2021 marks the anniversary of the famous event known as the First Thanksgiving. Plimoth Patuxet Museums’ Deputy Executive Director and Chief Historian, Richard Pickering, continued a series of Lunch & Learn lectures to chronicle the Pilgrims’ first year in New England with a focus on Fall 1621. Click here for the September 2nd on-line session.

Nathaniel Morton reports in his history, New England’s Memorial, that nine sachems were in Plymouth on September 13, 1621. The group made an agreement similar to the one reached between the Colony and Ousamequin (Massasoit) in March. He also references Nanapashnet and several recordings from the 1990s.

Was Ousamequin demonstrating his regional influence by bringing them to Plymouth as confirmation of promises made in March to negotiate peaceful relations? Richard Pickering explores these questions around this pivotal event and share details about other important moments in the Pilgrims’ first fall season, 400 years ago.

Richard uses information about the ripening of the flint corn grown in Plimoth to date some of the events that occurred that fall.

Much of the narrative came from Mort’s Relation, thought to be authored by Edward Winslow in 1622.