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UNIT 3: The Founding of New Societies:1607-1763 |
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UNIT 3: The Founding of New Societies:1607-1763 |
1. The Pilgrims and others celebrated Thanksgiving in the new land.
2. The Pilgrims and Jamestown colonists came to America for various reasons.
3. The Indians helped the Pilgrims and Jamestown colonists adjust to their new land by using natural resources.
4. The Pilgrims' community and traditions were unique.
Teacher's Rationale:
It is important to relate accurate facts about the Thanksgiving celebrated in 1621. Other groups of people, such as Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans, as well as Europeans and Indians celebrated harvest festivals long before the Pilgrims. The Pilgrims and Plimoth settlers, therefore, did not have the first Thanksgiving. Even the Jamestown colonist celebrated a harvest festival earlier than 1621 to thank God for a bounty of crops.
Also, Thanksgiving was not celebrated yearly. Although George Washington proclaimed November 26, 1789, as a national day to give thanks, it was President Lincoln in 1862 who proclaimed the last Thursday in November as a day set aside for giving thanks.
Although we often talk about the Pilgrims on the Mayflower and at Plimoth, it is important to tell the children that not all the passengers or settlers were Pilgrims. Some of them sailed on the Mayflower as servants and as adventurers or families of such.
In discussing the settlers in America, it is important to begin to distinguish the many varied reasons why these colonists came to America. It is just as important to accurately describe the world they found, a world successfully inhabited by Indian cultures. It is necessary to not only show how these Indians helped but why these Indians might have become dissatisfied with what these colonists were doing to their land.
