Thanksgiving was America’s first social safety net

The Pilgrim’s survival during that brutal first year depended almost entirely on Native peoples. Indigenous communities shared food, farming knowledge, and life-saving techniques, essentially the 17th-century equivalent of SNAP benefits. Without this assistance, the colony likely would not have endured.

When the Pilgrims arrived, they were not rugged frontier farmers but economic migrants: factory workers, wool traders, and laborers escaping rising costs, religious tensions, and the looming renewal of war with Spain. Their journey was not one of pure independence either.

English financiers funded the Mayflower’s voyage and provided a single year of supplies, expecting repayment with profit. Half the passengers weren’t Pilgrims at all, but other economic migrants seeking a better life.

The investors’ terms were harsh, leaving the colony in debt for nearly 30 years—decades spent on the edge of hunger and hardship. The supplies ran thin quickly, and the settlers lacked the agricultural skills needed to sustain themselves. Native Americans provided the social safety net that allowed the immigrant Pilgrims to survive and ultimately to flourish.

Thanksgiving, then, is not just a story of a feast. It is a story of migrants in crisis, of exploited laborers burdened by debt, and of Native generosity that made survival possible. It reminds us that community care, especially for newcomers and those facing hardship, has been woven into this nation’s story from the very beginning.

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