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 missions in Florida Father Luis de Cancer and three other Dominicans to Tampa Bay was the first solely missionary effort attempted in "La Florida". It ended in failure after six weeks with de Cancer's death at the hands of the Tocobaga natives, which sent shock waves through the Dominican missionary community in New Spain for many years. The first Spanish missions to the Indians of Florida, starting with the foundation of St. Augustine in 1565, were attached to presidios. Between 1559 and 1567, ten presidios were established at major harbors from Port Royal Sound in modern South Carolina to Pensacola Bay on the