Via Nicolas Geranios Growing up, I was always taught that the “first Thanksgiving” was the meal between Squanto and the English pilgrims. That was the picture we all learned in school: friendly Native Americans helping a starving group of Calvinist Puritans and then sharing a feast in 1621. Only in recent years did I learn how much of the story had been left out. The actual first Thanksgiving on American soil took place in 1565 on Timucua (specifically Seloy) tribal land, in the place that would later become St. Augustine, Florida. It was celebrated by Spanish Catholics who had just arrived. They offered a Mass of thanksgiving and then shared a meal with the local Native peoples. In the most literal sense of the word “Eucharist” (which means “thanksgiving”), the first Thanksgiving was a Catholic act of worship followed by a communal feast. None of this was ever mentioned in school. And another part of the story I never heard as a kid: Squanto himself had been baptized Catholic years before he met the Puritans. His journey was extraordinary. In 1614, he was kidnapped by English traders under Thomas Hunt (English Protestants, not Spaniards and not Catholics) who tried to sell him into slavery in Spain. What happened next is sobering...a part we were never told. When Squanto arrived in Spain, Catholic friars intervened. They prevented his sale, took him in, taught him, and helped him make his way out of Europe. They are the ones who freed and protected him. Without their help, he would likely never have returned home. Years later, when the Calvinist Separatists landed at Plymouth, hungry, unprepared, and close to death, it was this same Squanto (educated, freed, and helped by Catholics) who stepped in and guided them. Many historians agree they would not have survived the first year without him. So while the 1621 feast is part of our national memory, the deeper story is far older and far more Catholic than we were ever taught. The first Thanksgiving was Catholic. The first European/Native cooperation on this land was Catholic. And even the survival of the pilgrims owes something to a Native man rescued and cared for by those formed by, and practicing, the Catholic Faith. It’s a fuller and more honest telling of the story & one that fills in many missing pieces.