#squanto

The “Real” History of the Wampanoag’s Encounters with the English/ Pilgrims

The Wampanoags are a tribe in southern New England, where I live. Sadly, like a lot of Americans, I only learned the real story of their encounters with the Pilgrims a few years ago. Although I love Thanksgiving as a holiday that brings family and friends together, I realize the story of the “First Thanksgiving” was a later day, romanticized, whitewashed retelling of what really happened. Below is a summary of the Wampanoags’ story, based on several sources including the excellent, linked article above by Dana Hedgpeth.

Early History

According to Hedgpeth, “the Wampanoags, whose name means ‘People of the First Light’… trace their ancestors back at least 10,000 years to southeastern Massachusetts, a land they called Patuxet. In the 1600s, they lived in 69 villages, each with a chief, or sachem, and a medicine man.” They lived in a bountiful land where they hunted and planted corn. They traveled inland during the winter and spent the warmer months near the coast.

Captured and Sold into Slavery by the English

According to the video “Captured: 1614, “Introduction,” in 1614 an English captain Thomas Hunt (sailing with a fleet commanded by John Smith) used the pretext of trading with the Wampanoag in Patuxet to trick about 20 young Wampanoag men to board his ship, where “they were tackled and beaten and restrained below deck, captured to be sold as slaves” in Malaga, Spain.

“The Great Dying” (1616-1619)

According to Hedgpeth,

The Wampanoags were nearly wiped out by a mysterious disease that some Wampanoags believe came from the feces of rats aboard European boats, while other historians think it was likely small pox or possibly yellow fever.

Known as “The Great Dying,” the pandemic lasted three years.

By the time Squanto returned home in 1619, two-thirds of his people had been killed by it.  The English explorer Thomas Dermer described the once-populous villages along the banks of the bay as being “utterly void” of people. [emphasis added]

The Real  Tisquantum (aka “Squanto”) Story 

According to The Washington Post’s Gillian Brockell, the famous Wampanoag Tisquantum (aka “Squanto”) was one of the 20 Wampanoag’s captured and sold into slavery in Spain in 1614. Tisquantum escaped from Spain to England and eventually returned to North America in 1619, only to find that most of the Wampanoag had died off during “The Great Dying.”

On March 22, 1621 Tisquantum came to the Plymouth Colony. The Pilgrims were impressed that he could speak fluent English. During his time with the Pilgrims, “Tisquantum and other Wampanoags famously showed the Pilgrims how to plant crops, catch fish and survive in” the land where his ancestors had lived. Tisquantum also “brokered a peace treaty between the Pilgrims and Ousamequin, leader of the Wampanoag confederacy, who feared attack by the Narragansett tribe after his people had been so devastated by disease.” [emphasis added]

However by the time that Tisquantum went on a trading trip to the Wampanoag in November 1622, “both sides had begun to view him with suspicion.” During the trip, Tisquantum started bleeding from his nose. He died shortly thereafter on one of the anchored Pilgrim ships. Historian Nathaniel Philbrick thinks he was possibly poisoned by the Wampanoag, on Ousamequin’s orders, because Ousamequin thought of Tisquantum as a “double dealer.”

The “First” Thanksgiving

According to Hedgpeth,

By the fall [of 1621], the Pilgrims — thanks in large part to the Wampanoags teaching them how to plant beans and squash in a mound with maize around it and use fish remains as fertilizer — had their first harvest of crops. To celebrate its first success as a colony, the Pilgrims had a “harvest feast” that became the basis for what’s now called Thanksgiving.

The Wampanoags weren’t invited.

Ousamequin and his men showed up only after the English in their revelry shot off some of their muskets. At the sound of gunfire, the Wampanoags came running, fearing they were headed to war.

“One hundred warriors show up armed to the teeth after they heard muskets fired,” said Paula Peters.

Told it was a harvest celebration, the Wampanoags joined, bringing five deer to share, she said. There was fowl, fish, eel, shellfish and possibly cranberries from the area’s natural bogs.

[emphasis added]

King Philip’s War

According to Mayflower 400 UK,

Following the death of Ousamequin in 1662, his son and heir, Metacom – who was known as King Philip by the English – believed the alliance forged by his father was no longer being honoured by the colonists….[who were] expanding into Wampanoag land all the time. [….]

The colonists demanded the peace agreement should mean the Wampanoag hand over any guns and hanged three of the tribe for the murder in 1675 of Christian native John Sassamon, who had told the Plymouth Colony of a plan to attack English settlements.

Metacom refused and led an uprising of the Wampanoag, Nipmuck, Pocumtuck and Narragansett tribes. [….]

The war…is considered the deadliest war American has ever seen.

The colonist army burned villages as they went, killing women and children.

