#tisquantum

By Sophie Hirsh

Updated Nov. 21 2023, 4:18 p.m. ET

People visit the 1627 Pilgrim Village at "Plimoth Plantation" where role-players portray Pilgrims seven years after the arrival of the Mayflower in Plymouth, Massachusetts.

The Gist:

🔷️ Thanksgiving is typically marketed as a wholesome family holiday.

🔷️ The true origins of Thanksgiving whitewash the holiday's gruesome and unjust past, erasing the true narrative of Native Americans.

🔷️ The turkey industry, which kills 46 million turkeys for every Thanksgiving, has become another brutal aspect of the controversial holiday.

From Columbus Day to Independence Day to Thanksgiving, the U.S. pretty much specializes in taking dates that celebrate genocide and discrimination, and repackaging them as family-friendly holidays. So each November, when Thanksgiving approaches, you may wonder exactly why Thanksgiving is bad.

Not only is Thanksgiving offensive to Indigenous people, but it glorifies colonialism, slavery, and even epidemics. Many Americans who celebrate Thanksgiving have no idea just how cruel the holiday’s origins are, while those who do may choose to either boycott the holiday, or just use it as an excuse to express general gratitude, gather with family, and eat comfort foods.

Here’s a look into the true history of Thanksgiving, and what really went down between the Pilgrims and the Native Americans whose land they stole.

Why is Thanksgiving bad? The history of the holiday students learn is not quite accurate. In U.S. schools, children are taught that Thanksgiving celebrates a 1621 harvest feast hosted by the Pilgrims (the English colonialists who arrived on the Mayflower), along with their guests, the Wampanoag (a Native American tribe), as facilitated by the bilingual Tisquantum, better known as Squanto, which is what the Pilgrims called him.

The typical curriculum frames this story as one of the Pilgrims struggling to grow food, and the Wampanoag lending them a helping hand on the fields. And while there is evidence that some of those vague details did happen, a lot of details are left out of this sweet story.

“Thanksgiving is rooted in a historical fallacy,” Matika Wilbur, a member of the Tulalip and Swinomish tribes, told TODAY Parents in 2020. "The main Pilgrim narrative coincides with colonization that was inherently oppressive and brutal.”

Here’s the real history of Thanksgiving.

As Smithsonian Magazine puts it, the watered-down version of the story frames the Pilgrims as the protagonists. In actuality, they were the antagonists. For thousands of years before the Pilgrims arrived in the 1610s, the Wampanoag lived in the Americas. They were spread across the areas we now know as Massachusetts and Rhode Island, with a total of 69 different villages, as per Smithsonian Magazine.

Plus, the Pilgrims were not the first colonizers to arrive in the Americas and discriminate against the Wampanoag. As Smithsonian Magazine explains, for years before the Pilgrims landed, various other English colonizers showed up in the Americas on multiple occasions. Not only did they bring European plagues to the Americas, but many of these men actually kidnapped Native Americans, brought them back to Europe, and sold them as slaves — something that was made easier as more and more Indigenous people got sick from these new diseases.

So when the Pilgrims arrived in the region of Patuxet, which they renamed Plymouth, they thought they had discovered a miracle: the perfect land to steal and build a society upon. The land had arable fields, a spring, and, most importantly, “every single native person who had been living there was a corpse,” due to the plagues brought there by the English, as sociologist and author James W. Loewen explained to The New York Times.

Eventually, the Pilgrims met their neighbors, a tribe of Wampanoag peoples who survived the epidemic that wiped out the Wampanoag members who had lived in Patuxet. Tisquantum, who the Pilgrims called Squanto, is well known as the Native American who served as liaison between the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag, because he spoke English.

But why did he know English? According to Biography, years before, an English colonialist kidnapped Squanto and sold him as a slave in Europe, where he learned the language.

After a few years, he managed to escape and return to the Americas, to discover that his tribe had been killed by the epidemic — a zoonotic disease, according to Slate. (Remember that COVID-19 is a zoonotic disease, as well.) So, Tisquantum joined a neighboring Wampanoag village, eventually becoming the translator between his new tribe and the Pilgrims, as per Slate.

Here’s what happened at the “first Thanksgiving.”

The “first Thanksgiving” that is taught in history textbooks tells the story of the Pilgrims graciously inviting the Wampanoag for a feast as a thank you to the tribe for teaching them about the harvest.

And as explained by Blackfeet Tribe member Gyasi Ross in an essay for MSNBC, the narrative often suggests that the Pilgrims came to the Americas "in good faith," that they happily hosted the Wampanoag at Thanksgiving, and that they cooked turkey and sweet potato pie for them. However, this is part of the "mythology of white America," according to Ross.

“[The Pilgrims] could not [bring food to Thanksgiving]. They were broke,” Ross said. “They were begging. They brought nothing of value. But they got fed [by the Wampanoag].” Without the Wampanoag, the Pilgrims would not have survived in America.

