Telling The Truth as Being Preferrable

THE PURPOSE OF HISTORY is to shed as much light on the past as possible, to get to the truth. The fact is that some form of American Thanksgiving originated with pioneer groups in 1607 Virginia and 1620 Massachusetts, but really didn't take hold in New England until at least fifty years later. The fact is that the two groups, the 1607 group, and the 120 group of pioneers, barely survived the first few yeras in America, and wouldn't have, had they not gotten help from the local Indians. The first impulse and plan of the Europeans was to make slaves of the Indians, but they soon realized that the Indians wre too crafty, smart, and hard to control. If anybody was going to enslave enybody else, it wasn't going to be English enslaving native American. Then, faced with starvation, the English stole from the Indians, raiding their food stores in the dead of night, until they got caught. In both places,Virginia and Massachusetts, the Indians would gladly have helped, if only the English had asked. But no, asking was too humiliating, too risky, so they just stole. And there is really no reason to condemn them for this, any more than to condemn them for being hungry human beings. Its just a fact, just the way it was. The diaries of the time tell about it. And we have tended to leave that part out of the story of the founding of America, when teaching the story to children. We want our children to love their country, our country, so we tend to lie about it to them. But even if you tell the truth,that slaves came to Virginia in 1619, only twelve years after the first landing, it makes our country look a bit more human, a bit more imperfect. So we leave such information out. Too bad, because when you tell the truth about someone's negative behavior, it makes their positive behavior seem even more impressive.