Oh sure, we all know the story: The Pilgrims, wearing big white collars and those funny hats, celebrated "The First Thanksgiving" in Plymouth, Mass., in the fall of 1621.
But sometimes the details of that time and place get lost amid the pumpkin pies and construction-paper turkeys and Christmas sales.In honor of National Geography Week, we offer you the following Thanksgiving Geography Quiz, full of cranberries and colonists and explorations that changed the world.
1. Who or what was Speedwell?
a. Puritan minister at the first Thanksgiving feast
b. A boat that set out from England at the same time as the Mayflower
c. A Pilgrim greeting
d. Name of the first Dutch settlement in North America
2. The potato, native to South America and now a staple of the Thanksgiving meal, was not served at the Pilgrim's first Thanksgiving. Potatoes were first brought to Virginia in 1621. But potatoes did not become an important food crop in North America until they were brought to New Hampshire in 1719 by immigrants from what country?
3. Match the settlement and the date:
a. Jamestown, Va. e. 1607
b. St. Augustine, Fla. f. 1565
c. Plymouth, Mass. g. 1587
d. Roanoke Island, N.C. h. 1620
4. The first Thanksgiving observance in America took place where?
5. Plymouth, Mass. is at roughly the same longitude as:
a. Logan, Utah
b. Boise, Idaho
c. Helena, Mont.
d. Seattle, Wash.
6. The Mayflower's 101 passengers survived stormy seas, a top-heavy ship, crowded conditions, arguments between the "Saints" and the "Strangers" and bad food (mostly cold biscuits, salted beef and beer). They finally arrived in the New World after how many days?
a. 49
b. 66
c. 99
d. 201
7. What is the "starving time?"
1. Pilgrims' name for the winter season
b. The time between breakfast and Thanksgiving dinner
c. The Jamestown winter of 1609-1610
d. Puritan fasting observance
8. The same year that Jamestown was settled, riots broke out in England over a 17th-century version of grazing rights. What was the controversy?
9 . Where did the Mayflower first anchor in the New World?
10. Two days after that first landing, the Mayflower women went ashore to do what?
11. It is believed that the Mayflower was eventually sold for salvage. Where is the hull now?
12. Which of these is native to North America:
a. The pumpkin
b. The cranberry
c. The turkey
d. all of the above
e. none of the above
13. Where was New Amsterdam?
14. The Virginia Company, chartered by the English crown in 1606, was given the rights to land about 200 miles north and south of Jamestown, extending west how far?
15. Long before Pocahontas became an animated character she married John Rolfe. What was his claim to fame regarding a colonial crop?
16. Plymouth's Pilgrims were plagued by a bad diet and harsh conditions during their first winter in the New World. What percentage died of "general sickness" by that first spring?
a. 10 percent
b. 25 percent
c. 50 percent
17. What is the name of the island off Cape Cod that became, along with Bedford, Mass., and Mystic, Conn., one of colonial America's great whaling centers?
18. Sir Humphrey Gilbert, half-brother of Sir Walter Raleigh, sailed to America in 1578 after obtaining a patent "to inhabit and possess at his choice all remote and heathen lands not in the possession of any Christian Prince." But the site he chose was so bleak that he could not persuade his crew to stay and farm. Where did he land?
19. Which immigrants built the first log cabins in America?
20. Which of the original 13 colonies now leads the nation in turkey production?
21. During Colonial times, there were two big crops in Georgia and South Carolina? One was rice. What was the other one?
22. Which two of the following items did the Pilgrims send back to England to help pay off their debt to the mother country?
a. lumber
b. beaver
c. tobacco
d. corn
23. England prohibited the colonies from exporting certain farm products. What did the colonists do to get around this?
24. The Grand Banks were:
a. prodigious fishing area off Newfoundland
b. site of first settlement in North Carolina
c. Puritans' first financial institutions
25. The colony of Virginia was named after:
a. The Virgin Islands
b. Virginia Dare, the first English child born in America
c. Queen Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen
26. Who were the "Saints" aboard the Mayflower?
ANSWERS:
1. b (The Speedwell was a small ship that left the Netherlands in 1620 carrying English Separatist immigrants, bound for the New World. The Speedwell stopped in England, where it was joined by other Separatists aboard a larger ship, the Mayflower. The Speedwell proved unseaworthy and returned to England.
2. Ireland
3. a-e, b-f, c-h, d-g
4. The first Thanksgiving observance in America featured prayers but no food. It took place on Dec. 4, 1620, to celebrate the date when a group of 38 English settlers arrived at Berkeley Plantation on the James River near what is now Charles City, Va. The famous Plymouth Thanksgiving - actually a harvest festival - took place in 1621.
5. a
6. b
7. c
8. To provide more land for sheep to graze - in order to meet the needs of England's growing wool exports - farmers had to give up some of their tilling privilege on common land. Farmers who did not own their own land were often evicted. "Sheep eat men" was their rallying cry. Free land was one reason that some of the first immigrants came to America.
9. Provincetown, on the tip of Cape Cod.
10. To wash everyone's dirty clothes.
11. It is believed that the Mayflower's hull was used for a barn roof. The barn still stands, in Jordans, a village outside London.
12. d. Native Americans raised turkeys as food as early as A.D. 1000.
13. Original name of Manhattan, bought from Canarsie Indian chiefs by Dutch colonizer Peter Minuit.
14. The Pacific Ocean; settlers had only a vague notion how big the continent was.
15. He invented a way of curing tobacco, which enabled it to be exported to England. The crop then became the basis of Virginia's economy.
16. c
17. Nantucket
18. Newfoundland
19. Swedish colonists who came to Delaware in 1638.
20. North Carolina, which raises 58 million turkeys a year.
21. Indigo, the chief source of blue dye. Cotton did not become an important crop until after the Revolutionary War.
22. a and b
23. They developed "triangular trade routes" that carried, for example, fish and grain to southern Europe, where the products were traded for fruit and wine, which were then carried to England and traded for manufactured goods.
24. a
25. c
26. "Saints" was the name the Pilgrims gave themselves. They also called themselves Separatist Puritans. The term Pilgrim did not come into popular usage until the 1840s. On the Mayflower there were 21 Saints and 50 "Strangers," including ordinary settlers and indentured servants.