Ever since 1621, November in our country has been viewed as a month of thankfulness and reflection. As time passed, our farming ancestors would yearly offer up thankful appreciation for their bountiful harvests. Many an unofficial Thanksgiving Day would be celebrated, but it would take President Abraham Lincoln, during the dark days of our Civil War in 1863, to officially proclaim the last Thursday of this month a national holiday.

I love this time of year, especially in New England, and I am also more than happy to admit Thanksgiving to be my favorite holiday.

Football games, family gathered around, the smell of turkey in the oven and of course the oft-repeated story of those stalwart Pilgrims highlight the day. Those ancestors of ours sure did face many trials and tribulations in a strange and dangerous new world and somehow, by golly, they managed to survive.

I have always loved the Mayflower story and always enjoyed hearing about that first Thanksgiving Day feast in 1621. In fact, a large portrayal of that event, “The First Thanksgiving,” painted by artist Jennie Augusta Brownscombe in 1914, hangs prominently in our old Cape Cod home down on Smith Street in Niantic. It depicts a group of somber white settlers (men, women and children) being led in prayer by an elder at a communal table.

Native Americans are also pictured. Some are standing and some are seated cross-legged on the nearby grass. One big happy family, it appears. I always liked that inclusive image and never thought to challenge its authenticity.

But what do most of us really know of the Native American story — you know, the story of those “other” people at the table that day? After all, their general appearance and culture contrasted greatly with that of the Europeans, and they seem to have said little over the years about this event or their story in general.

In 1990, President George H.W. Bush proclaimed November “Native American Heritage Month” and it has been so ever since. As a result, Native Americans have been able to speak more openly on their own behalf.

When “First Nations People” speak of that first Thanksgiving, for example, they reveal that Wampanoag “soldiers” in the Plymouth area did, indeed, show up that day but only because they heard celebratory gunshots and thought the colonists might be under attack. Because these Native Americans had a mutual defense treaty with the Pilgrims, they had rushed to the scene to honor that agreement.

So, that does confirm that Native Americans were present at that first thanksgiving feast. They just weren’t invited. Does that change the traditional narrative at all?

Most of what I do know of these people’s story comes from archaeological research I have been fortunate enough to have been involved in over the years.

Norris L. Bull, originally from West Hartford, was the founder of Connecticut’s first organized archaeological society back in the 1930s. He recognized the importance of Native American artifacts in helping to tell their story. He managed to amass a sizable collection of over 6,000 objects (donated by his family and currently housed at the University of Connecticut) that had been fashioned by Eastern Woodland tribes once living within Connecticut’s modern day borders.

When Bull moved to Old Lyme in the mid-1930s, he brought his family and his collection with him. Among other things, I especially remember his dugout canoe, the magnificent monolithic stone ax and the pottery and daily items that once were housed in his hurricane-proof museum down at the end of Hawk’s Nest Beach.

It seemed to me at the time that he was always studying those objects with equal parts of reverence and enthusiasm whenever my family stopped in for a visit.

His preoccupation with that collection generally precluded any lengthy conversations he might have had with any of his grandkids, me included, but one day I did manage to get his full attention. While fishing for blue crabs (my favorite activity while visiting) I discovered an arrowhead lying in the sand. The tip was broken off, but I held out hope that it still might be of interest to this quiet, solitary, and somewhat mysterious grandfather of mine.

I remember him staring intently at it, a reaction I did not expect due to its rather compromised condition. When he finished a careful examination, he removed his glasses and pronounced the artifact “very old” and added that he would be willing to make a little swap… my broken arrowhead for a fully grooved stone axe from his extensive collection. Wow!

I always felt I got the better of the deal that day and kept that wonderful stone implement throughout much of my youth. I loved the smooth feel of it and added numerous hand-crafted wooden handles (some better than others) to it over the years.

