Thanksgiving (United States) The most prominent historic thanksgiving event in American popular culture is the 1621 celebration at the Plymouth Plantation, where the settlers held a harvest feast after a successful growing season. Autumn or early winter feasts continued sporadically in later years, first as an impromptu religious observance and later as a civil tradition. The Plymouth settlers, known as Pilgrims, had settled in land abandoned when all but one of the Patuxet Indians died in a plague. After a harsh winter killed half of the Plymouth settlers, the last surviving Patuxet, Squanto (who had learned English and avoided the plague as a
Christianity in the United States wherever the Spanish went, such as San Antonio, Texas, (named for Anthony of Padua, Santa Fe, New Mexico (named after Francis of Assisi,) and Saint Augustine, Florida, (named for Augustine of Hippo), as was Saint Lucy County and Port Saint Lucy in Florida named for Saint Lucy/Santa Lucia although Saint Petersburg, Florida was not named for St. Peter, but for the city of the same name in Russia. In the English colonies, Catholicism was introduced with the settling of Maryland. Conversion of Native Americans to Catholicism was a main goal of the Catholic missionaries, especially the Jesuits. This was common