By Darius A. Lecointe, PhD, JD
In 2021, the National Archives marked the 400th anniversary of the 1621 harvest gathering at Plymouth — a meeting of 90 Wampanoag and 52 English survivors of the Mayflower voyage. The Archives finally acknowledged publicly what historians have known for decades: Most of what Americans believe about the “First Thanksgiving” is myth — crafted long after the event.
The Archives corrected several popular errors:
The Mayflower passengers did not discover “empty wilderness.” They landed on Wampanoag land.
The Wampanoag were not strangers; some already spoke English through earlier encounters with Europeans.
The alliance between the Wampanoag and the English was strategic, not sentimental.
Wampanoag agricultural knowledge saved the English from starvation.
But even this more honest public version still hides the deepest truth of all.
The 1621 harvest celebration was not a meeting between two peoples. It was a meeting between three. And the third group — forgotten in the American imagination — may hold the key to understanding the recurring constitutional crisis we are now living through.
I. The “Pilgrims” Were not One People
American classrooms teach that the Mayflower carried a single group fleeing religious persecution. That story is only half true.
In reality, the Mayflower passengers consisted of:
1. English Separatists, religious dissenters who had lived for a decade in Leiden, Holland.
2. Non-Separatist Englishmen, motivated by economic opportunity, status, or adventure — the same profile as the men who settled Jamestown in 1607.
3. The Wampanoag, whose land the English occupied and whose strategic calculations shaped the survival of the settlement.
Only about half the passengers were the people we now call Pilgrims. The rest were not refugees at all. They were ordinary English settlers — employees, craftsmen, traders, and opportunists — who had joined the voyage for the same reasons others joined the Virginia Company a decade earlier.
The “First Thanksgiving” was therefore not a quaint, harmonious scene but an encounter shaped by three distinct identities, each with its own constitution.
II. The Lost Decade: The Pilgrims Followed San Marino’s Path — Until They Didn’t
This is the part of the story Americans almost never hear.
Before the Pilgrims sailed from Plymouth, England, they lived for ten years in Leiden, Holland, practicing their faith in peace. In doing so, they followed the example of the early Christians who founded San Marino in 301, a community also created by people fleeing religious persecution.
San Marino’s founders succeeded because they were able to form a new identity, isolated enough to grow into a distinct constitutional culture.
The Separatists in Holland could not.
Dutch culture was strong, the children were becoming “Dutchmen,” and the community feared it was losing its English identity.
Identity is the first stage of constitutional life, and theirs was slipping. So instead of continuing on the San Marino path, they chose a different one: They sought a royal charter from King James I — returning to the very system that had persecuted them.
This is the first constitutional mystery of American history.
Why did a persecuted group voluntarily reattach itself to its persecutor? Why seek English authorization instead of building a new identity abroad or in Holland?
Their answer created the contradictions America still lives with.
III. The Legal Story No One Teaches
Here is the version every American should know:
The Pilgrims and non-Pilgrims planned to settle near the Hudson River, then part of Virginia.
They had royal permission to settle there.
A storm blew the Mayflower off course.
They landed illegally in New England.
Because they lacked authority to settle where they landed, they drafted the Mayflower Compact, a temporary constitutional patch until a new patent could be obtained.
This means:
They were authorized to settle in one place, unauthorized to settle in another, and divided among themselves by identity, theology, and purpose the entire time.
The 1621 celebration occurred not under a unified “Pilgrim” identity but under constitutional improvisation, identity instability, and jurisdictional confusion.
America’s constitutional paradox began here — not in 1776 or 1787.
IV. The First Thanksgiving Was a Constitutional Collision
The celebration in 1621 was not just an intercultural meeting between Wampanoag and English. It was a collision of constitutions: Wampanoag sovereignty, English royal authority, Separatist religious identity, Non-Separatist colonial ambition, and the improvised governance of the Mayflower Compact
The English were not one people.
They were a mixed multitude, bound together by geographical accident and constitutional necessity.
This is the part Americans never learn.
V. America’s Schizophrenia Began in 1621
You cannot understand the present constitutional crisis without understanding this original one.
The English at Plymouth fled persecution but sought royal approval. They wanted religious autonomy but insisted on English identity. They desired separation from England but asked England to authorize it. They settled without permission in a land that was not theirs. They formed a government only because their original charter no longer applied.
This is the earliest concrete instance of America’s constitutional schizophrenia: identity pulling in one direction, governance in another, and constitutional fidelity somewhere in between.
The same confusion persists today.
Whenever Americans tolerate violations of the Constitution, they do not merely break a rule — they adopt a new identity. Identity is always the first stage of constitutional life, and it precedes law. Americans have forgotten that.
The Pilgrims did too.
VI. The Hidden Lesson for Our Time
The Pilgrims’ forgotten complexity matters now for one reason: America is again living through a crisis of constitutional identity. Just as in 1621, we see: mixed motives, divided identities, competing constitutional claims, and the attempt to justify violations of existing authority by rewriting the past.
The first Thanksgiving was not a symbol of unity. It was a warning: when identity is unstable, constitutional life is unstable.
The Pilgrims preserved their Englishness — and America is still paying for that unresolved contradiction.
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