How many other young boys could boast of holding an authentic Native American ax in their hand as they hiked through the local woods? I wish I could remember whatever became of it, but what showed up on my doorstep a while back did manage to rekindle some fond memories, along with some of the magic and reverence I once felt for that early stone object.

My stepbrother, Allan York (recently deceased) offered me an Eastern Woodland Indian axe head and, boy, was it a piece of true craftsmanship! He said it had been in his family since the early 1950s when his father, Walter York, had discovered it on the banks of the Lieutenant River in nearby Old Lyme. He felt it was now time that it found a new home, he said. That home would be the East Lyme Historical Society.

When I asked local archaeologist Dr. John Pfeiffer for an interpretation, he pronounced it “a fully grooved axe from the Terminal (Late) Archaic Period, about 3,000 years old.” It was made from basalt, he said, with the nearest source being Higganum, which strangely enough translates into “the place where there is rock for axes.”

I was assured this axe was not a weapon of war (five pounds … too heavy) but had been used for the felling of good-sized trees. The swollen end of the stone had been pic pecked into shape through the use of another sharp, hard stone, while the cutting end had been gradually honed down and sharpened with a whetstone.

I was later informed that this fully groove design was known to be a Late Archaic innovation as that was the point in Native American history when big game hunting was giving way to semi-permanent residences and the necessity of clearing land to raise food crops.

Holding such a prize artifact in my hands, an object made by an individual living some 3,000 years before my time, was a feeling never to be forgotten. Yes, it was an inanimate object, but it seemed somehow to be alive with great energy and with a miraculous ability to span time.

I have been so blessed over the years to have felt this connection many times and hope others may also soon experience that as the axe head is now on public display along with other Native American artifacts in the Lee House barn in Niantic.

When our class found a sacred Manitou pendant on our final archaeological dig in 2013, our class learned of these people’s complex spiritual beliefs. When another anthropology class was asked to participate in the reburial of an 800-year-old Native American skeleton we had uncovered in Waterford, we learned of their elaborate burial practices.

When a Lavanna Point arrowhead was unearthed near the Niantic River, it allowed us to trace the evolution of their projectile points to that final stage before white contact.

The discovery of an ungrooved axe called a “celt,” also found on the banks of the Niantic River, opened up the story of dugout canoe building. When two local boys skimming rocks across Latimer’s Brook stumbled upon an atlatl weight, another story, this one of a deadly Native American killing machine, emerged.

When historian Mark Starr spoke to townspeople not long ago about the artistry of Native American stone wall building, the audience was struck by the degree of sophistication these early people possessed.

So, why don’t we know more about their story? Why are we not in absolute awe, as my grandfather was or how others I have known have become when they have invested the proper time and effort? Are we forever doomed to see these people as just part-time players, sitting off in the shadows of the Pilgrim’s table on that first Thanksgiving Day?

When we sit down with our families on the fourth Thursday of this month, let’s pause and take stock of the whole story of Thanksgiving that is starting to finally emerge through archaeological research and Native American lore that has never been included in the past.

America loves their stalwart Pilgrims with their steadfast faith in God and their incredible work ethic, but we must also note that they would have never survived even that first New England winter without Native American assistance. No feast would have ever been possible if indigenous people were absent from that Thanksgiving Day picture.

Food for thought on Thanksgiving Day might come in the form of a rectangular metal plaque with beveled edges and set in stone, erected in the town of Plymouth, Mass. in 1997 after a lengthy court battle. It tells of the genocide of millions of Native Americans, the theft of their lands and the relentless assault on their culture. The fourth Thursday in November found itself renamed as “A Day of Mourning.”

November is a month of thanksgiving, but it is also a month of reflection. Maybe we should all be thankful that a more complete Thanksgiving Day story is starting to emerge. Nothing good, it has often been said reflectively, ever grows in the dark

Jim Littlefield is a retired history teacher in East Lyme who has written two local history books and two historical novels. His columns can also be found in the Post Road Review.