Across virtually every corner of
Native American culture “thanksgiving” festivals are celebrated not only at
harvest time, but throughout the year; a manifestation of the idea that all our
wants are supplied by the spiritual God of this earth. Nowhere was this more
firmly established than among the Algonquian and Iroquoian people of the
northeast where harvests from gardens, the forests and the sea were
commemorated in days of prayers and rites of renewal – if not by entire
villages, by individual families. Nearly every food tradition practiced in
today’s Thanksgiving feasts is a reflection of something learned from the
coastal people of Samoset in 1621.
Each year as I lift the first slice
from my still-warm-from-the-oven Wampanoag
cranberry pie I revisit in my mind the beautiful story of the ice-bound
Indian youth saved from death by the lovely white bird dropping strange
never-seen-before red berries to him like gifts from the winter sky. When I
lift a fillet of Pacific salmon, glazed with wild honey and redolent of alder
smoke after six hours in my smoker, I think of my Aleut niece and the generations of sea-bound island traditions
which speak to her and her modern-day family – and to me.
I enlisted in the United States Air
Force less than three years after it was created out of what had been the U.S.
Army Air Forces (and before that the Army Air Corps.) At that time a (sometimes
painful) marriage of cultures was
going on. The old timers took pride
in clinging to their olive drab, army-style uniforms along with other
less-obvious habits of dress and behavior. I was among the first training camp
graduates to be issued only the new
blue uniforms and a new sense of pride in identity. (I wouldn’t have worn an
“old” OD uniform even if invited to do so!) I use this as an introduction to
the subject of “Thanksgiving Day mess hall menus”. It took me a while to notice
that wherever I happened to be both in the “states” and overseas at holiday
times, we would be served sweet potato
pie, not pumpkin pie. So I learned to like sweet potato pie – and will be
making my own this year. But why? Why was this an old “Air Corps” tradition?
In the 1930s and all during WWII,
Army aviation training activities were centered in the South where flying
conditions were favorable. The “sweet potato” was brought to the U.S. with
African slaves and became a strong African-American food favorite, and one much
preferred over pumpkin in pie-making time. I believe that the “old school” mess
sergeants of that era (and NCOs have long been the heart-and-soul of continuity
in military customs around the world) passed this one along.
I also believe that of all our
seasonal holidays, Thanksgiving is the most powerful celebration of American
traditions and – along with Christmas – the most family-centered. It is a
natural “avenue” for the passing-along of family tradition and family history.
For those of us who have a sense of our generational responsibilities as
parents and grandparents to do something more important than carving a turkey
and grating orange rind into grandma’s cranberry relish, this is a time to put
our signature on a lesson of love and values.
As I stand today as the senior
living representative of four generations of our united family “tree”, I was
gladdened to learn that a 13-year-old great-grand-daughter informed her mother
that they just could not leave on a
family vacation unless they had Thanksgiving first.
And one more reminder: For those
courageous 103 seekers-of-freedom who dared the waters of a mighty ocean to get
here, Thanksgiving was a “thank you” to
their God.
Wampanoag Cranberry Pie
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