Ap World History Dbq Sample

The September of 1620 a ship, the Mayflower, carried nearly one hundred and two passengers as it left Plymouth England and headed for new land (Source 6 , Source 8). The passengers of the Mayflower were looking to find land that would allow them to practice their faith freely and in hopes for new land to settle on. It was sixty-six days before the Mayflower reached the tip Cape Cod which was north of the destination they had been looking for. It took nearly a month for the Mayflower to reach the Massachusetts Bay which was the intended destination of the ship. When the Mayflower reached the Bay the Pilgrims began working on building a village . The Pilgrims were devoted working through the harsh winter but many died due to the harsh exposure

and outbreaks of disease. So many pilgrims died that only half of the Mayflower's original passengers were alive to see the first new england spring.
When spring of 1621 came the pilgrims migrated to the shore and were greeted by Squanto a Native American member of the Pawtuxet tribe and an Abenaki Indian (Source 6).

Squanto taught the pilgrims how to get extract from maple trees, cultivate corn, avoid poisonous plants, catch fish and was an interpreter for the Pilgrims and Wampanoag (Source 7 , Source 6). The things that Squanto taught the pilgrims would help keep them alive and help build an alliance between the Wampanoag tribe. The Pilgrims planted their first harvest in the spring of 1621, and it was a successful harvest with the help of Squanto (source 6). The Pilgrims had finally experienced their first successful stepping stone to the new life they had been longing for since they had arrived and it was worth celebrating. It was Governor William Bradford that invited the Native American allies and organized the feast that would be known as first

thanksgiving.
It was over 200 years later before Congress made Thanksgiving an official holiday. In 1863 Abraham Lincoln first proclaimed that Thanksgiving would be held every year in November (source 6). President George Washington issued the first Thanksgiving proclamation by the national government in 1789 recognize the role of providence in creating the new United States (source 6, source 10). George Washington’s successors James Madison and John Adams also issued days of Thanksgiving.
Thanksgiving was held on the last Thursday of every November until Franklin Roosevelt moved it up one week to try and help in the hard times of the Great Depression.
Many of the Thanksgiving traditions that we have today are very different from the first Thanksgiving (source 6).

Thanksgiving today is about cooking and sharing a beautiful meal with family and friends which is far from what the first Thanksgiving was like. The first Thanksgiving was held to celebrate the first successful harvest they reaped (Source 5, Source 3).The feast lasted three days and turkey was not one of the items on the menu. The Pilgrims ate native fruits, Jerusalem artichokes, turnips, cabbage, native birds, shellfish, and Venison (source 11). Other Items did not show up on the menu until after the 1900s. The first Thanksgiving was quite different from modern Thanksgiving in many ways but one thing that hasn't changed is taking the time to be thankful for all that we have and have been

given.
Many scholars believe in Thanksgiving Controversies such as that the feast at plymouth was not the first Thanksgiving in the United States but that many historians have recorded ceremonies of thanks by European settlers that predate the Pilgrims celebration (Source 6). One example of this is in 1565 Spanish explorer Pedro Menéndez de Ailé invited a local timucua tribe to a feast in florida to give thanks to God for the crew’s safe arrival. Another example is in December of 1619 “a day of Thanksgiving to the Almighty God” was held by 38 British settlers that had reached Berkeley Hundred on the Banks of Virginia's James River (source 6). It is believed that there is no real beginning to the Thanksgiving holiday because there are many recorded feast of thanks before the feast in 1621 know as the First Thanksgiving. Their are other controversies such as scholars believe that some Native Americans and others take issue with how the Thanksgiving story is presented to the American public, and especially to schoolchildren. In their view the traditional narrative paints a deceptively sunny portrait of relations between the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag people masking the long and bloody history of conflict between Native Americans and European settlers that resulted in the deaths of millions.Since 1970, protesters have gathered on the day designated as Thanksgiving at the top of Cole’s Hill, which overlooks Plymouth Rock, to commemorate a “National Day of Mourning” (Source 6).
Thanksgiving dates back to an ancient harvest festival celebrating gratitude for peace and harmony (Source 13). It is believed that before the establishment of formal religions many ancient agriculturist believed that their crops contained spirits that caused the crops to grow, and believed that these spirits would be released when the crops were harvested. They believed that if they did not destroy the spirits they would wreak revenge upon the harvesting farmers and cause the land to be barren. Some of these ancient rituals celebrated the defeat of such spirits with feast and ceremonies. Thanksgiving is believed to actually be an ancient harvest holiday wholly unrelated to Pilgrims and Plymouth Rock. Thanksgiving's origins date back to a time of when starvation was a constant threat and humankind felt dependent upon the gods and goddesses.