We give thanks for the good we have experienced throughout the year.

At the 29 Palms Inn the yearly feast includes bounty from the sea – oysters, shrimp, crab, salmon – greens from the garden, the traditional turkey and ham, mashed potatoes and dressing, many kinds of traditional and non-traditional cranberry sauces, and dessert including both pumpkin and pecan pie. And this is the short list.

When the meal is over, while we are still digesting, it is worth ruminating on the similarities between what we serve today, the original 1621 Plymouth Colony Thanksgiving, and the feasts of the Indians once living at the Oasis.

We learned in school that our national Thanksgiving was intended to celebrate that first successful year – the lifesaving crops of corn, squash, and beans. The meal also included foods taken from the woods and waters around the struggling colonists.

The corn, squash and beans were a gift from the Wampanoag and came with a cultivation history going back thousands of years to their original heartlands in Mexico.

Locally, the Indians that lived for millennia in the vicinity of the Oasis of Mara – the Serrano, Chemehuevi, and Cahuilla – never saw a turkey although they were familiar enough with squashes, corn and beans.

In 1904, before the Colorado River was dammed and productivity was all but lost, Robert Forbes boated down the River and reported:

The Indians, especially the Chemehuevi’s, who are at present the most successful farmers on the river, grow beans, cowpeas, watermelons, Turkish winter muskmelons, martynias (devil’s claw), a soft maze easily ground in their metates and maturing in about seven weeks, a black sweet corn, winter squashes, pumpkins, a little wheat, barnyard millet and a seedy grass and horse forage. Grass and millet seed is sown in the soft mud as soon as the river subsides, a method strikingly similar to that employed by the Egyptians in sowing their great forage crop, Berseem, along the Nile.

The Chemehuevi and Serrano tribes were the last to live at the Oasis. Matthew Lewis, a Chemehuevi farmer on the Colorado River, believes the Serrano were the first tribe to farm at the Oasis. Records indicate the garden was approximately twice the size it is today. Water was supplied from the natural springs. They followed the tradition of manipulating crops to meet the local environmental conditions.

The Indians knew their environment completely. They used over300 kinds of plants for food and other purposes like medicines, cordage, textiles, and building materials. Their success came from knowing the environmental zones and their characteristic plants intimately including what was edible, when to harvest, and which were harmed by frost.

They also were familiar with local game animals including when and where to find them, and how to catch them. They utilized species ranging in size from insects to rodents, lizards, snakes, tortoise, rabbits, birds, deer, antelope, and big horn sheep. Individuals from over 100 different species could be brought to the table during the year.

The main staples were plants, of those honey mesquite beans, agave, acorn, and pinyon nuts were the most valued. Although these plants were never domesticated – no need since they were produced without human support – they were managed to increase productivity and to prevent insects from infesting the fruit. Each season brought its harvests and thanksgiving. We can be sure there was feasting and thanks given for the bounty!