by William Trollinger

Anyone who is paying attention at all knows that White Christian Nationalism is alive and well and on the rise in America. It’s everywhere, and these folks are thrilled that Trump the autocrat-wannabe has been elected president. See, for example, Art Jipson’s brilliant article on the New Apostolic Reformation.

Not surprisingly, White Christian Nationalists need a “usable past,” a history that comports with their understanding of America as a divinely ordained nation that was from the beginning rooted in the Christian faith. See, for example, the dreadful 1776 Report, which – in its deliberate effort to whitewash American history of its past and present racism – really is a crime against history. 

Well, here we are, two days before Thanksgiving, a holiday that some White Christian Nationalists are determined to rescue from the clutches of “woke” historians and native American activists. At the forefront of the “Save Thanksgiving” campaign has been Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton. 

On November 18, 2021 Cotton delivered a 15 minute speech on the floor of the Senate in which he, as one blogger noted, address[ed] what he saw as “a pressing issue: the disturbing lack of patriotic appreciation of the Pilgrims and their contributions to freedom and democracy in the USA.” According to Cotton, the lack of Thanksgiving celebrations had to do with the fact that “the Pilgrims have fallen out of favor in fashionable circles.” And why is that? Because of an apparent loss of “civilizational self-confidence,” evinced by the fact that the New York Times ran an article in the Food Section (the Senator from Arkansas had time to scour the Food Section for attacks on American pride?) that referred to the traditional Thanksgiving story as a “myth” and a “caricature.”

Cotton (whose last name seems so appropriate) would have had to work hard to be less subtle in his racism, but then again, lack of subtlety is precisely the point, for Cotton in particular and White Christian Nationalists in general. “Civilizational self-confidence” certainly does not refer to the Native Americans, who had been here for millennia when the Mayflower landed (and who were dying and would continue to die in great numbers). Nor does “civilizational self-confidence” refer to the millions of Africans brought to the Americas in chains, with North America receiving its first slaves one year before the Pilgrims’ arrival.

But for Cotton, focusing on American slavery was precisely the problem. He connected the lack of “commemorations, parades, or festivals to celebrate the Pilgrims” not to the pandemic, but instead to “revisionist charlatans of the radical left [who] have lately claimed the previous year [1619] as America’s true founding.” Here Cotton was continuing his campaign – an ongoing campaign joined by all sorts of other White Christian Nationalists – against the New York Times’ 1619 Project, a campaign which has included an effort to have this project banned from public schools, as this effort to educate Americans about slavery and its legacy misses the point that slavery was a “necessary evil” that allowed America to be the great nation that it is today.

As regards Cotton’s effort to restore white pride in the Pilgrim story, he informed Americans that the Pilgrims came here “seeking the freedom to practice their faith.” In saying this he was suggesting a commitment to religious freedom that the Pilgrims absolutely did not have. On the contrary, the Pilgrims wanted the freedom to establish a community where their faith and only their faith would be allowed – a point that Cotton chose to elide (but would seem to fit the White Christian Nationalist vision for America.)

Cotton also mentioned that the Pilgrims “had to conquer the desolate wilderness” without noting why the wilderness was so desolate (the silence of the first winter in New England was rather terrifying for the Pilgrims). English traders had brought disease to the region for which the Indians had no immunities, and between 1616 and 1619 80% or more all Indians in the region were killed. As two scholars coolly put it in the Centers of Disease and Prevention’s journal of Emerging Infectious Diseases, this epidemic – these authors suggest chicken pox, trichinosis, or leptospirosis as the culprit – “may have been instrumental to the near annihilation of Native Americans, which facilitated successful colonization of the Massachusetts Bay area.”

Again, not a story that Cotton wanted to tell.

But the most remarkable omission in Cotton’s story may have had to do with Squanto. As I tell my students, the Squanto story is true. As Cotton rightly explained, he did come out of the wilderness to help the Pilgrims, teaching them how to grow corn and other crops, giving suggestions as to where to hunt and fish, and so forth. As William Bradford put it, Squanto “was a special instrument sent of God for their good beyond their expectation.”

When I ask my students how they imagine Squanto communicating with the Pilgrims, most suggest “sign language.” A reasonable guess. But wrong. And here Cotton is right again: “Squanto spoke fluent English,” to the point that he served as the Pilgrims’ “interpreter” with other tribes.

But what is astonishing – or not, given Cotton’s White Christian Nationalist commitments – is that Cotton never explained why Squanto spoke fluent English.

Did Squanto stumble upon an English grammar book inadvertently dropped on the shore by one of the traders bringing disease to the region? Did one of those traders take the time to provide this Indian a crash course in the English language? Did Squanto’s role as a “special instrument sent of God” for the sake of the Pilgrims include receiving from the Holy Spirit the gift of speaking in English?

No.

The reason that Squanto spoke fluent English is that in 1614 an English trader named Thomas Hunt tricked Squanto and two dozen or so other Wampanoag Indians into boarding his ship. Then Hunt chained them below deck and set sail for Spain, the goal being to sell them into slavery.

We do not know how many Indians survived the voyage, or how many were actually enslaved in Spain. We do know that Squanto escaped – perhaps with the help of Catholic friars – and made his way to England, where he learned English.

In 1619 he was employed as a guide for a ship heading to New England. When he arrived, and disembarked near the village where he had grown up, he discovered that disease had killed all his family and their fellow villagers; all that remained were bones and rotting corpses. Taken in but held in tight control by Wampanoag Indians, as they did not trust him, in the spring of 1621 Squanto was allowed to serve as an emissary to the struggling Pilgrims.

The Pilgrims must have freaked out when they heard Squanto speak English. But why he spoke English is not of interest to Sen. Cotton. He wants an American history whitewashed of the horrors of slavery, be it slavery of Africans or Native Americans. He wants an American history whitewashed of Protestant religious intolerance, whitewashed of the annihilation of the native inhabitants. 

In short, Sen. Cotton and other White Christian Nationalists want a grade-school history that inspires “civilizational self-confidence” among white students. 

That is to say, they want to cancel history for their own political purposes. With Trump’s election, with the ascent of the Project 2025 agenda, there is much more historical erasure to come.

(Note: this post is an update of a November 2020 post.)