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
Spanish assault on French Florida of news from the expedition against Fort Caroline greatly concerned the Spaniards at St. Augustine. San Vicente, one of the captains who had remained behind, prophesied that Menéndez would never come back, and that the entire party would be killed. This impression was confirmed by the return of a hundred men made desperate by the hardships of the march, who brought with them their version of the difficulty of the attempt. On the afternoon of Monday, the 24th, just after the successful rescue of the French frigate, the settlers saw a man coming towards them, shouting at the top of