Search: 'thanksgiving indian"
Part 3: “thanksgiving indian”
Searching for this phrase, there are only 21 instances and it is frequently in the context of dance, association, band, pudding, and summer. It is extremely interesting that with this word placement, “indian” is used as a descriptor to describe those words.
Most often, pudding is found in reference to this phrase. Looking closer at the contexts, there are two texts that are nearly identical, file 11.txt from Richmond, Virginia and file 19.txt from Omaha, Nebraska, both from 1919:
“A Thanksgiving Indian. His body is a fig and his head is a prune fastened to the fig with a toothpick. His leg.;; [sic] and arms are mado [sic] of raisins on toothpicks j [sic] thrust into his body. Fringe a bit of bright crepe paper to make a feather that you stick in his head with a pn [sic]. His face is carved in the wrinkled prune with a sharp pen knife.”
This is contrasted with the following recipe:
“The Pilgrim Pale-Face. This Pilgrim may stand beside the Indian at each Thanksgivig [sic] Place.”
It is extremely clear that there is a racial hierarchy defined within a Thanksgiving recipe, with the “pale-face” pilgrim standing in sharp contrast with the Native American whose face is “carved in the wrinkled prune”, illustrating the pervasiveness of racism. The recipe includes the stereotypical feather to show that it is a Native American as well as adjectives that are discomforting to read: “toothpicks thrust into his body”; “stick into his head”; “carved...sharp pen knife.” At this time, Native American children were still being sent to boarding school where their hair was cut, features were changed to be more Western, and suffered physical abuse. In these contexts, these verb choices seem purposefully violent.