According to TIME, there is no clear evidence explaining exactly why the two groups, consisting of about 50 Pilgrims and 90 Wampanoag members, came together. And as Britannica notes, the event was chaotic, filled with liquor, gun shooting, and hunting.

Was there turkey at the first Thanksgiving?

There is actually no written evidence that turkeys were eaten at the 1621 Thanksgiving. As The New York Times reports, many experts believe some sort of wild bird, such as ducks, geese, or turkeys were hunted, cooked, and served at the feast, alongside produce.

Every year, Americans breed, kill, and eat around 46 million turkeys on Thanksgiving — and there's really no reason for this cruel and unsustainable tradition. These days, there are so many vegan turkey alternatives on the market, which are all more compassionate and environmentally-friendly choices.

If you are hosting or attending a Thanksgiving dinner this year, remember the true origins of the holiday — and consider sharing the true story with your friends and family.

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.

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. 

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.

The most fascinating character in the Thanksgiving story isn't a Pilgrim; it's Tisquantum (Squanto). He wasn't just a "friendly helper." He was a survivor of abduction who had crossed the Atlantic six times. He spoke English because he had been kidnapped and sold into slavery in Spain before escaping to London.

It is amazing to me, that the fact that this Thanksgiving marks the four hundredth anniversary of the contract between the Pilgrims and Wampanoag people (April 1, 1621) and yet few seem to be taking note of it. Even worse, I am hearing from some within the progressive camp who claim that this day should be not a day to give thanks but a day of mourning. Do a Google search and you will find multiple sites claiming to tell the sad truth about the first thanksgiving or how some of the current Wampanoag regret helping the early Pilgrims since their arrival began the genocide of native people. That is a bunch of hooie.

It is hooie because the Pilgrims committed no genocide and they were not even the first westerners to colonize the New World since Europeans had already been to this continent multiple times. Thus, those who put this idea forward and attack a day that has historically been set aside to be thankful, rob the culture of positive practice and refuse to see the goodness of a few who met in a strange time. One quality I see missing from our current culture is an awareness of gratitude as a way to happiness. Thus this day must be preserved.

Perhaps a little history is needed: On November 1620, The Mayflower arrived in the Americas, carrying 101 English settlers, commonly known as The Pilgrims. The Pilgrims were not Puritans whatever you will find in many misinformed websites. They were nonconformists who were rebelling from the rule of the Church of England. They were strict Calvinists but profoundly different than those who would come later to found the Boston Bay Colony.

The Pilgrims fled England to Holland but found that their children were being influenced towards a more secular world view and so 101 of them sailed for the New World. I mention this because a lot of the voices demanding that Thanksgiving be given over to the national guilt campaign immediately put together what the Boston Bay Colony Puritans did with those of Pilgrims of Plymouth. Mixing the Puritan perception of Native Americans with those of the Pilgrims is like mixing a pre-civil war white Southern slaveholder to blacks with that of a white abolitionist of the same period. Plymouth is located approximately 40 miles (64 km) south of Boston, The Pilgrims of Plymouth would have barely interacted with Puritans of Boston. As is so often the case in "woke" history, their ideas lack nuance and show no understanding of context. The Pilgrims had good relations with their native neighbors, what there were of them.

The Pilgrims were actually on their way to an already established colony in Virginia and were to land in late summer where the English had already established a patent by 1607 AD but, owing to delays, they left in September 1620 AD, were blown off course by the fall weather, and wound up off the coast of Massachusetts. In a time when COVID has struck fear among so many in the American populace, it would be a good moment to consider that this day of Thanksgiving was set in the shadow of great tragedy and bravery.

According to the History Channel's web page "half of the 101 passengers on the Mayflower died that first winter from starvation, exposure, and disease." Most of these casualties were women who gave up their own food for their children. If one visits Plymouth plantation, (which I recommend) there is a Pilgrim's Progress march in which every survivor is represented by a re-enactor. One is struck by the decimation of families with only fathers and children. The colony would likely have failed without native help.

This season had not been easy for the Native Americans at that time either. Squanto: the Patuxet warrior who had been kidnapped by an Englishman, sold into slavery in Spain, and released by Spanish monks, made his way home only to find his entire village wiped out by the plague. This was not genocide, this was the tragedy that occurs when people meet and are exposed to unfamiliar viruses. Our own experience with the pandemic should make that clear and few would be so insane to claim that the Chinese people committed genocide for an illness that has decimated so many which came from their land.

It is difficult to imagine the heartbreak of Squanto or Tisquantum who having traveled from Spain to England, (where he may have met the famous Pocahontas, a Native American from Virginia, in 1616–1617), returning America in 1619 to his native village, only to find that his tribe had been wiped out by an epidemic infection; thus Tisquantum who participated in that first Thanksgiving was the last of the Patuxets. When his tribe died, he went to live with the Wampanoags.

