Thanksgiving is the right time to revisit the legacy of the Pilgrims–via Mark Twain, the most American of Americans, and someone at least twice exceptional. This is from his speech at the First Annual Dinner of the New England Society in 1881.
I have kept still for years; but really, I think there is no sufficient justification for this sort of thing. What do you want to celebrate those people for—those ancestors of yours of 1620—the Mayflower tribe and the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth rock? What was remarkable about it? Why, those Pilgrims had been at sea three or four months. It was the middle of winter and cold as death off Cape Cod. Why shouldn’t they come ashore? Hang it, a horse would have known enough to land. The Pilgrims were a mighty hard lot. They took good care of themselves, but they abolished everybody else’s ancestors. Where are my ancestors?
My first American ancestor, gentlemen, was an Indian. Your ancestors skinned him alive, and I am an orphan. I ask you to put yourselves in his place. I ask it as a favor; I ask it as a tardy act of justice; I ask it that the world may contemplate, with vision unobstructed by disguising swallowtails with white cravats, the spectacle which the New England Society ought to present.
Later ancestors of mine were Quakers. Your tribe chased them out of the country; promised them death if they came back; for your ancestors had braved the perils of the sea and the savage wilderness to acquire that highest and most precious of boons, the religious liberty to [make us] worship as they required us to worship, and political liberty to vote as the church required.
All those Salem witches were ancestors of mine! Your people made it tropical for them. Yes, they did; by pressure and the gallows they made such a clean deal with them that there hasn’t been a witch in our family from that day to this.
The first slave brought into New England out of Africa by your progenitors was an ancestor of mine—for I am of a mixed breed, an infinitely shaded and exquisite Mongrel.
O my friends, hear me and reform! Disband these New England societies! The Pilgrims were a simple and ignorant race. They never had seen any good rocks before, or at least any that were not watched, and so they were excusable for hopping ashore in frantic delight and clapping an iron fence around this one. But you, gentlemen, are educated; you are enlightened; you know that in the rich land of your opulent New England, overflowing with rocks, this one isn’t worth, at the outside, more than thirty-five cents. Therefore, sell it, before it is injured by exposure.
Yes, hear your true friend—your only true friend—listen to his voice. Disband these New England societies, cease from varnishing the rusty reputations of your long-vanished ancestors—the super-high-moral, old iron-clads of Cape Cod, the pious buccaneers of Plymouth Rock. Go home and learn to behave!
Happy Thanksgiving!
I have kept still for years; but really, I think there is no sufficient justification for this sort of thing. What do you want to celebrate those people for—those ancestors of yours of 1620—the Mayflower tribe and the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth rock? What was remarkable about it? Why, those Pilgrims had been at sea three or four months. It was the middle of winter and cold as death off Cape Cod. Why shouldn’t they come ashore? Hang it, a horse would have known enough to land. The Pilgrims were a mighty hard lot. They took good care of themselves, but they abolished everybody else’s ancestors. Where are my ancestors?
My first American ancestor, gentlemen, was an Indian. Your ancestors skinned him alive, and I am an orphan. I ask you to put yourselves in his place. I ask it as a favor; I ask it as a tardy act of justice; I ask it that the world may contemplate, with vision unobstructed by disguising swallowtails with white cravats, the spectacle which the New England Society ought to present.
Later ancestors of mine were Quakers. Your tribe chased them out of the country; promised them death if they came back; for your ancestors had braved the perils of the sea and the savage wilderness to acquire that highest and most precious of boons, the religious liberty to [make us] worship as they required us to worship, and political liberty to vote as the church required.
All those Salem witches were ancestors of mine! Your people made it tropical for them. Yes, they did; by pressure and the gallows they made such a clean deal with them that there hasn’t been a witch in our family from that day to this.
The first slave brought into New England out of Africa by your progenitors was an ancestor of mine—for I am of a mixed breed, an infinitely shaded and exquisite Mongrel.
O my friends, hear me and reform! Disband these New England societies! The Pilgrims were a simple and ignorant race. They never had seen any good rocks before, or at least any that were not watched, and so they were excusable for hopping ashore in frantic delight and clapping an iron fence around this one. But you, gentlemen, are educated; you are enlightened; you know that in the rich land of your opulent New England, overflowing with rocks, this one isn’t worth, at the outside, more than thirty-five cents. Therefore, sell it, before it is injured by exposure.
Yes, hear your true friend—your only true friend—listen to his voice. Disband these New England societies, cease from varnishing the rusty reputations of your long-vanished ancestors—the super-high-moral, old iron-clads of Cape Cod, the pious buccaneers of Plymouth Rock. Go home and learn to behave!
Happy Thanksgiving!
