Paintings Created Hundreds of Years After 1st Thanksgiving Aren't Historically, Factually Accurate

STANDARD-EXAMINER
By Becky Cairns

“The First Thanksgiving 1621,” by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris, includes some inaccuracies about the feast.

UTAH---If only there had been a camera at the First Thanksgiving. Many of our stereotypes about the feast and its attendees come from artists’ renderings of the event, painted long after the 1621 event was over, says a Brigham Young University historian. Take, for instance, a popular painting of the First Thanksgiving, done in 1915 by Jean Louis Gerome Ferris, an American painter. The art — like many pieces that portray this event — depicts the Indians wearing elaborate feathered headdresses common to tribes who lived on the Plains, not in Massachusetts. A modern painting of the First Thanksgiving would be more apt to feature both groups sitting at a table, the professor says, or both groups sitting together on the ground. The Pilgrims and Wampanoag enjoyed a cooperative relationship at the time, Pulsipher says — “not one people dominating over another.” [link]