A Thanksgiving Feast on the Río Grande
By Nicolasa Chávez
Deputy State Historian
During the Thanksgiving season fantastical images of English pilgrims and Native Americans happily sharing a meal grace the windows and displays of many US grocery stores. It is generally accepted that the first ever Thanksgiving took place on land that was to become the Eastern coast of the present-day United States. Even though many believe Thanksgiving to be a traditionally American Holiday, its roots and origins have been practiced by cultures around the word for thousands of years. This is true of the ancient cultures of our European colonizers as well as for the Native peoples of the Americas.
Many ceremonies and feasts for giving thanks take place after crops are harvested and brought in for the season. Acts of thanks are given to the gods, or heavens, for a fruitful year and abundant harvest. In New Mexico the earliest of these usually take place in early August, coinciding with the harvesting of corn. Our current Thanksgiving feast celebrated throughout the United States is a combination of both Old World and New World traditions and the food items on the menu show as much. Even so, what if the first Europeans to celebrate Thanksgiving in North America were not Pilgrims? What if they did not speak English? What if this early “Thanksgiving” ceremony took place in the American Southwest? And what if the event occurred in the Spring rather than the Autumn? Would knowledge of these events change the way we celebrate today?
Two early accounts of Thanksgiving feasts were documented in the epic poem Historia de la Nueva Mexico written by Gaspar Perez de Villagrá and published in 1610. Historical documents and inventories further corroborate his description of events that occurred among early Spanish colonizers and their Native allies as they traveled north from north-central Mexico for 1500 miles to get to the entry of New Mexico that was called El Paso del Norte (from which the present-day city of El Paso, TX gets its name). The first celebration took place as early as April 30, 1598, on the banks of the Río Grande slightly downriver from present-day Juárez and El Paso, at the present site of San Ilizaro. A second Thanksgiving celebration occurred on September 8, 1598, on the banks of the Río Grande near present day Okay Owingeh and Española.
In both instances we can only imagine the food that was enjoyed. Just as our contemporary Thanksgiving feast is a mix of Old and New World delights, this is true of the diets of the early colonists. The Spanish settlers were accompanied by many of mixed heritage, Native tribes from Mexico, people of Muslim or North African descent, and Europeans from Greece, Portugal and Italy as well as Spain.
By the time those first settlers began their journey they were already accustomed to local and regional culinary customs of Mexico and blending those not only with items imported from Spain but with other items and spices imported from Asia via the Manila Galleons. Inventories of foodstuffs that were brought up the Camino Real reflected cultural mixing taking place all over the Americas. One example is the regular inclusion of both wheat imported from Spain, and native corn grown in Mexico.
Juan de Oñate, the leader of the first expedition and New Mexico’s first governor, was required by the Viceregal government to supply provisions for the long journey. He was also required to bring seeds to plant and extra livestock to promulgate more stock once a colony was established. Prior to embarking upon this first journey, inventories recorded a variety of live-stock, food items, and herbs and plant extracts for medicinal purposes and to flavor food. Livestock included oxen, cattle, horses, sheep, goats, chickens and a small number of pigs. The food items listed included wheat, lentils, beans, and maize. The Spanish crown sent goods from the Iberian Peninsula including olive oil, cheese, shrimp, wine, spices, and several types of fish. The list of herbs, plant extracts and oils included chamomile, dill, rue, myrtle, citrus, fennel, quince, rose, borage, and marshmallow. Early items for planting included onions, cabbage, lettuce, radishes, garlic, cucumbers, carrots and artichokes. It is also evident that there was taste for sweeter items. Several inventories included sugar, cinnamon, wine and chocolate. Chocolate, native to the Americas, was long consumed in Mexico and used for ritual purposes. Vanilla, also native to Mexico, was another popular item. Sugar, originally imported from Canary Islands and then cultivated in the Caribbean and other parts of the colonies, and cinnamon were also important items.
These itemized inventories provide for an estimated guess as to what may have been enjoyed during these early celebrations and one might dream of an elaborate banquet, but historical descriptions show a different story. The first feast was not as fancy, or formal, as one might experience at court. The Spanish reached the banks of the Río Grande after traveling fifty days and nearly running out of all provisions. On the journey they ate what were described as “course roots indigestible”. Upon arriving at the river, they fished and hunted for cranes, ducks and geese. Villagrá described the scene “From out the fire-bearing flints we struck their hidden fires and made a great and excellent campfire, and on huge spits and in the coals, we put a huge supply of meat and fish”. They paused, rested, and ate for a week before continuing onward.
The second feast was much more celebratory in that it marked the official end of the journey and the establishment of the first settlement in New Mexico. The festivities took place after the completion of the first acequias, the planting of the first seeds for the Spring season, and the construction of the first church, San Juan Bautista. The ceremonies included prayers and proclamations, along with games and festivities including Moros y Cristianos (a Medieval play conducted entirely on horseback) and tilts of the ring (a game in which a rider must thrust a lance into a small ring while traveling at high speed on horseback).
These early descriptions combined with the inventories of food items provide a glimpse into the eating habits and celebrations of the early colonial period. One can perhaps imagine consecutive Thanksgiving celebrations to include roast pig, maybe some chicken or fish, or local game, along with plenty of richly seasoned vegetables, including local beans and squash. The meals may have been topped off with libations such as wine and a sweetened chocolate beverage.
Of course, at this time the battle at Acoma had yet to occur, nor the desertion of two-thirds of the original colonizers, who left due to poor leadership, nor when Oñate was eventually sent back to Mexico to face trial for crimes committed while establishing the fledgling colony. What remains today from those first two Thanksgiving feasts is our unique New Mexican heritage: one in which the harvest season is welcomed with rejoicing in the streets when the air of grocery store parking lots are filled with the first scents of roasted green chile. Our tables are complete with turkey, gravy, and a little bit of red or green on side. The occasional New Mexican has been known to stuff their turkey with red chile tamales and our vegetables sometimes incorporate our local calabacitas instead of the traditional green beans with fried onions on top. Our contemporary celebration can still be experienced as the amalgamation of centuries of mixed heritage and culinary mestizaje.
Further reading:
Chávez, Nicolasa “Chocolate in New Mexico: A Brief History” https://newmexicohistory.org/chocolate-in-new-mexico/
Chávez, Nicolasa “Proud Pageantry: How a play on horseback traveled to the New World” https://www.elpalacio.org/2020/02/proud-pageantry/
Hammond, George P. and Agapito Rey, Don Juan de Oñate: Colonizer of New Mexico 1595 – 1628 (Albuquerque, New Mexico: University of New Mexico Press, 1953).
Simmons, Marc, The Last Conquistador: Juan de Oñate and the Settling of the Far Southwest. (Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991).
Snow, Dede “Care Packages: Luxury foods transported over El Camino Real” El Palacio Magazine (Winter Vol.117, No. 4).
Villagrá, Gaspar Perez de. Historia de la Nueva México, 1610 (A Criticaland Annotated Spanish/English Edition, Translated and edited by Miguel Encinias, Alfred Rodríguez, and Joseph P. Sánchez) (Albuquerque, New Mexico: University of New Mexico Press, 1992).