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Jerseyans Had Important Role In Thanksgiving . The* official establishment of Thanksgiving as a national holiday can lx* traced to the efforts of a “New Jersey pollin' cian He was Klias Houdinot, anr IBth century Elizabeth resident. President of the fontinental Congress, and a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. In September of 1789 he appeared before the House to propose the establishment of an official day of thanks for the American people In response. President Washirigton proclaimed November 26 of that year as the first official Thanksgiving’ holiday in the newly formed American

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THANKSGIVING PRAYER

by Clare Campbell

Thank you, .God, for the things that we

See by chance infrequently:

For the glint of the sun on a seagull’s wing, For the holly’s brief, white blossoming, For jeweled frost winking at the moon, For the deer at the brook that afternoon, For thefrdil little lamb on its wobbly legs. For the quail’s nqst, holding her clutch of eggs, And above all, thanks, God, for grace to see

In these things, thy divinity.

Clare Campbell

True Repentance

New Jersey's first residents, the Lenni I<cnape Indians, held a yearly harvest festival that was similar to our present day Thanksgiving celebration. Called TGafnwmg. the 10 to 12 day observance consisted m family gatherings, dancing, and feasting on deer, turkey, and squirrel. The Indian holiday was also a time for-discussing spiritual visions and thanking the Creator for the fall harvest. One of the earliest instances of an organized day of thanks in New Jersey took place in 1673, but it was far from .'vday of merriment The colonists were instructed by the Dutch Governor to observe a day of "fasting and humiliation - ’ and to abstain from fishing, hunting, and all physical labor as a way of expressing their thanks. In colonial times, the Thanksgiving menu was likely to consist of either turkey or roast j^oose, often served with a side dish of pigeon pie This popular item waft made from the passenger pigeon, a bird Whose extinction is no surprise considering the hunting methods used to capture it. In an effort to save gunpowder, colonial hunters would employ special spring nets which trapped hundreds of the wild birds with ease Or. if a net was unavailable, they simply blinded the biYds by lighting torches at night, when gathered them in great number. Cranberry sauce, th^Ltasty and traditional accoutrement to the Thanksgiving dinner, was developed by a New Jersey woman in the 1920's. Elizabeth C. Lee, a resident of New Egypt, whipped up a jelly-like concoction from a batch of cranberries that her brother had deemed useless and was preparing (o discard Taking eight eases of the sauce to a large Philadelphia department store, she was rtet with a less than enthusiastic reception—the manager Yold her she was crazy if she ever expected to market it. In a last-ditch, but brilliant move, Elizabeth announced that she was too old to carry the cases all the way back to New Jersey and simply left them at the store: A few days later, she received a call from the store, where the cranberry sauce had lx?en cautiously sampled...they ordered 54)0 cases for the following year! The New Jersey Historical Socieiy printed, this information. NOTICE TO Letter Writers Options for our Reader's Forum should: , » Be signed by the writer and include the writer’s address and phone number. Letters can be printed /anonymously, but the newspaper must have writer verification • Deal with one topic or issue in an accurate, norilibelous manner

To Do So No More

by R. Leslie Chrismer f In all likelihood most people have seen Unfamiliar, sentimental picture of the procession of New England colonists wending their way to church in celebration of the "first" Thanksgiving, the men with gfins on their shoulders, their wives and children close by their sides. The illustration needs no cpatiorvto explain that the guns were carried to protect the white Christians from the heathen Red Men who were lurking nearby waiting foy a good opportunity to attack their hated neighbors and take

their possessions.

It was not originally thus. When the first English came to colonize "the stern and rockbound" coast that they called New England, the Indians did not welcome them with joy. but neither were they antagonistic. They were suspicious — as they had reason to be - but, they were also tolerant, and cooperative. Proof of that is the fact the Indians made it possible for the earliest white settlers to live. In brief, they saved them from starvation. To paraphrase a well-known poetic line, those settlers were strangers and afraid in a world they never made. The Indians enabled them to acclimate themselves to it by introducing them to food they never heard of — and but for

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which they would have died.

