PLYMOUTH, Mass. – Most of us know that Pilgrims celebrated the first Thanksgiving to celebrate how they miraculously survived their first harsh winter in America. But another part of the story is relatively unknown: just two years later, an even more impressive miracle saved the Pilgrims and the surrounding Indian tribes.

The first winter of 1621 had been truly murderous, wiping out 51 of the original 102 settlers in the Plymouth Colony. But then their first harvest thrived. In fact, they found that they could grow five times as much on a plot of land here as they could on a plot of the same size back in England.

Why the first Thanksgiving was important

Pilgrim re-enactor Leo Martin told CBN News: “They thought they should thank God for this. So they had a Thanksgiving feast.”

Martin and his wife Nancy run the religious Jenney Museum in Plymouth to keep alive the memory of the pilgrim’s defining faith.

The performer recounted how the kindly chief Massasoit brought 99 brave souls to the first Thanksgiving, which turned into a three-day celebration.

“They played games. They fired guns. They had competitions and really bonded, which is very important because you have to understand that there was a little bit of animosity there because hunters came here before the Pilgrims and captured Indians as slaves,” Martin explained.

“Everything withers away”

Things were going very well, but then in 1623 there was a drought that threatened to wipe out all the crops of the Plymouth Plantation and the surrounding Indian tribes.

“Everything withered,” Martin said. “One Wednesday morning, Governor William Bradford turned to his people and said, ‘We must get on our knees and ask God what we did wrong.'”

The settlers knew that their colony and even their lives were at stake.

“And they began to pray – 90 degrees, not a cloud in the sky. They started at nine in the morning,” Martin said. “Lunchtime: nothing. Two o’clock in the afternoon: nothing. Four o’clock: A small cloud appeared directly over the plantation. And at six o’clock it started to rain.”

Just a special rain would be enough

The miracle had begun over the colony, but for it to continue, God had to grant a special rain.

“And I don’t mean the kind of rain we’re used to in Plymouth: a nor’easter that tears everything down. But for two weeks a gentle, gentle rain fell on the Plymouth Planation. And the harvest was saved,” Martin explained.

Not only that, but when a nearby Indian chief named Hobbamock witnessed this miracle – this saving rain – it sparked a major advance in relations with the Pilgrims.

Martin said of Hobbamock: “And when he saw that, he went to William Bradford and said, ‘Billy, I like your God. He saved your harvest.’ And Hobbamock became a Christian. And there Hobbamock built his village directly across the river from the Pilgrims, three years after the Pilgrims arrived, so that he could be closer to his Christian friends and his Christian God.”

Some criticize the pilgrims because they do not bear witness as lively and actively as today’s evangelicals. But Martin has great respect for the Christianity of these early settlers.

“People say to me, ‘The pilgrims didn’t evangelize.’ “Do you know what they did? They lived their faith. And when you live your faith, it has an impact. It definitely had an impact on Hobbamock,” he said.