Squanto helped the Pilgrims survive the first brutal years of the Plymouth colony through
his skills as a translator and a teacher.
But there was a lot more to him than that.
Here's a look at the tragic real-life story of Squanto.
Though he became known to history as Squanto, that was just a nickname.
His full name was actually Tisquantum, which according to Smithsonian Magazine, meant "rage"
and in particular the rage of one of the divine spirits his people worshipped.
Historians estimate that Squanto was born around the year 1580 in the area of what became
Plymouth, Massachusetts.
Squanto was a member of the Patuxet tribe of Native Americans, which was one of a number
of coastal tribes in Massachusetts and Rhode Island that were part of the Wampanoag Confederation.
While each tribe thought of itself as a separate entity, they all spoke dialects of Massachusett.
The Patuxet themselves called their land the "Dawnland" and the inhabitants the "People
of First Light."
The Patuxet were situated along Cape Cod Bay with its shallow water, while ashore the people
grew fields full of maize.
It was in this environment that Squanto gradually was educated, learning to hunt, fish, and
cultivate maize.
He became most likely a counsellor and retainer to the local sachem.
Unfortunately, there is no record of what Squanto looked like, but considering his skills,
he must have been physically formidable, indeed.
According to the Massachusetts Archaeological Society Bulletin, Squanto's world turned immediately
upside down when, in 1614, he and 19 other Native Americans were captured by Thomas Hunt.
Hunt was the captain of a ship of a trading and exploration mission, but he only had managed
to collect a cargo of dried fish, so he wanted to make the trip more profitable
Hunt put the Patuxets, as well as other Wampanoags he had captured, below decks and made for
Malaga, Spain.
There, he sold some of the Native Americans into slavery.
Before he could sell Squanto, Catholic friars came and confiscated the prisoners.
The Catholic Church rejected and condemned brutality toward Native Americans, instead
wanting to convert them.
It's unclear what happened next, but somehow Squanto convinced the church authorities to
release him with the intent for him to return home.
Squanto was put on a ship for England, and ended up living for a time with a man named
John Slany, who was treasurer of the Newfoundland Company.
Smithsonian Magazine speculates that Squanto learned English from Slany, which made Squanto
a valuable asset – with command of both English and Native American dialects, Squanto
had a unique set of skills that could be very useful for traders and explorers.
Squanto convinced Slany to send him along on a voyage back to North America.
He was probably hoping to return to Patuxet, but only made it as far as Newfoundland.
Still, he made the best of it.
There he met an explorer named Captain Thomas Dermer, who became intrigued by Squanto's
tales of his glorious homeland.
Dermer took Squanto back to England, where they met with a man named Sir Ferdinando Gorges,
who had attempted to establish a colony in Maine but failed due to efforts by the Native
Americans to drive the Europeans out.
Gorges was interested in trying again and gave Dermer a commission.
After touching down in Maine in 1619, Dermer sailed with Squanto and five or six other
men south toward Patuxet.
It was there that Squanto would receive the greatest shock of his life.
After five years traveling the globe in a desperate attempt to return home, Squanto
finally arrived.
But it wasn't the homecoming he no doubt had been longing for.
Instead, it was horror.
Beginning in 1616, while Squanto was being held in Europe, a terrible plague swept through
New England.
The Native people had no natural immunity to the diseases that had been brought to America
by colonizers, and the Wampanoags suffered horribly.
Though it's impossible to know exact numbers, it's believed that upwards of 90% of the Native
population died in just three years - including the entire population of Patuxet.
"Go back to your village, Squanto, and see what the English have brought to your people."
In 1637, colonist Thomas Morton wrote an account of the events in his book New English Canaan,
saying,
"The hand of God fell heavily upon them, with such a mortal stroke that they died on heaps
as they lay in their houses; and the living, that were able to shift for themselves, would
run away and let them die, and let their carcasses lie above the ground without burial.
For in a place where many inhabited, there had been but one left to live to tell what
became of the rest; the living being (as it seems) not able to bury the dead, they were
left for crows, kites and vermin to prey upon...."
Though it's believed that some members of his people may have survived and been assimilated
into other villages, Squanto was considered by many to be the last of the Patuxets.
And he soon lost his only other ally.
