Posted on 11/23/2023 4:24:49 AM PST by Jan_Sobieski
We all know the Thanksgiving story about the Pilgrims and their first bountiful harvest of 1621. We are taught about the hardships of the first winter season with over half of the early settlers dying in the first year. The Pilgrims were but 40 of the 102 people aboard the Mayflower that landed in Plymouth on the eastern coast of today’s state of Massachusetts. They met Squanto, an English-speaking Indian (for that story see the Nov. 24, 2014 Biblical Viewpoint post) who taught them to how to live off the land and negotiate a treaty with the neighboring Wampanoag tribe allowing the early Plymouth community to live in relative peace for decades.
That first Thanksgiving in the harvest time of 1621 was out of thankfulness to God for a season of bounty and blessing and survival.
The Rest of the Story – a Lesson in Economics
But all was not blissful in paradise. The pilgrims actually faced chronic food shortages for three years until the harvest of 1623. But it was not because of further severe weather or their limited but growing corn planting and farming knowledge.
It was a matter of economic incentives.
William Bradford, whose own wife died on the Mayflower, was the governor of this original Plymouth settlement. The colony was first organized on a communal basis, as their European financiers required. All land was to be owned in common. And all the production of crops from their farming was also to be shared communally. Food and supplies were held in common and then distributed on “equality” and “need” as determined by the Plymouth Plantation.
They called their arrangement a “commonwealth,” a word we know today as communism, because all wealth — the product of their labors — was held in common…
(Excerpt) Read more at biblicalviewpoint.com ...
Whatever Squanto taught the Pilgrims, he probably learned in England.
Rush covered this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAyvTCaoFA0
Excellent Thanksgiving meditation. Thanks for posting it.
I was not familiar with Michael Griego before now; I read a few other of his “viewpoints” and I find them helpful.
.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.