The Dark History of the First Thanksgiving: Cannibals, Colonists, and Rat Pee
Crowned & Cancelled
Shallon Lester
4.7 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 27 November 2025
⏱️ 34 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Forget the Hallmark version — the first Thanksgiving wasn’t cute, cozy, or even particularly grateful.
In this episode, we break down the real story behind the 1621 feast: the Pilgrims who knew nothing and learned even less, the Jamestown colonists who literally ate each other, and the kidnapped survivor — Squanto, who held an entire colony together.
Enjoy this tale of useless assholes, entitlement and why empathy can be a deadly mistake.
Pull up a chair — it’s about to get historically unhinged.
Need support during the holiday chaos? Join The Shallontourage with my Black Friday 2-week free trial and get the sisterhood, sanity, and strategy!
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | When we talk about Thanksgiving, our mind probably drifts to pie and parades, football and falling leaves, hometown bars, and hometown exes. |
| 0:15.6 | But maybe you have a less than rosy association with this holiday. Maybe you're up cooking all day for ungrateful family, |
| 0:22.7 | and then drunk Uncle Marty goes on a tear about the Chung family that moved in next door. |
| 0:27.4 | They're going to eat your dogs. That's what they do. Even though Mr. Chung is an aerospace engineer, |
| 0:32.7 | that's fine. Or maybe your non-binary cousin is vaping too close to your dog, even though you specifically |
| 0:38.3 | asked her or him, whatever, to just not do that, please. |
| 0:45.4 | If you have at some point, some Thanksgiving, some year, looked out over your loved ones and |
| 0:51.0 | thought, why does it feel like I'm the only one trying here? The only competent |
| 0:55.1 | one, the only one holding this family together, and yet I'm barely getting a thank you. God, |
| 1:01.3 | what a bunch of useless assholes. Well, take heart, my dear listener. This doesn't make you a monster. |
| 1:08.1 | It actually makes you a historian. Because despite Hallmark's best efforts to make |
| 1:14.0 | Thanksgiving all about gratitude and family, and yeah, football, it's actually very much a day about |
| 1:20.4 | useless assholes. So let's dive today into the history of a holiday that's done a magnificent |
| 1:26.0 | job in the branding department, but hides a truth that's darker, stranger, and, a holiday that's done a magnificent job in the branding department, |
| 1:33.5 | but hides a truth that's darker, stranger, and oh, so much more fascinating than any conspiracy theory your Aunt Phyllis might share over Pecan Pie. |
| 1:38.0 | It's a tale of adventure, death, entitlement, and how too much empathy can end up costing us everything. |
| 1:47.0 | I'm Shaolin Lester, and this is crowned and canceled. |
| 1:58.7 | Squanto couldn't quite believe what he was seeing, but then again, he absolutely could. |
| 2:05.4 | He peered at the pilgrim settlement from behind a thick bush and absent-mindedly plucked a ripe berry |
| 2:10.8 | from the branches laden with late spring fruit. The year was 1621, and he watched as a white man with tight, sallow skin and gaunt cheeks |
| 2:20.7 | ambled painfully through the rickety English settlement. The man's breathing was labored and shallow. |
| 2:27.2 | Hunger clung to him as he shuffled up to a shack where an equally emaciated woman waited |
... |
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