Only five years after initiating an annual Thanksgiving parade, organizers have cancelled the event this year, saying an appointed town board sent a strong message by trimming its financial contribution. The decision to cancel the parade in Plymouth, where the first Thanksgiving feast was held 380 years ago, in 1621, is not sitting well with some residents and other town officials.
“I’m disappointed that the parade is not taking place this year,” said Kenneth Tavares, chairman of the Board of Selectmen. ’’This is an event that is important for Plymouth.”
Native Americans, however, are jubilant at the cancellation. Bruce F. Curtis, a NipMuc Native American and former Indian Affairs Agent applauded the decision saying “it’s hurtful to see a lie of supposed cooperation between Natives and non-Natives turned into a National holiday when the reality was that the first ‘Thanksgiving’ feast was to celebrate the wiping out of an innocent Native village over an imagined wrong.” In the annuals a settler is supposed to have lost a pewter cup and the local tribe is blamed. The governor of Plymouth organized a group of men who slaughtered the inhabitants of a nearby Native village.
