Howdy and welcome to Wise About Texas, the podcast about Texas history.

Now the normal production schedule is every other Monday, but this is a bonus episode for you.

It's Thanksgiving Week 2015, and I wanted to give you a little Thanksgiving history with a Texas twist, of course.

Now, the traditional first Thanksgiving story involves the pilgrims celebrating their first harvest in the New World in 1621.

Numerous other of the eastern states claimed Thanksgiving celebrations at various times in the 1600s,

and several of the original colonies celebrated Thanksgiving before the 1800s.

Several presidents also called for Thanksgiving celebrations.

George Washington called for the first

national day of Thanksgiving in 1789. But if you've learned one thing from this podcast, it's that

Texas is different, and Thanksgiving is no exception. So today we're going to go all the way back to

1541. That's right, 1541, way before the Pilgrims in Plymouth and get wise about Texas.

In 1540, the Spanish explorer Francisco Vesquez de Coronado led an expedition of about 1,500

men north from Mexico City looking for gold. In the spring of 1541, the expedition was camp

near Paladura Canyon up in the Panhandle of Texas, and they celebrated a Eucharistic Thanksgiving.

Now, whether this was a special service or just the celebration of the Feast of the Ascension is not

known, but this event was commemorated as the first Thanksgiving by the Texas Society of

the Daughters of American Colonists. In 1959, they placed a marker in Paladur Canyon at a river

crossing. Incidentally, that service was celebrated by Frey Juan de Piedia, who was a Franciscan

missionary, and in 1544, he became the first Christian martyr

in the United States and in Texas.

So let's fast forward to 1597.

In 1597, a man named Juan de Anyate, who had developed some minds in San Luis Potosi, wanted to lead an expedition into what is now

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