Thanksgiving

Presentation Transcript

4th Grade O’Neal

The King of England at that time was King James. As King, he was also head of the Church of England. Small groups of English people criticized his church for being too much like a Catholic church, and not true to what the Bible says a church should be.

One group of people wanted to make the King's Church more “pure,” and they came to be called “Puritans.” There were also “Separatists,” who believed that the English church was so bad it was beyond repair.

They wanted to separate and form their own church. Such a thing was not allowed in England at that time; it was illegal and punishable by law.

To escape persecution, some Separatists from the northern part of England went to Holland and built a church they believed was a proper one. Although the Dutch allowed them to practice their religion as they wished, the members of this reformed English church experienced other problems.

Holland did not feel like home and it was a hard place to live. They could not get good, well-paying jobs.

After about 10 years of such worries, these Englishmen started looking for a new place to live. When the opportunity came to join a new fishing company, many of them took it, even though they knew it would be difficult in the “New World.” They looked forward to living in a place where they could practice their religion as they wished, save their families from such desperate poverty.

The Voyage of the Mayflower

The Separatists bought a small ship, the Speedwell, in Holland. They embarked on July 22, 1620.

Mayflower set sail from England in July of 1620, but had to turn around twice because Speedwell, kept leaking.

It finally got underway on September 6, leaving the leaky Speedwell behind.

102 The number of passengers known to have been aboard the Mayflower

32 The number of children and other young people among the passengers

1 The number of passengers who died on the voyage across the Atlantic

21The number of children born on the ship before it reached Plymouth(

66 The number of days it took for the Mayflower to sail from England to America.

41 The number of men who signed the Mayflower Compact, Establishing laws in the New World.

Arriving in America

English colonists finally arrived at Cape Cod on November 11, 1620. A few weeks later, they sailed up the coast to Plymouth, and started to build their town where a group of Wampanoag people had lived before (a sickness had killed most of them). They lived on the ship for a few more months, rowing ashore to build houses during the day, and returning to the ship at night. Many people began to get very sick from the cold and the wet — it was December! About half the people on Mayflower died that first winter from what they described as a “general sickness” of colds, coughs and fevers.

Who Were the Wampanoag

Wampanoag , means People of the First Light. In the 1600's they had up to forty thousand people in the sixty-seven villages of the Wampanoag

The Wampanoag Homeland provided bountiful food for fulfillment of all our needs. It was up to the People to keep the balance and respect for all living beings, to receive all the gifts from The Creator. We were seasonal people living in the forest and valleys during winter. Summer and Spring and Fall we moved to the rivers, ponds, and ocean to plant crops, fish and gather foods from the forests.

The First Thanksgiving

In 1621, the English colonists at Plymouth had a three-day feast to celebrate their first harvest. More than 90 native Wampanoag People joined the 50 English colonists in the festivities.

The English did not call the 1621 event a “thanksgiving.”

The English actually had their first thanksgiving in the summer of 1623. On this day they gave thanks for the rain that ended a long drought.