PLYMOUTH, Mass. – One year ago when the newly arrived immigrants invited the Indians of this wooded coastal region over for a meal of thanks and appreciation for helping them to survive, some thought this was to be the beginning of a great friendship. But now as the first anniversary of that dinner approaches, there is mounting concern about the long-term intentions of the Indians’ new neighbors.

“They haven’t spoken to us the whole year,” said a high-ranking chief of the Indians. “Every week another group of boat people arrive. They don’t even say ‘Hello, how are you’ or ‘Nice weather we’re having.’ They act like we’re not even here. You’d think we were made out of wood or something.”

Life was not always this unfriendly around here. When the Indians first discovered the Puritan immigrants who had landed on these icy shores two years ago, they found a people who barely survived the harsh winter months. Many of them were starved, disease-ridden and freezing. In a gesture of human kindness, the Indians helped the immigrants recover.

They taught the Puritans how to make warm homes out of birch bark. They showed them how to plant corn and beans. And they taught the immigrants how to trap beaver and hunt deer.

The Indians say they were honored when the immigrants wanted to prepare a “meal of thanks” for them after the autumn harvest.

“Of course, we had to bring the turkey and all the side dishes, but they seemed to be very sincere, decent people,” the chief recalled. He sympathized with their plight. “During the meal they told us about the government oppression they faced back home – not being able to pray to their own God, not being allowed to manage their own affairs without intrusion, and how good it felt to be in a land where individual sovereignty really meant something.”

But in the months that followed that day of giving thanks, the relationship between the immigrants and the Indians took a turn for the worse.

“We kind of feel like we’re in the way, if you can imagine that,” the chief said. “We come back from a hunt or a fishing trip only to find our land has been resettled and fenced off. We’re thinking we may need to move further into the hills and valleys just to hold onto our way of life.”

But as the immigrants prepare for this year’s Thanksgiving celebration, a former ship captain, who was among the first Puritans to arrive, said the Indians are simply overreacting.

“We have no interest in disrupting their way of life (though I must say we sure don’t want our kids turning on to their pagan beliefs),” the Puritan sailor said. “And we certainly are not interested in settling on any more of their land. The fact of the matter is, we’re two different races and we would all be better off if the Indians just kept their distance.”

When asked if the Indians would be invited to this year’s Thanksgiving meal, the captain would only say, “We’re still finalizing the guest list.” Told that the Indians may not receive a dinner invitation this year, the chief turned philosophical. “Maybe next year will be different,” he said. “Maybe they will realize we just want to be good neighbors, that we just want to live our own lives without too much disruption. Maybe next year they’ll be thankful that we taught them how to live here in this land in the first place.”

There is always next year.

Mark Anthony Rolo is a member of the Bad River Band of Ojibwe in Wisconsin. He is a journalist, playwright and former executive director of the Native American Journalists Association.