As our modern gladiators chase a pigskin down the field in Detroit, Dallas and Baltimore, we settle into our living rooms, loosen our belts and remind the little ones this is the day we echo the thanks of the Pilgrims, who gathered in the autumn of 1621 to celebrate the first bountiful harvest in a new land.

The Pilgrims’ first winter in the New World had been a harsh one. The wheat they had brought with them to plant would not grow in the rocky New England soil. Nearly half the colonists died. But the survivors were hard-working and tenacious, and — with the help of an English-speaking Wampanoag named Tisquantum (the Pilgrims dubbed him “Squanto”) — they learned how to cultivate corn by using fish for fertilizer, how to dig and cook clams, how to tap the maples for sap. And so they were

See Full Page