FOR EXAMPLE.' NEW ENGLAND INDIANS told the settlers about such things as the groundnut, a wild plant (which "helped the Pilgrims survive their first bitter winter in America," according to the reputable naturalist, Edwin Way Teale,) and cultivated plants such as corn and pumpkins. Those who think pumpkins were not an important food for thfe colonists, as they were for the native, missed an article by Ink Mendelsohn, a Smithsonian News Service writer, in the Oct. 13 paper In it, the author quoted a Pilgrim about the year 1630 writing: "We have pumpkins at morning yid pumpkins at rfoon. If it Were not for pumpkins, we should be undone." The Red Men not only showed^he White Men how to use such food v but, more importantly, taught them how to grow it. The Groundnut or Indian pdato, is not suitable for cultivation, its roots lying too close to the surface of the ground, and Its "tubers" taking two or three years to mature. But pumpkins and com rewarded cultivation with prompt and productive crops. Pumpkin seeds were to be sown^'when the oak buds burst and the leaves are as big as a mouse's ears,” advised Squareto, the Patuxent Indian. Corn was to be planted in hills with a dead fish for fertilizer buried alongside. Those two impoftant practical instructions were typical of how the Indians voluntarily helped the colonists, who, in

y time, ursurped their land.

IN RETURN FOR SUCH FAVORS, some of the earliest white men in New England stole much of the com which Indians had stored to prevent themselves from starving in winter. And that mean and sneaky episode is typical of innumerable wrongs which the white m?n increasingly afflicted on the red. As the result of such injutices.'the Indians initial tolerance of the settlers turned to mistrust, then hatred, and then violence. Soon, red men were killing white men, women and children—and a Massachussetts Colonial governor was retaliating by offering 20 pounds for the scalp of any Indian—male or female." There is plenty of evidence to show that, in the beginn-

ing, there was a good chance of establishing peaceful rela- -

lions between the white men and the red. There is also plenty of evidence to show that — in the main — it was the white men who spoiled the chance. The original white settlers of this land seldom treated red settlers of it with the basic Christian virtues of love and kindness, justice and mercy which they professed in their various religious

creeds. ,

SUCH HYPOCRISY IS SUMMED UP in an atrocious pun which would be funny were it not for its bitter truth: "When the first settlers came to these shores, thejrgot down upon their knees and prayed—and then got up and preyed upon the aborigines!;; This is the place for a relevant quotation from Rutherford Platt's The Great American Forest, a book first published by Prentice-Hall in 1965, with many later editions. It tells of "the incredible journey of three young English sailors. David Ingram, Richard Twide, and Richard Browne, who walked through the forest of the Atlantic seaboard in 1568-69. They were members of a rading expedition of John Hawkins, one of Queen Elizabeth’s buccaneers. The ship disabled in a battle upon the Spaniards, Hawkins put the young sailors ashore on the Gulf of Mexico. They were picked up fifteen tnonths later by a French vessel of Nova Soctia. They kept in touch with the coast and 'navigated' by the stars. They were unarmed and made friends with the Indians who fed them and helped them on their way." It is the last sentence that is the important one. IF THE NEW ENGLANDEAMILIES trudging off to Church on that purported 7r Rrst" Thanksgiving had invited the neighboring red men antTwomen and children to go with them, and also to the "feast" that supposedly followed — (and if that example had been widely observed) — there would have been no guns or bows and arrows around, and ttye whole history of our country would have been better, and safer. All of this is trite, of course, but it is also true — and bears repeating. An unjustified sense of guilt is one of the many causes of neuroses, even psychoses. But a proper recognition of guilt is the mark of a sound mind and a strong conscience — the kind of conscience that enables one to face his faults, and reform. In the words of Martin Luther, "To do so no more is the only true repentance." Among the many things Americans can be thankful for on this, and succeeding Thanksgivings, is that they now freely and fully acknowledge the injustice of their ancestors to the Indians. This does not mean we have to. feel quilty because of the sins of our fathers. All we need to do to renjain guiltless is not re repeat them.