"An Early Modern Odysseus"
Man Monday #1: The Tales of Squanto
The man that most histories call the Friendly Indian of the Wampanoag Confederation would call himself no such thing. Squanto would call himself a man of Patuxet. Likely born at least a decade before the turn of the seventeenth century, Squanto, short for Tisquantum, was destined to do something great. Whether this was for good or for ill was not known, however. Early in his life he was put on the track to become a pniese, an advisor to the sachem of the Wampanoag. He was subjected to long, lonely periods in the nearby forests, extensive training sessions with bow and arrow, and continuous education on farming, hunting, fishing, and diplomacy. It was during these years that Squanto heard, and even met many strange pale, hairy, short men that looked similar, though thoroughly inferior to himself. They hailed from a far-off land in what looked to be moving islands and begged to trade their shiny orange pots for the blankets Squanto and his family had slept with the night before. He had no idea why these men would trade their copper pots for these furs.
In 1605, Samuel de Champlain became the latest in a long string of Europeans, stretching back to Verrazzano in 1524, to reach Patuxet in search of wares, furs, food, or fishing spots. Squanto was one of the many young men that accompanied the sachem as he welcomed the Frenchmen. This location had been critical in the cod fishing industry starting in the middle of the sixteenth century. But, most often there were few interactions. The Europeans, usually English, French, or Basque, would set up a small temporary drying station on the coast. They would fish for several months before returning home with their dried catch.
Patuxet was a coastal village in the Dawnland, the land of the Wampanoag, the People of the Dawn. But Patuxet was not a permanent fixture on the coast of Cape Cod Bay. In the summer the coast was filled with dozens of dome-shaped wetu lined with layers of bark and surrounded by acres of farmland, in the fall it would empty out as the forest became more useful for sustenance. Their homes were touted by many Englishmen as warmer and more water-tight than their dwellings back home. The domes had a singular hole in the top to let out the smoke from the fire placed at the center. Around the edges were beds made of fur blankets for each of the residents.
Squanto was a spirited adolescent. This did not just become evident later in life, this spirit goes all the way down to his name, Tisquantum. This name is one of the names of the Wampanoag spirit of darkness and conniving. He chose a name that is the equivalent of Satan in Christendom. He was clearly attempting to present himself in a certain way to his kin, but also to the newcomers, whether they knew it or not.
On a subsequent arrival of the short white men in 1614, Squanto was invited to climb aboard their large boats as a sign of goodwill. Unfortunately for him, Thomas Hunt was not one to give out this goodwill without a hidden motive. Squanto and a dozen others were ambushed as they went aboard and those that could not escape were locked up in the hold below decks. They left Patuxet behind, stopping shortly on the Cape to capture a few nearby Nauset. From there they entered the open water.
It is impossible to know what it was like for Squanto aboard this ship. But the extensive testimony of the millions that made a similar journey the opposite way from Africa can give rise to some detail. It was slightly better than the treatment of slaves, but not by much. They would rarely receive fresh air, only to use the toilet hole. The usually clean Natives would soon become greasy and grimy; the hair on their head and faces would grow out far beyond what was normal to them. They received little water and few meals, as was the case with all aboard a vessel. The stench would build and build to the point of being almost unbearable to any who entered the hold. Along the way, it is possible that mutinies were planned and foiled, existential dread emanated from them all, and death was wished for by many. For eight weeks these poor souls were jostled and rocked until one day they could hear a familiar sound: a seagull cry.
Through a crack in the ship’s hull, Squanto could see distant land unlike anything he had seen before. The giant boats floated this way and that through the glistening sapphire sea that melted into turquoise as it reaches the coast. The hills beyond rose higher than any he had ever seen, even higher than those his old neighbors to the west spoke of, and the city sprawled up the slope like serpents. As they approached the shore, the bustle above broke out in earnest. The crew shuffled past each other to move the cargo, including the humans, off the ship as fast as they could manage. Squanto was pushed and pulled through a crowd of short, hairy, pock-marked men. He watched as his imprisoned companions were brought to the center of a crowd and shouted at in a disgustingly foreign tongue. Before long, the leader of the group was approached by several other men adorned in crosses who broke up the crowd and took custody of the captives.
The priests who took the Native men from Hunt were sympathetic to the plight of the Natives in the New World. Spain by this point had banned the enslavement of Indians for almost a century. They transitioned quickly to African slaves, a people they felt were unable to be saved, unlike the Indians. Beyond religious reasons, disease had almost wiped out the entire Native population where Spain had colonies by this point. By 1600, about 90% of the Native population had been killed due to a combination of overwork, violence, and diseases like smallpox and hepatitis. The latter was the culprit for the vast majority of the initial death waves, but generational immunity, and the decimated population, eventually left many able to overcome the illnesses. Where Squanto hailed from the population had not been introduced to those diseases nearly as much as the West Indies and Central and South America, so their immunity was far less robust even by 1614.
