a fortnight later

 

the year is 2020, the Western World celebrates Thanksgiving...a holiday to commemorate when White Anglo-Saxon Protestant rejects from England came to North America. These folks were having a rough go at it, so the indigenous peoples of the area took pity on the refugees, their ignorance and their inability to grow crops. They weren’t in England anymore. Native North Americans had inhabited the land for millennia and had built a complex tribal society with allies and enemies just like humans everywhere. I cannot recall which tribe/s encountered these floundering WASPs and decided to show them how to sustain life through agriculture and thus their community.  They allowed the outcasts to stay on their land, carving out room for their uninvited guests. The WASPs had guns, but even with more advanced technology, without aboriginal assistance, they were doomed. The inherent goodness of humans shows itself from time to time, and this particular time, if any of this is remotely factual, would prove to be an unfortunate time for the aboriginal. Maybe, just maybe...for one generation, the English would be honest, honorable people. Thankful for the kindness shown to them from another civilization. A civilization adapted to survive in their old world, and give that knowledge to members of the human race occupying their land. We give Thanks and show our gratitude with ritual pagentry. As I recall from some History lesson or documentary, it didn’t take long for the Native Americans to regret giving a toe hold to the English religious zealots, and the fight to take the resources of our fellow humans began.  Mass genocide, on a scale I cannot comprehend, continued from not long after the first Thanksgiving until the 20th century was carried out until effectively the original inhabitants were gone. Carried into the mythology of the WASPs, celebrated as a victory in the manifest destiny of the White man.