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
Maritime history of Florida Johns River for future settlement and then headed north to establish Charlesfort in present-day Parris Island, South Carolina. The colony failed, and in 1564, René Goulaine de Laudonnière led the settlers back to Florida and established Fort Caroline in what is now Jacksonville. In 1565, Spaniard Pedro Menéndez de Avilés captured Fort Caroline in a brutal fight with the French and established St. Augustine, the first permanent European colony in the continental United States. In 1568, Frenchman Dominique de Gourgues recaptured Fort Caroline. In 1569, the Spanish built a watchtower at Matanzas Inlet to watch the horizon and warn St.