COMMENT OF THE DAY RUNNER-UP: ANOTHER REASON WHY WE GIVE THANKS ON THANKSGIVING 
“If the Pilgrims had landed on the Island of Doom (Cabeza de Vaca’s name for Galveston) the Karankawas may well have simply eaten them. So the first Thanksgiving would consist of long pig festooned with buckle hats.” [Memebag, commenting on Houston’s Baby Boomer Housing Shortage; Cooking Up a Third Coast Thanksgiving] Illustration: Lulu
Sign up for the Newsletter
Wait, what? Uh ok and why the smiling Pilgram? Is she happy to be about to be eaten by savages? Bizarre comment, Bizarre drawing.
That’s bogus. De Vaca himself shipwrecked near Galveston and the Karankawas were very hospitable to his party. He never mentioned anything about cannibalism, other than some in his own party resorted to it to stay alive, a fact that disgusted the natives. There were reports of some Gulf Coast tribes that practiced ritual cannibalism on conquered enemies, but all of them were second or third hand accounts. http://www.pbs.org/opb/conquistadors/namerica/adventure1/b2.htm
The Karankawas made Cabeza de Vaca a slave for almost two years.
Just because they made him a slave doesn’t mean they weren’t hospitable to him and his party…
OK, new Thanksgiving ideas. This year I’m going to be a Karankawa and my wife will be Cabeza de Vaca. I’m going to make her dig up aquatic roots and prepare them for me. She will flee to my neighbor’s house to become a merchant. But I won’t consume her flesh.