The modern celebration of Thanksgiving commemorates the first harvest festival of the Pilgrim colonists at Plymouth, Massachusetts, but that was one of many days of Thanksgiving observed by early European settlers, and only became the center of one of our foundation myths in the late 19th century.

Days of Thanksgiving were decreed by the Spanish Governor upon the founding of St. Augustine, Florida, in 1656, by Jamestown colonists in 1610, and by English settlers upon landing at Berkeley Hundred, in Virginia in 1619. The charter of the company of investors that sent that group required “that the day of our ships arrival at the place assigned for plantation in the land of Virginia shall be yearly and perpetually kept holy as a day of thanksgiving to Almighty God”

Although the Plymouth colonists refrained from celebrating holidays that had picked up pagan connotations, like Christmas and Easter, they observed special days of penitence and fasting, and thanksgiving and celebration, according to circumstance.

The Plymouth Pilgrims were known as “Separatists,” wishing independence from the Church of England. One group had left England for Leiden, Holland. With the help of investors who hoped to profit from products of the new colony, they set off in two ships, the Speedwell, leaving from Leiden, and the better-known Mayflower, from England. The Speedwell, unfortunately, leaked, and after several attempts to remedy this, had to turn back, after transferring as many passengers as possible to the other ship.

The Mayflower arrived in the new world in 1620 to find a coast recently de-peopled by “plagues” brought by European traders. The place the colonists called Plymouth had been home to the Patuxet, who were now extinct. Other nearby tribes, like the Wampanoag, were weakened but survived, while their rivals, the Narragansett, were unscathed. The Wampanoag then had motivation to seek an ally and noting that the Pilgrims had arrived with women and children, judged them peaceful. They negotiated a mutual defense pact with the new-comers and offered them the knowledge they needed to survive. The 1621 treaty lasted 40 years and has been called “the only one between Native Americans and English colonists to be honored throughout the lives of all who signed it.”

This negotiation was made possible by a man remembered as the last surviving member of the Patuxet, Tisquantum, often called “Squanto” by American histories. Tisquantum had been captured by English slavers and sold in Spain. He was ransomed by Franciscan friars, perhaps baptized, and lived several years in England, where he learned English. He managed to return to his village a year before the arrival of the Mayflower, only to find his people wiped out. He lived with the Wampanoag but was an outsider among them. He went to live with the colonists, who had lost more than half their number during their first winter in the new world and taught them to use the natural resources that his people knew.

The harvest of 1621 was successful, and the colonists began to prepare a feast. The gunfire of hunters brought the Wampanoag, who mistook the sounds for a battle. Invited to join the celebration, they furnished several deer. Colonist William Bradford’s Of Plymouth Plantation gives a contemporary account of the menu, including cod and bass, waterfowl and wild turkey, and corn of the colorful variety we now call “Indian.” Other foods likely included oysters, mussels, lobster, wild fruits and vegetables and those hardy English vegetables that survived: cabbage, carrots, turnips, and herbs. Pumpkin would have been baked, stewed or mashed, but not made into pies, as they had neither flour, sugar, nor butter.

The first National Day of Thanksgiving was decreed by the Continental Congress for December 18, 1777. In 1789, the House of Representatives asked President Washington to proclaim a Day of Thanksgiving, and he chose November 26. His proclamation “recommended” that the people devote the day to the “service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be,” and enumerated the many things the new country had to be thankful for.

President Adams continued the practice in 1798 and 1799. President Jefferson, being a Deist and skeptical of divine intervention, politely declined to follow suit in a letter extolling the “wall of separation between church and state.”

New York was the first state to set aside an annual Thanksgiving Day, in 1817. Other states chose days between September and January. In 1847, Sarah Josepha Hale, the editress of the most widely circulated magazine in America, Godey’s Lady’s Book, started a campaign to make Thanksgiving a national holiday. Her lobbying included writing letters to five presidents.

President Lincoln responded to Hale’s proposal in 1863, during the Civil War. He set the last Thursday of November as a “Day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens.” Lincoln enumerated the many signs of the health of the Union and the “greatly contracted” theater of war.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt attempted an innovation in 1939, a year with five Thursdays in November, by moving the day back to the fourth, and hoped to keep it always second-to-last. This was intended to stimulate the economy and give shopkeepers another week to profit from the coming Christmas season. The response was mixed; many Republicans continued to celebrate on the last Thursday, leading to several years of separate Republican and Democratic Thanksgivings, the latter derided as “Franksgiving.” In 1942 Congress stepped in with a compromise, moving the date permanently to the fourth Thursday.

Presidents have been gifted turkeys since 1873. In 1947 the National Turkey Federation gave President Truman a live turkey along with the dressed birds in a stunt to convince him to stop rationing turkey. President Kennedy was the first president to spare the live turkey. The spared turkeys went to petting farms or universities, but modern turkeys, bred for size, rarely made it to the next Thanksgiving. Recent advances in turkey medicine have resulted in longer post-pardon lives for the birds.