the scene in the "Winter's Tale." The broad plains outside the town
were used as a common sheep-pasture throughout the year; sometimes
fifteen or sixteen thousand sheep were kept thereon. About two miles
from the town was a sheep-fold, near the margin of a pond, where the
sheep could be washed. It was built of four or five concentric fences,
which thus formed a sort of labyrinth, into which and through which the
sheep and lambs were driven at shearing-time, and in it they were sorted
out and placed in cotes or pens erected for each sheep-owner. The
existence of carefully registered ear-marks, with which each lamb was
branded, formed a means of identifying each owner's sheep and lambs. Of
course, this gathering brought together all the sheep drivers and
herders, the sheep washers and shearers. Vast preparations of food and
drink were made for their entertainment, and tents were reared for their
occupancy, and, of course, fiddlers and peddlers, like Autolycus,
flocked there also, and much amusement and frolicking accompanied the
shearing. Even the sheep, panting with their heavy wool when within the
folds, and the shorn and shivering creatures running around outside and
bleating for their old long-wooled companions, added to the excitement
of the scene. Perhaps the maritime occupation of the Islanders made them
enjoy with the zest of unwontedness this rural "shore-holiday." But it
exists no longer; the island is not now one vast sheep-pasture, and
there are no longer any sheep-shearings.
X
SPORTS AND DIVERSIONS
The Puritans of the first century of colonial life--the "true New
England men," not only of Winthrop and Bradford's time, but of the
slowly degenerating days of Cotton Mather and Judge Sewall--thought
little and cared little for any form of amusement;
"Not knowing this, that Heaven decrees
Some mirth t'adulce man's miseries."