A friend of mine posted the following on Facebook:
The First Thanksgiving Thanksgiving was named after an entire tribe’s massacre — not a peaceful meal between pilgrims and Indians. In 1621, Wampanoag Indians investigated gun and cannon fire at a Pilgrim settlement to see them celebrating a successful harvest. The Indians — all male warriors, were fed as a gesture of peace. The act was not repeated annually. In 1636, when a murdered man was discovered in a boat in Plymouth, English Major John Mason collected his soldiers and killed and burned down the wigwams of all the neighboring Pequot Indians who were blamed for the murder. The following day, Plymouth Governor William Bradford applauded the massacre of the 400 Indians, including the women and children. The Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, William Newell, proclaimed: “From that day forth, shall be a day of celebration and thanks giving for subduing the Pequots.” For the next 100 years, every Thanksgiving Day ordained by a governor was in honor of the bloody victory, thanking God that the battle had been won."
http://everydayfeminism.com/2014/11/history-books-dont-tell-natives/
Is there any truth to these claims?
It was common for governors and Presidents to issue Thanksgiving proclamations, for many reasons. Here's an example from 1726 giving thanks for peace with the Indians, and here's another example from 1723 giving thanks for the defeat of the Jacobite rebellion, both by Governor Dummer of Massachusetts. Note both of these are within a hundred years of 1636, and without mentioning any Indian massacre, rendering the blog's claim inaccurate.
The original Thanksgiving was proclaimed by Governor Bradford in 1623 to give thanks for the harvest and for God's protection. It wasn't repeated, but neither was any other thanksgiving celebration - they were one-time celebrations in thanks for one-time blessings. The current annual celebration was proclaimed by President Lincoln in 1863, to give thanks for the victories in the American Civil War. That proclamation in itself was also a one-time celebration, but it established the precedent for an annual Thanksgiving. Neither of these have anything to do with the Pequot massacre.
I'm not aware of whether a day of thanksgiving was proclaimed upon the victory over the Pequots, but I wouldn't be surprised at all if one was. However, it would have been a single non-repeated celebration. It wouldn't be the true origin of the current Thanksgiving any more than the 1723 Thanksgiving for victory over the Jacobites was its true origin. The modern annual celebration traces back to Lincoln's 1863 proclamation - and secondarily, perhaps, to Bradford's 1623 proclamation as the first Thanksgiving ever celebrated in New England.