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Squanto
We Americans like to tell the story of the first Thanksgiving as part of our celebration. We recount how the Pilgrims and Indians gathered after the bountiful harvest, hunted and celebrated the boundy with a feast that lasted several days. Many people celebrate in a smilar way throughout the world as they take time to be thankful for their many blessings. This Thanksgiving Day 2006, a little celebrated hero of the first feast in the New World is the highlight of our story.
Here is my version of Squanto, Native American who rose from slavery to a position of power in the new land called America.
Squanto or Tisquantum lived between 1580 and 1622. He was a member of the Patuxet tribe living in the area of what today is Plymouth Mass. The Patuxet are a subtribe of the Wampanoag Confederacy.
English traders were known to kidnap American Natives to show them off in the Old World or sell them as slaves.
Squanto and some of his native comrades were lured to a ship and taken to England by George Weymouth in 1605 according to the memoirs of Ferdinando Gorges. There he worked for 9 years before a promise for his return to his homeland actually came about. He was returned to the New World on John Smith's 1613 voyage.
When John Smith left to return to England, Squanto while assisting map makers to chart the area, was captured again by Thomas Hunt thus breaking a trust that John Smith had vowed. This time in 1614 he was taken to Malaga, Spain where Hunt attempted to sell him as a slave. Local monks (Friars) getting wind of the plans, interferred and took Squanto and the others into hiding with the plan of instructing them in the Christian faith.
Eventually Squanto escaped to London, living with Hohn Slang and then went to Cuper's Cove, Newfoundland. Not wanting to walk to his New World home he tried to join an expedition. That idea failed, he was spotted as Thomas Hunt's Indian and escaped back to England before being caught.
In 1619 he finally made his way home on an expedition that was to explore the New England coast. Upon arrival home he was devastated to learn that all his people and other tribes had been decimated the year before by a plague, possibly small pox.
Squanto settled in with the new Pilgrims of Plymouth Mass who had made a small settlement. He helped them by teaching them to increase food production by fertilizing their crops. He taught them the best places to catch fish and eels. He is credited for showing the Pilgrims how to place fish in each hill of corn for fertilizer, how to survive the cold winter, and actually perserving their lives in the harsh new world.
Without his assistance it is doubtful that the new immigrants to this hostile environment would have survived that first winter. Many Pilgrims succomed to illness and starvation. When the first bountiful harvest was gathered and meat was hunted to prepare for the feast, no doubt Squanto was one of the honored guests. Squanto served as a diplomat of the Massasoit Indians.
Many problems were handled by this former slave, when disputes arose between the new settlers and the existing native Americans.
But in November 1622, while on a trading expedition to the Massachusetts Indians, Squanto AKA Tisquantum came down with Indian fever, his nose began to bleed, and he died. Governor William Bradford, perhaps Squanto's closest friend and associate among the Pilgrims, wrote the following about his sudden death: "In this place Squanto fell sick of an Indian fever, bleeding much at the nose (which the Indians take for a symptom of death) and within a few days died there; desiring the Governor to pray for him that he might go to the Englishman's God in Heaven; and bequeathed sundry of his things to sundry of his English friends as remembrances of his love; of whom they had great loss.
Thanksgiving Day, we salute a great American Hero who assisted our Pilgrim Fathers in many ways.
Mary Hofstetter
Nov. 24, 2006
Note: If you go to search using the name Squanto, you find various versions of the life of this American Hero.
Books about Squanto can be found on Amazon.
Go to http://www.shophereandplayhere. Scroll to Amazon, choose books, search for
Squanto, Pilgrims.
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