Squanto was whisked away from the port and brought to a giant building near the center of the city. He watched as his companions were slowly taken away by the pale men. He himself was eventually sold to two men who looked to be of the ilk that had stolen him away. Squanto quickly found that they were not as conniving as the man who took him and were even willing to bring him back to his home, or at least close. About two years after arriving on this foreign land, he was brought onto another ship, by a different man, this time without the chains. When they landed again, he was in a city even larger than the last, and even more disgusting. Luckily, the man who brought Squanto to London, John Slany, was wealthy enough to keep him mostly clear of the riffraff. But the city was full of street merchants, con artists, and various other scum and villainy, so he was never fully isolated from it. Regardless, Squanto bided his time by looking for a way home and learning the foul-sounding language merely by proximity.
After a year or two, Squanto was put on yet another ship. This time though, he was headed in the right direction. He was aboard a ship back heading across the Atlantic to a small colony on Newfoundland. It was here that he met Thomas Dermer. In 1618, Dermer was meant to travel to Maine to try to establish a new English colony near the location of a previously failed attempt that had been made. After a comedy-of-errors in which Squanto was brought to Jamestown and brought back to England before finally sailing to Maine, he eventually convinced Dermer to meet the Englishman’s partner near Cape Cod, and his home in Patuxet. By June 1619, he could see his home in the distance.
As they approached the land he grew up in, something didn’t seem right. Where there used to be smoke rising from the many fires in the villages there was none. Likewise, there was not the normal bustle of canoes and hunters along the coast. As they approached the shore, the image only became bleaker. There were people visible now, not moving or working, but lying dead on the ground as skeletons. Their bones had been picked clean by birds and bleached by the Sun.
He didn’t have much time to mourn, though, as Massasoit, the Pokanoket sachem, had received news of the arrival of Squanto and Dermer. Fortunately, Squanto was able to broker a deal between the Wampanoag and the Englishman. He was to be traded for a French prisoner, and Dermer was asked to leave the Dawnland. Squanto learned after this transfer that not all hope was lost in reconnecting with other Patuxet residents. Several of them had survived the plague that struck, but were forced to move inland and integrate into a new village. Dermer would return the next year, though, and Squanto would again act as his guide. But after the years of grievance that had been wrought by these men, Massasoit’s patience had run thin, and he felt that he was forced to attack. In a clash at Martha’s Vineyard, most of Dermer’s men were killed and Squanto was captured again.
Massasoit took a tentative liking to Squanto. He had lots of information that Massasoit needed and he relayed many stories of far-off lands, travels across the sea, and the various mishaps that occurred along the way. His knowledge of the foreign tongue made him an adept translator for the strange pale men that so often asked to trade and were becoming more troublesome. But Massasoit could sense there was more to this man; his ambition was likely to cause issues in the future. For now, though, he was an important ally. This became especially true when word arrived of yet another ship landing on Cape Cod. Where the earlier groups were focused on trading and fishing, this one had loftier goals. They had even taken root in Squanto’s old home in the winter of 1620. The Pilgrims had arrived.
Without retelling the Pilgrim story for the millionth time, I want to observe their landing from the perspective of Massasoit. He was the sachem when Thomas Hunt had taken the Natives from Patuxet, and he saw a mysterious plague tear through his people but spare his enemies to the west. When this new group of men from across the sea arrived, he was not prepared to invite them into his home with open arms. On top of that, he had heard rumors of these men trekking aimlessly, getting into skirmishes, and stealing maize. These did not seem like the types to play nice with. So, he was going to act carefully.
Squanto was quick to implore Massasoit to soften up against these newcomers. He warned him about the powerful guns and cannons they would use to guard their landing spot. Furthermore, they hid from view an even more dangerous weapon, one that every Native was aware of at this point: the plague. Squanto implored him to take a more diplomatic approach to avoid the ire of the Englishmen and even use them as allies against the growing threat of the Narragansett. Even though he couldn’t trust him as far as he could throw him, Massasoit took Squanto’s advice. He first sent a more loyal ambassador, Samoset, to make first contact. The man was a sight to behold for the Englishmen, most had never seen a native man before, and those that had had only seen them from afar. His ability to speak English relatively fluently was even more shocking. After a successful meeting, Massasoit sent Squanto and Samoset to initiate peace talks before he would make his own journey.
