We lament that Thanksgiving will be different this year because of the pandemic and Governor Brown’s restrictions. But an epidemic gave us the holiday.

The original Thanksgiving dinner never would have occurred without the Great Epidemic of 1616-1619.

A French trading vessel wrecked off the coast of Massachusetts near Cape Cod. The native Wampanoag took four men captive. One of them carried the epidemic causing disease--long thought to be typhus, small pox or plague but recently determined to be leptospirosis (a bacterial blood infection).

Having been exposed for centuries, most Europeans had developed immunities and resistance. However, for the Wampanoag the disease was devastating. It wiped out as many as 90% of the Wampanoag population in southern New England.

Still, the remaining Wampanoag outnumbered the settlers. Prior settlers had brutalized the Wampanoag and the Wampanoag people could have overcome the present group. However, the Wampanoag were terrified that the epidemic came from the white man’s God and was intended to wipe them out.

Accordingly, the Wampanoag leader Massasoit elected to make peace and established an alliance with the Pilgrims in the spring of 1621. The Wampanoag taught the Pilgrims what to plant and how to hunt certain wildlife and fish. In turn, the Pilgrims invited the Wampanoag to join them for the first Thanksgiving in the Fall of 1621.

While you eat your turkey with empty seats at the table this year, remember that the first Thanksgiving was also shaped by an epidemic . . . and the Wampanoag and Pilgrims didn’t even have Zoom.

Happy Thanksgiving!