The Land Was Ours, Before We Were The Land’s

November 25, 1976 – Orl
November 22, 1979 – Lakeland
Thanksgiving

The Land Was Ours, Before We Were The Land’s

In the land of the Senecas, which was roughly bounded by the Genesee River on the East and the Niagara joining of two lakeheads on the West, there still stand some of the longhouses of the Senecas, part of the Iroquois family of nations. The longhouse was a community residence of matrilineal families, but it was also a community council house.

For hundreds of years before the Pilgrims came, the American Indians celebrated the gathering-in of harvest. The Senecas were an agricultural tribe which had evolved an intricate Thanksgiving ritual. Thanksgiving was Ganon:yonk, celebrated with poems and the Feather and Drum Dance. Skilled orators would recite the age-old poems. Tribal chiefs Cornplanter and Red Jacket were among the most famous when the Europeans invaded the peaceful land of the six nations. At harvest time, there was a belief from the most ancient of times that when the thanksgiving ritual began, even the wind stopped and all spirit forces listened.

To the cadence of the drum, the rhythmic stomp of dance and the measured chant of the poem, the Longhouse people gave thanks for the structure of the world and for the grain, corn, squashes, beans, venison, and wild turkey provided there so that the people of the six nations might survive and mate and endure.

We know more of the psalms of thanksgiving created by the Hebrews, but the peace loving tribes of the Iroquois had their songs of thanks. Part of their thanksgiving chant went:

“We give thanks for the corn and beans and squashes that give us life;
We give thanks for the Great Spirit who is all goodness and
who directs all things for the good of his children.”

We are a long way from Cornplanter and his people. We buy turkey and squash, not grow it – but we are alive; we know love and pain an anxiety – and at times, assurance that life is good. And we give thanks.

The Senecas’ and Pilgrims’ survival depended on the favorable allotment of sun, rain, heat, frost, and cold. Our survival is dependent on complexities of culture, needing generosity and understanding that can break through much more difficult boundaries than the Genesee and the Niagara. Our breakthrough has to be through thick walls of international fear and, within our own country, through walls of racial mistrust and the wall of ignorance and hostility between groups.

Perhaps Sam Bradley puts our thanks and fears in words:

Pilgrims, Pilgrims Yet

“They came as strangers, pilgrims of the earth,
to a wilderness of untried strengths, a West
for bolder covenants. And their unrest
is still in us. Each humbled line of birth,
rebel or not, yet far-ventures worth
of everyman. And our God-speeds attest
a perpetuity of trust, a quest
not halted by a dowsing at the hearth.

“A stranger’s hand? A promised world at hand?
Draconian rules to pass? If we undo
old mistimed power, tradition misapplied,
ours, fasces of new power! But to command
our sheaf of stars, we must somehow subdue
Our waylost fear and our waylaying pride.”