Squanto was fluent enough in English to explain their reason for coming and inquired for a place to meet and speak. After some deliberation, they settled in the house of Stephen Hopkins. A pipe was passed, and intentions were made clear all around. This meeting was a turning point in the relationship between the English and the Natives and they signed a peace treaty. Hopkins even allowed Squanto and Samoset to stay overnight. No one knows what tales they spun together, but just as Squanto could tell of his roughshod journey, Hopkins could tell his story of being shipwrecked on the island of Bermuda and being accused of treason while there. Whatever happened behind closed doors, Samoset relayed the good news to Massasoit. Squanto stayed behind.
Squanto was finally back home even if, by this point, he could barely call it that. He knew the waters and the land, but his family was gone, his people decimated. Regardless, he taught the English about farming techniques to sustain themselves like mixing crops and using fish as fertilizer1. Squanto then acted as a translator for the Pilgrims when they offered Massasoit a copper chain and horseman’s coat to mark him as an ally. Squanto was then tasked with traveling to the various surrounding tribes to establish trade with the Pilgrims. Little did the English, or Massasoit, know, he was using this time to undermine them both and build his own empire.
Massasoit, though he was once a very powerful presence near Cape Cod, was losing status in the region. The disease that had spread from the English had decimated his people. His allies and enemies alike were becoming more powerful than his Pokanoket and starting to take advantage of his relative weakness. The Narragansett to the west and the Nauset on the Cape were not as affected by the disease, so they were able to start throwing their weight around. The latter proved to be an even bigger threat as they tried to assert their will over Massasoit by taking him prisoner and forcing him to end the Pokanoket-English alliance. However, the Pilgrims quickly came to the aid of the sachem and brokered peace between the several allied tribes. This moment marked a distinct shift from the Pilgrim’s original desire to remain isolated from the Natives. They were now, and for decades to come, tied to the endless power struggle in New England. What they did not know was that the Indian who had helped them adapt to this new land had been plotting to throw the whole region into conflict.
As the newcomers bolstered their defenses to ward off a Narragansett attack, Squanto had been making his way through the various villages to undermine the authority of Massasoit. He had convinced them that the Pilgrims “possessed the plague, and they were about to release it at will. However, if a village sent him sufficient tribute, he assured them that he could convince the Pilgrims to relent.”2 His final act in the plan was to fake an attack by the Pokanoket to prompt a response. However, this plan was foiled when Hobbamock, a Pokanoket pniese who had been living with the Pilgrims all winter, traveled to the Pokanoket capital of Sowams to verify the claim. He found the town quiet. When Massasoit heard of this slight by Squanto, he flew into a rage and called the Pilgrims to take his head and hands. Luckily for Squanto, William Bradford was not prepared to lose one of his most valuable assets, his translator, so he resisted these calls. But this action, and the recent massacre at Jamestown in the spring of 1622, only made the entire region more tense. Furthermore, this slight forced the Pilgrims to look elsewhere for trade, more specifically food.
By the fall of 1622, Squanto was able to make peace with Massasoit and regain the respect of the Pilgrims, but the region was still tense. In an attempt to stay true to the rebuilt trust, he agreed to act as interpreter on a trade mission. With his help, Bradford was able to procure a significant amount of corn and beans from the nearby Manamoyicks. But this win was undercut when Squanto became violently ill. He had a raging fever and began bleeding from his nose. He suffered for three days before he died on the ship.
It is not known to us what malady did him in. It may have been a natural disease, but there may have been a more sinister cause. It is possible that the peace that he had made with Massasoit was no true peace at all. The sachem may have used this as a tactic to allow Squanto to lower his guard. When he was least expecting it, he had him poisoned. There is no proof of this occurring, nor any evidence of a plot, but it wouldn’t have been the first, or last, poisoning of a rival. Furthermore, Squanto had survived several trips across the Atlantic, the streets of Malaga and London, and continuous interactions with the English, making his succumbing to disease less likely. Though in a time racked with disease, even among the Europeans, this was not improbable. Regardless, this is just another historical mystery that we will never truly know the answer to, but that’s the fun of it.
Sources
Squanto: A Native Odyssey - Andrew Lipman
1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus - Charles C. Mann
Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War - Nathaniel Philbrick
A Stranger Among Saints: Stephen Hopkins - The Man Who Survived Jamestown and Saved Plymouth - Jonathan Mack
This may have actually been learned in Europe. According to Charles C. Mann, he had “stayed in places where Europeans used fish as fertilizer, a practice on the Continent since medieval times.”
Philbrick, Nathaniel. Mayflower. pp. 133.
Interesting history with lots of local and personal details. Enjoyed reading the article.