One thousand years of religious persecution of the Bible-believing European people had created a thirst for freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and freedom to govern themselves. They took the Mayflower, the Speedwell, and many other sailing boats that were basically freighters to a new and promised land across the ocean where the Bishop of Hippo, Augustine, wrote in his book, The City of God, “No one could live or survive.”
They faced rough seas, cold and harsh winters, hostile Indians, a whole different style of living, and death was their constant enemy.
They prayed to God, and God sent a native American that had been captured, taken to Europe and learned the English language, to be their mentor in the new world and help them establish a beach head on the cold, stony New England shore. Squanto was his name, and he helped the Pilgrims to make it. Plymouth, Massachusetts, became a place of Thanksgiving just a couple of decades after Señor Oñate and his Spanish boys held the first Thanksgiving on what was to become the United States at El Paseo on the Rio Grande.