(July 3, 2015 at 7:33 pm)smax Wrote: Like I said, the letter allows you to live ignorant, even if you do claim to know about and understand the events in question. You obviously like the Thanksgiving holiday and prefer to think of it in a way that eliminates guilt. That's your prerogative.
For that matter, anyone can say they view any holiday as anything they choose to see it as so as to avoid the implications.
Abraham Lincoln's selective revision of Thanksgiving is not a revision accepted by Native Americans in general:
Quote:William B. 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. “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 celebratingk their annual Green Corn Dance…Thanksgiving Day to the, “in their own house”, Newell stated....
—–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.”
And was that our federal holiday? No? Okay.
But don't just take his word for it....
Quote:[quote]
"The Holy God having by a long and Continual Series of his Afflictive dispensations in and by the present Warr with the Heathen Natives of this land, written and brought to pass bitter things against his own Covenant people in this wilderness, yet so that we evidently discern that in the midst of his judgements he hath remembered mercy, having remembered his Footstool in the day of his sore displeasure against us for our sins, with many singular Intimations of his Fatherly Compassion, and regard; reserving many of our Towns from Desolation Threatened, and attempted by the Enemy, and giving us especially of late with many of our Confederates many signal Advantages against them, without such Disadvantage to ourselves as formerly we have been sensible of, if it be the Lord's mercy that we are not consumed, It certainly bespeaks our positive Thankfulness, when our Enemies are in any measure disappointed or destroyed; and fearing the Lord should take notice under so many Intimations of his returning mercy, we should be found an Insensible people, as not standing before Him with Thanksgiving, as well as lading him with our Complaints in the time of pressing Afflictions:
The Council has thought meet to appoint and set apart the 29th day of this instant June, as a day of Solemn Thanksgiving and praise to God for such his Goodness and Favour, many Particulars of which mercy might be Instanced, but we doubt not those who are sensible of God's Afflictions, have been as diligent to espy him returning to us; and that the Lord may behold us as a People offering Praise and thereby glorifying Him; the Council doth commend it to the Respective Ministers, Elders and people of this Jurisdiction; Solemnly and seriously to keep the same Beseeching that being persuaded by the mercies of God we may all, even this whole people offer up our bodies and souls as a living and acceptable Service unto God by Jesus Christ." -- Edward Rawson, representative of the Charlestown, Massachusetts governing council
I'm unsure why his reasoning should outweigh the official edict, aside from your preference. Was he more of an authority in the provenance of the holiday, and more to the point, has he participated in a modern celebration of it? No? Okay.
It funny that to, who doesn't celebrate the day, seems to think himself the expert on why others do as they do.
Quote:One last note, and then you can go on with your life: while you and millions of other non-Native Americans are eating turkey and pretending that there was harmony between Europeans and Natives, the American Indians have a Day of Mourning. That is, what's left of the Native Americans.
Except that I've already made plain my knowledge that genocide, not harmony between the two races, was the prime historical fact of the era.
This conversation would go much smoother if you read what was actually written, rather than filter everything through your biases.
And with that, I'll leave you to your fulminations.
