On the day before Thanksgiving, Axios published an article titled “Thanksgiving’s Troubled History” by Russell Contreras, the “Justice and Race reporter at Axios.”
Citing “a new generation of historians,” Contreras declares that “Thanksgiving in the United States is based on a mythical feast between the Wampanoag people and Mayflower Pilgrims” and that “the holiday’s real story is mixed with national unity and racial exclusion.”
According to Contreras, the Native Americans weren’t actually invited to the famous 1621 meal but “showed up” out of “concern over gunshots.”
His source for that claim is the Partnership With Native Americans, which requires readers to submit their e-mails to “Download The Real Thanksgiving Story.” The downloaded document quotes an “account by Ramona Peters, via Indian Country Today Media Network.” Beyond that, it doesn’t provide a hyperlink, article title, or any other type of sourcing.
Peters’ account, located by Just Facts, appears in an interview she gave in 2012. In this interview, Peters, the “Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe’s Tribal Historic Preservation Officer,” was asked to comment on “what we’re taught in mainstream media and in schools” about Thanksgiving. She replied by stating:
Yeah, it was made up. It was Abraham Lincoln who used the theme of Pilgrims and Indians eating happily together. He was trying to calm things down during the Civil War when people were divided.
Asked twice if the Pilgrims and Wampanoags shared a meal together at the first Thanksgiving, Peters replied, “No.”
Because Peters provided no sources or documentation for her claims, Just Facts attempted to reach her via an email address that appeared in more than a dozen official documents but received an auto-reply stating, “Unable to deliver message after multiple retries, giving up.”
In short, Axios’ claim that Thanksgiving is “based on a mythical feast” rests on an uncorroborated assertion made by one person 400 years after the events in question.
Peters’ version of Thanksgiving doesn’t even appear to be a tribal tradition because she stated that the Wampanoag celebrate Thanksgiving like other Americans and “most of us are taught about the friendly Indians and the friendly Pilgrims and people sitting down and eating together.”
Moreover, Peters’ account is at odds with the first-hand witness of Edward Winslow, governor of the Pilgrim colony, which consisted of only 53 people at the time. He wrote that the Pilgrims “entertained and feasted” with the Indians for three days because, “by the goodness of God, we are so far from want, that we often wish you partakers of our plenty.”
That was 242 years before Abraham Lincoln established Thanksgiving as a national holiday, obliterating the accusation that Lincoln made it up.
The National Press Club recently honored Axios CEO Jim VandeHei, who took the opportunity to lambaste Elon Musk for saying to X users, “You are the media now.” After calling Musk’s statement “bullshit” to cheers from his audience, VandeHei proclaimed that:
being a reporter is hard, really hard. You have to care. You have to do the hard work. You have to get up every single day and say, “I want to get to the closest approximation of the truth without any fear, without any favoritism.” You don’t do that by popping off on Twitter. You don’t do that by having an opinion. You do it by doing the hard work.
Belying that claim, Axios’ article on the history of Thanksgiving adds to the hundreds of reasons why 69% of Americans have little-to-no trust in mass media.
James D. Agresti is the president of Just Facts, a research and educational institute dedicated to publishing facts about public policies and teaching research skills.
