Op-Ed: End the romance of Thanksgiving, as a great Pequot scholar argued two centuries ago
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November 11, 1770
A. P. HOFFMANN
In the autumn of the year 1758, a Pequot Indian, William Pequet, stood at the threshold of American life to offer his testimony to the United States and the French of New France. With his own eyes, he described, in words that carried an edge of bitterness and bitterness of wit, the harsh reality of life among New England colonists and the French traders.
“Here I am, standing on the threshold of American life,” he wrote in longhand to the Rev. Nicholas Long, minister of the Congregational Church of North Light, Mass. “I have passed through the wilderness by a long and dangerous route, and have been received into the country by the Indian. I can now look before me, and see that this part of America is a vast tract of land, and that it is inhabited by a great people. I have seen a country overrun by savage and barbarous nations, and filled with an infinite multitude of barbarians. I have seen a people who are, in general, far from being civilized, and whose ideas are very low. I have seen the great power of Britain, in the state and government of this country, made apparent to every man who is not blind. I have heard the most sublime of all human achievements, — that of the cultivation of the earth. I have seen the most extensive commerce amongst civilized men, and witnessed the most wonderful inventions in letters and