The war decimated the Narragansett, Wampanoag and many smaller tribes…. Thousands were killed, wounded or captured and sold into slavery or indentured servitude. [….]

After his wife and son were captured, Metacom fled to his secret headquarters at Mount Hope in Rhode Island, where he was killed in August 1676.

He was hanged, beheaded, drawn and quartered, with his head placed on a spike and displayed at Plymouth Colony for two decades.

[emphasis added]

King Philip’s War was considered the bloodiest war on American soil in proportion to the size of the population at the time of the war. Both sides suffered huge losses. Deaths included over 1000 of the English colonists and over 3000 of the indigenous population.

See more under the cut about the modern day attempt by the Trump administration to revoke the “approximately 321 acres” of land that the Obama administration “put in federal trust for the Mashpee Wampanoag,” but which the courts and the Biden DOI restored to them.

Massasoit

Massasoit (c. 1581-1661) était le sachem (chef) de la confédération Wampanoag de l'actuelle Nouvelle-Angleterre, aux États-Unis. Massasoit est un titre qui signifie Grand Sachem; son nom de naissance était Ousamequin de la tribu Pokanoket de l'actuel Rhode Island et Massachusetts.

By Jonah McKeown, 24 November 2022

In 1621, lacking both the skills and the resources necessary to survive in the harsh territory of New England, European pilgrims encountered a miracle:

A Native American who not only spoke English but who also used his skills and knowledge to help the Pilgrims adapt to their environment and survive the brutal winter. 

This was Squanto, a man who occupies a special place in the hearts of many people who celebrate Thanksgiving because of his willingness and ability to help the newcomers to his land. 

Squanto’s full name was Tisquantum and he was a member of the Patuxet tribe, which lived in and around modern-day Plymouth, Massachusetts.

He was probably born around 1585 in the area that is now Boston. 

Little is known about Tisquantum’s early life, but what is known is that he was abducted from his homeland as a slave by an Englishman, Thomas Hunt, in 1614.

He ended up in Malaga, Spain, where a group of Franciscans bought him in order to free him.

It is apparently thanks to these Franciscans that he received baptism and became Catholic, though it is not clear to what extent he was catechized and practiced his new faith. 

Damien Costello, a Catholic historian and theologian, told CNA that the historical record portrays “a very skillful agent” in Tisquantum who was able to change his situation and engage with European culture.

He was able to find employment as a translator in England and later convinced a wealthy financier to fund an expedition back to his homeland. 

When Tisquantum finally made it back to where his tribe lived in present-day Massachusetts, his life took a tragic turn. He found that his entire tribe, while he was in Europe, had been wiped out by disease — he was the sole survivor.  

The Pilgrims arrived in New England in 1620 and were far from the first Europeans to set foot on those shores — this was many years after Jesuit missionaries had started missionary activity in the area but hadn’t settled.

When the Pilgrims arrived in what had once been Patuxet territory, the empty land made a good place to settle.

Tisquantum, no doubt mourning the loss of his people, was nevertheless able to deftly reinvent himself as an intermediary between the Pilgrims and Native leaders. 

In March 1621, the chief of the Wampanoag confederation, Massasoit, went to meet with the Pilgrims and brought Tisquantum along to translate.

After negotiations fell apart, Tisquantum stayed with the Pilgrims and helped to facilitate what we now know as the first Thanksgiving — a meal between the Pilgrims and the Natives of the area.

Tisquantum died in 1622.

So, was Tisquantum a Catholic? Costello says it is likely he was baptized and thus, theologically, he was indeed a Catholic.

Native American culture was very spiritual, and Costello said he doesn’t think it unlikely that Tisquantum saw his baptism as a positive spiritual experience. 

“Catholicism was a crucial ingredient in Squanto’s resiliency, the regenerative principle that gave spiritual power to sustain the disjunction of being a global citizen in a world forever turned upside down,” Costello later wrote in an article for U.S. Catholic. 

As to whether Tisquantum continued to practice his Catholic faith for the rest of his life, there’s little evidence to say for sure. In a very real sense, God only knows. 

Yes, it’s behind a paywall/subscription, but WaPo allows a couple free reads a month.

Make THIS read one of yours. Especially this year. Give thanks, sure, for surviving Covid. But then tell the story of The Great Dying...a pandemic among the Wampanoags along the coast that killed a much larger portion of that population than Covid killed ours.

This year, of all years, don’t buy into the Old Myth. Know the Real Story.

Just remember, Tisquantum (”Squanto”) spent his escaping slavery in a Spanish monastery and making his way with his buddy Samoset over to England so they could hop a ship back to ‘The New World’. The pair got back to Plymouth Rock to find out his village had been wiped out by Plague. Just to have the Pilgrims (who were Brownist Separatists) to show up within the year. Then, had to then keep them from getting themselves killed for being too English for the next twenty years.