When the dandies and fortune hunters of Jamestown first encountered the Powhatans eating roast oysters and wild strawberries on the beach, the colonists chased them off and devoured their food, according to local historian Pat Butler.
By 1622, the Berkeley settlement was wiped out in a massacre by Native Americans.
Jamie Jamieson, Berkeley Plantation's owner, says the first Thanksgiving was somewhere on this James River shore.
(Lucian Perkins -- The Washington Post)
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"No matter how imaginary or romanticized, the Plymouth story is a comforting story of harmony with the Indians . . . which may, in fact, have been the only moment of harmony before they killed them all," said James C. Kelly of the Virginia Historical Society. "In Virginia, in fact, what they were most giving thanks for was having survived the Indians. It never had the same PR possibilities."
The Virginia Thanksgiving story was forgotten until 1931, when an area historian was noodling around the New York Public Library and came upon letters, papers and the orders from Berkeley Co.
But since the time of President Abraham Lincoln, who first proclaimed Thanksgiving a national holiday in 1863, the imagery of Thanksgiving was strongly tied to the Pilgrims and New England. New Englanders wrote the first history books and mined the rich written diaries and records left behind by the Pilgrims to tell the "American" story.
Thanksgiving was seen as such a Northern affair that the City of Alexandria outlawed it in 1858. One resident wrote at the time that the day was "simply one of those senseless apings of Northern customs." Another complained of "trying to set this New England plant in our sacred soil."
In 1960, Jamieson's father, Malcolm, who then owned Berkeley Plantation, decided it was time to change Thanksgiving.
"Everyone told him: 'You're nuts. Why don't you try to change Christmas?'" Jamie Jamieson recalled. "But he wouldn't take no for an answer. It's the right thing to do."
Carolyn Travers, historian for Plymouth Plantation, has heard it all before. She drolly ticks off a list of other claims to the "first" Thanksgiving in the United States: the explorer Francisco Vasquez de Coronado in 1541 in the Texas Panhandle. French Huguenots in 1564 in Florida. English settlers and Abenaki Indians in 1607 in Maine.
"There are so many early Thanksgivings, Berkeley is not the first by any stretch of the imagination," she said. "It's a silly claim. Historically, Berkeley came before us. Tell me why it's important?"
What is important, she says, is that the Pilgrims' three-day feast of turkey, venison, fish, squash, pumpkin and cranberries captured the fancy of a young country of immigrants searching for a sense of identity. What better image, she said, than that of a pious, hardworking family gathering with "restrained revelry" with friends and Native Americans to give thanks, play games and share in the fruits of their labors.
"When immigrants began arriving who were not from England, the Pilgrims got presented as: These are the people you should turn into. These are the real Americans," she said.
As for Virginia and its all-male Thanksgiving: "People trying to go out, get gold, get rich and get out is not an attractive image," she said. "It's not necessarily the person who you wanted to be descended from."
Jamie Jamieson turns from the river. His eyes twinkle. "As long as there's contention over the matter, it helps both of us," he said, envisioning thousands of tourists to the Berkeley Plantation. "We can't let the controversy die."
Jamieson knows that the Virginia Thanksgiving never will unseat the Pilgrims in the American mind -- even the most recent military campaign in Iraq has just been dubbed Operation Plymouth Rock. But, he says, at least history ought to be big enough to make room at the table for both -- as he will when he joins his family for turkey today.
"My dad would have a fit," he said.
