While the rest of America has accepted the Pilgrims and Plymouth Rock as the original Thanksgiving celebrants, certain Texas historians have long maintained that the first Thanksgiving took place, not at Plymouth Rock, but in Palo Duro Canyon.
Our Thanksgiving icons would include the Palo Duro Canyon instead of Plymouth Rock. The Texas Indians would be in the history books and we might be eating buffalo instead of turkey every year. If you think leftover turkey is hard to finish, leftover buffalo could last families until the next Thanksgiving
Spanish explorer, Francisco Vasquez de Coronado, not John Smith, was the noted participant of that first Thanksgiving, Texas-style, and it can be argued that Coronado had more to be thankful for than Smith and his pilgrims.
Coronado's expedition had left Mexico in search of the Seven Cities of Cibola, but instead of a mythical city of gold, Coronado and his men found the Llano Estacado, where there were no cities, no trees and very little water.
Coronado and his men wandered in circles for days, unable to find anything upon which to fix a compass. This is a land that, even today, can try a traveler's patience.
We can imagine just how thankful Coronado and his men must have been to leave behind those miles and miles of nothing but miles and miles, and downright ecstatic he must have been to find Palo Duro Canyon and the friendly Teyas Indians who lived there.
Coronado's records show that he celebrated Thanksgiving with the Indians on Ascension Thursday, May 23, 1541. Friar Juan de Padilla performed a Thanksgiving Mass witnessed by the Indians. Reports of the event said that the Indians were neither hostile nor friendly, but mostly baffled. They stared a lot.
At the time of the mass Coronado and his men had suffered a series of misadventures that make the Pilgrims; travails seem like a walk in the park. The expedition included 1500 men and thousands of horses, cattle and sheep. The purpose of the mission was to find Quivara, the riches of the Seven Cities of Cibola. He never found the Seven Cities, but at that point he probably didn't care.
An Indian Coronado's men called the Turk "because he looked like one" led the mass of men and critters on their dubious quest. The Turk (la Turque) led Coronado and his men onto the Llano Estacado, a vast expanse of shortgrass prairie with no settlements, no trees, very little water and nothing to fix a compass to.
Coronado and his men wandered in dazed circles for days on end, lost, hungry and thirsty on an endless "sea of grass." All the travels played tricks on the mind, and some of the men were hallucinating by the end.
The men and animals made a harrowing descent into the canyon where they encountered the Indians. A hailstorm hit the canyon the first night and stampeded the expedition's horses and destroyed much of their equipment.
Coronado sent hunters to venture onto the plains to kill buffalo, but the hunters got lost. Helpful comrades built fires and blew trumpets to help them find their way back to the canyon. Most did.
By now, Coronado had figured out that LaTurque was lying about knowing the whereabouts of Quivira.
Some 300 years later, in 1848, not long after Texas had become a state, Gov. George T. Wood established the first Texas State Thanksgiving. Texas was the first state in the South to call for a day of Thanksgiving.
Coronado might have termed his expedition a failure, but he succeeded in giving Texas (which wouldn't be a state for three more centuries) something to add to its list of bragging rights -- the country's first Thanksgiving.
Temple (Texas) Telegram, Nov. 26, 1998 and Nov. 27, 2003
