FOOD: What’s for dinner on Thanksgiving? Do you have a traditional turkey dinner?

According to Smithsonian Magazine, turkey wasn’t the centerpiece of the first Thanksgiving.

“Two primary sources — the only surviving documents that reference the meal — confirm that these dietary staples were part of the harvest celebration shared by the Pilgrims and Wampanoag at Plymouth Colony in 1621. Edward Winslow, an English leader who attended, wrote home to a friend:

“’Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a special manner rejoice together after we had gathered the fruit of our labors. They four in one day killed as much fowl as, with a little help beside, served the company almost a week. At which time, amongst other recreations, we exercised our arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and among the rest their greatest king Massasoit, with some 90 men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five deer, which they brought to the plantation and bestowed on our governor, and upon the captain and others.’

“William Bradford, the governor Winslow mentions, also described the autumn of 1621, adding, ‘And besides waterfowl there was great store of wild turkeys, of which they took many, besides venison, etc. Besides, they had about a peck a meal a week to a person, or now since harvest, Indian corn to that proportion.”

So far, that’s wild fowl, deer and Indian corn. It’s likely they had a bounty from the water, too, with the colonists and Wampanoag probably eating eels and shellfish, such as lobster, clams and mussels, according to the Smithsonian.

While it’s an event widely celebrated today, from 1621 to the 1800s, it was forgotten.