What the First Thanksgiving Dinner Actually Looked Like

What the First Thanksgiving Dinner Actually Looked Like
Waterfowl – not turkey – would have been the main course. (Winslow Homer, 'Right and Left' (1909), National Gallery of Art)
|Updated:

Most Americans probably don’t realize that we have a very limited understanding of the first Thanksgiving, which took place in 1621 in Massachusetts.

Indeed, few of our present-day traditions resemble what happened almost 400 years ago, and there’s only one original account of the feast.
Julie Lesnik
Julie Lesnik
Author
Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Wayne State University