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Opinions: The First Sanks Giving


With the approaching holiday, I find it appropriate to investigate the origins of Thanksgiving. Hopefully, after reading this you will have a greater, more accurate appreciation of the sacrifice and absurdity that went into that first meal between the Pilgrims and Native Americans nearly 400 years ago.

The pilgrims landed in 1620 at a place now known as Plymouth Rock, derived from the location's original name, Plymouth Sock. Seeing the gigantic waterlogged elastic tube sock floating hundreds of meters off the coast of Massachusetts puzzled the passengers on the Mayflower, and after a vote (the first instance of American democracy, with 63 in favor, 4 against, and 3 voting for Nader) they decided to pull into harbor (mysteriously, someone had built a harbor – perhaps the socks owner, they thought) and stretch their legs.

Eventually the Pilgrims ran upon the Iroquois natives, an advanced civilization, who had nevertheless not evolved very complex footwear. To this day, the origins of the sock is a subject of much debate within the podiatrist-historian community.

In what is today believed to have been a tragic mistranslation, the Iroquois were made to believe that the pilgrims promised them a "thanks giving." In fact, the true phrase has been pinned down as "sanks giving," due to the lifelong devotion of historian, linguist, and would-be upholsterer Anders Moore of the Massachusetts Institute Of Technology (MIOT, not to be confused with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or MIT). According to Moore, "'Sanks' was puritan slang for the usurpation and eventual destruction of Native American culture, and since they had never come upon American Indians before (nor were they sure they even existed) the Pilgrims jumped at the chance to use the long-since-coined colloquialism." Unfortunately, the word's first utterer was the speech-impeded Ezekiel ("Jigsaw") O'Toole, the Mayflower's sole Irishman and a constant source of entertainment, scorn, and embarrassment.

In any case, O'Toole pronounced "sanks" with a "th" at the beginning, and Harlo ("Legs") Crenshaw, the ship's language specialist, thus translated it as "thanks giving" after careful consideration. The faux pas became a bitter sore subject that haunted Crenshaw for the remainder of his days (which were thirty-six.) In his personal diary, Crenshaw wrote just before his passing, "What, did they expect a guy to be fluent in Iroquois after three hours? God in Heaven, no one's patting me on the back about that rapid-fire conjugation of 'to swallow noiselessly.' No, no: It's just sanks this and sanks that."

Either way, the Pilgrims decided to move on and, feeling sorry about the semantic slip-up, invited several Iroquois representatives over for a feast. After a classic example of American compromise ("What time is good for you?" "Six okay?" "Naw, the kids have soccer till six-thirty. How about seven?") the arrangements were set.

The meal was a fantastic tragedy, which fouled up relations between the colonists and the natives all the way up to present day. In an unfortunate coincidence, the Pilgrims' way of shaking hands turned out to be an extremely offensive hand gesture in Iroquois society, putting things off to a rocky start almost immediately. Then an argument ensued over where the napkins should be placed, with the natives insisting that they be rested upon the lap and the settlers tucking them into their shoe-buckles. After exchanging less-than-tasteful remarks about each other's headwear, the dinner party broke up in the middle of the third course, which was taco salad.

These arguments were never resolved, so that to this day it is nearly impossible to find Puritan and Iroquois families sitting down for a civil Thanksgiving dinner, although there are a handful of not-for-profit organizations dedicated to rectifying this.

Reach the reporter at: krking@asu.edu.


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