XPost: alt.fan.jai-maharaj, soc.culture.indian, alt.religion.hindu   
   XPost: alt.animals.ethics.vegetarian, alt.animals.rights.promotion,   
   soc.culture.usa   
      
   Jay stevens,aka dr. jai etc. is so uninformed on real history as to be   
   taken by this nonsense:   
      
   "The legend that one hundred odd English men and women who   
   landed at Plymouth Harbor feasted on turkey and all the   
   trimmings is a myth. When they first arrived, on November   
   11 1620, the settlers had so little food that they raised   
   the houses of the Native American inhabitants and made   
   off with stores of beans and corn. There was simply no   
   animal flesh to be had. It is likely that the first   
   Thanksgiving would have had to have been a vegan one,"   
      
   Now let us consult what we really know from documents of the time:   
      
   'What Was on the Menu at the First Thanksgiving',   
      
   an article in the Smithsonian magazine:   
      
   Today, the traditional Thanksgiving dinner includes any number of   
   dishes: turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, candied yams, cranberry   
   sauce and pumpkin pie. But if one were to create a historically   
   accurate feast, consisting of only those foods that historians are   
   certain were served at the so-called "first Thanksgiving," there would   
   be slimmer pickings. "Wildfowl was there. Corn, in grain form for bread   
   or for porridge, was there. Venison was there," says Kathleen Wall.   
   "These are absolutes."   
      
   Two primary sources--the only surviving documents that reference the   
   meal--confirm that these staples were part of the harvest celebration   
   shared by the Pilgrims and Wampanoag at Plymouth Colony in 1621. Edward   
   Winslow, an English leader who attended, wrote home to a friend:   
      
   "Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling,   
   that so we might after a special manner rejoice together after we had   
   gathered the fruit of our labors. They four in one day killed as much   
   fowl as, with a little help beside, served the company almost a week.   
   At which time, amongst other recreations, we exercised our arms, many   
   of the Indians coming amongst us, and among the rest their greatest   
   king Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we   
   entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five deer, which   
   they brought to the plantation and bestowed on our governor, and upon   
   the captain and others."   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)