The Mayflower landed in Cape Cod Bay in 1620, and Squanto (Tisquantum) worked to broker peaceable relations between the Pilgrims and the local Pokanokets. According to one source “On Friday, March 16, the settlers were conducting military training when Samoset "boldly came alone" into the settlement. The colonists were initially alarmed, but he immediately set their fears at ease by asking for beer in English. (As an evangelical teetotaler, this cracks me up!). He spent the day giving them intelligence of the surrounding tribes, then stayed for the night, leaving the next morning. The next day (Sunday), he returned with five men all bearing deer skins and one cat skin. The settlers entertained them but refused to trade with them because it was the Sabbath, although they encouraged them to return with more furs.

Several sources say that for Squanto—who had lost his own people—these colonists in their need touched him deeply. He dedicated himself to their survival. Meanwhile, the Pilgrims hearing about Squanto being sold into slavery, rising in education, and returning to them to give aid paralleled the Old Testament story of Joseph. God had sent them "a Joseph." Squanto would play a key role in the early meetings in March 1621, partly because he spoke English but also his dedication. He then lived with the Pilgrims for 20 months, acting as an interpreter, guide, and advisor.

The Wampanoag chief Massasoit was anxious to befriend these strangers since his own people had been so cruelly decimated by disease. According to Wikipedia “The Wampanoag suffered from an epidemic between 1616 and 1619, long thought to be smallpox introduced by contact with Europeans. However, researchers published a study in 2010 suggesting that the epidemic was leptospirosis or 7-day fever. The groups most devastated by the illness were those who had traded heavily with the French, leading to speculation that the disease was a virgin soil epidemic.” Again not the Pilgrims and certainly not genocide. Massasoit hoped these strangers would prove to be powerful allies. And do they did in several later conflicts with other tribes.

The meaning of the name Wampanoag is by the way beautiful: “People of the First Light.”

With the help of the native Wampanoag people, the Pilgrims learned to fish and farm their new lands, resulting in the famous feast of Thanksgiving attended by natives and new arrivals in 1621.

The actual day is unclear. The Pilgrims' first Thanksgiving began at some unknown date between September 21 and November 9, most likely in very early October. Harvest home was an already established holiday in England. The date of Thanksgiving was probably set by Lincoln to somewhat correlate with the anchoring of the Mayflower at Cape Cod, which occurred on November 21, 1620 (by our modern Gregorian calendar--it was November 11 to the Pilgrims who used the Julian calendar).

And so there you have it. For all involved, there had been terrible trials and yet together they created a tradition that we sorely need to remember—not of guilt and grief but of shared thankfulness and hope!

Sources

Thanksgiving 'redefined' into 'National Day of Mourning' https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/11/thanksgiving_redefined_into_national_day_of_mourning.html

This tribe helped the Pilgrims survive for their first Thanksgiving. They still regret it 400 years later. Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2021/11/04/thanksgiving-anniversary-wampanoag-indians-pilgrims/

What's the Difference Between Puritans and Pilgrims. History Channel: https://www.history.com/news/pilgrims-puritans-differences

Pilgrim-Wampanoag Peace Treaty World History Encyclopedia https://www.worldhistory.org/Pilgrim-Wampanoag_Peace_Treaty/

Squanto And The Story Of The First Thanksgiving. Pilgrim's Beacon: https://pilgrimsbeacon.com/squanto-story-first-thanksgiving/

Squanto Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squanto

Native America and the Mayflower: 400 years of Wampanoag history/ Mayflower 400: https://www.mayflower400uk.org/education/native-america-and-the-mayflower-400-years-of-wampanoag-history/

The American Thanksgiving story many may be familiar with goes something like this: the English Pilgrims settle in the New World, meet a "friendly" Indigenous guide named Squanto who teaches them to plant corn, and together, they celebrate their first harvest.

Very little is known about Tisquantum more commonly known as Squanto. But historians generally agree he was a member of the Patuxet, a band of the Wampanoag Tribe that lived on what would become Plymouth, Massachusetts.

Though there are varying versions of Tisquantum's story, historians seem to agree that prior to the pilgrims' settling in 1620, Tisquantum was captured by English explorers in 1614 and sold into slavery in Europe. He spent a number of years in England where he learned English.

Tisquantum eventually made it back to Patuxet in 1619, only to find his tribe wiped out by an epidemic brought over by the Europeans. It is not known what caused this widespread death and devastation. Varying theories include smallpox, yellow fever, bubonic plague and influenza.

In 1621, Wampanoag Chief Massasoit — with Squanto's aid — negotiated an agreement with the pilgrims, promising not to harm each other and to come to each other's aid in the event of an attack from another tribe.

Tisquantum then claimed that Massasoit had been plotting to attack the English. But this was exposed as a lie, angering the Wampanoag people.

As a result of what many considered an act of treason, Tisquantum was shunned by the Wampanoag. In 1622, Tisquantum would fall ill with fever and die a few days later.