In 1620, Dermer returned to visit.
But in a misunderstanding, he was attacked by a different group of Natives, and slain.
Squanto ultimately fell in with Massasoit, who was the head sachem of the Wampanoag Confederation.
And it wasn't long before Massasoit needed him, because just a few months after Dermer's
death, another group from England arrived - the Pilgrims.
This sudden depopulation made the settlement of Plymouth much easier for the English.
And there was another thing working in their favor: the Wampanoag's rivals, the Narragansetts,
escaped the plague mostly untouched.
That left Massasoit caught between a rock and hard place, with the English on one side
and the Narragansetts on the other.
Massaoit wasn't sure what to do - until Squanto stepped in.
He advised Massasoit to avoid conflict with the English because they had muskets, cannons,
and could unleash disease on them.
This convinced Massasoit to seek an alliance with the English - and set in motion events
that would change the course of history.
Still, according to the book Mayflower, Massasoit was suspicious of Squanto, so in order to
make first contact with the Pilgrims, he sent Samoset, a visiting sachem, on March 17, 1621,
to the fledgling settlement.
Samoset carried with him two arrows, one with a head and the other without.
These he presented to the Pilgrims to find out if they wanted war or peace.
Samoset, however, only spoke rudimentary, broken English, so after these preliminaries,
Massasoit and Squanto joined Samoset on a second visit on March 22.
Squanto, with his fluent English, acted as translator and enabled a treaty of friendship
in which both Pilgrims and Wampanoags promised not to do violence to one another and to aid
one another if attacked.
This was to the benefit of Massasoit, who could use the English as a deterrent against
rival tribes in the region, such as the Narragansett.
After the alliance was formalized, Massasoit ordered Squanto to live among the Pilgrims
and act as his go-between.
This was meant to ensure to the Pilgrims of Massasoit's good faith and friendship.
Squanto proved to be valuable to the survival of the Plymouth colony.
In addition to teaching them native farming techniques for the depleted soil of the region,
he also helped them establish vital trade contacts.
The Pilgrims used these contacts to obtain animal pelts, which they used to pay their
financial backers in London.
Squanto, as translator and liaison, became invaluable to the English.
Without him, there would have been no first Thanksgiving in American history, which was
more of a diplomatic negotiation than anything else.
The more valuable he became to the Pilgrims, though, the more his rivals began to worry
about his outsized influence.
In the summer of 1621, Corbitant, a rival of Massasoit, threatened to kill Squanto,
viewing him as the mouthpiece of the English.
He was rescued by a detachment of English soldiers led by Miles Standish - but it was
just a sign of things to come.
William Bradford, the governor of Plymouth colony, later wrote that other Native Americans,
"[...] began to see that Squanto sought his own ends, and played his own game, by putting
the Indians in fear, and drawing gifts from them to enrich himself; making them believe
he could stir up war against whom he would, and make peace for whom he would."
So what was Squanto's game?
Squanto's ultimate goal seems to have been to make himself a grand sachem and depose
Massasoit.
According to Smithsonian Magazine, Squanto realized that he could not stay in Plymouth
forever and was already organizing a renewal of Patuxet with some plague survivors.
To be successful, he needed to play the English and Native Americans against each other.
Massasoit, still suspicious of Squanto and his intentions, sent a warrior named Hobamak
to monitor him in Plymouth.
The pair quickly grew to be rivals.
According to New England Quarterly, Squanto was using his power to try to peel away power
from Massasoit and the Wampanoag by driving trade away from them and to the Massachusetts
tribes.
Hobamak warned the Pilgrims that Massasoit believed that two rival tribes, the Massachusetts
and Narragansetts, were in confederation against them — and that Squanto had been in secret
communications with them.
Meanwhile, Squanto seemed to grow more emboldened.
He also showed signs of trying to undermine the alliance between Massasoit and the Pilgrims.
In January 1622, the Pilgrims received a bundle of arrows wrapped in snakeskin from a Narragansett
chief, clearly not a friendly sign.
Squanto advised the Pilgrims to send back a bundle of shot and powder in response.
Diplomatically, the Pilgrims should have consulted with Massasoit before committing any action.
It made Squanto seem to Massasoit more and more like a loose cannon.
Squanto grew bolder.
In early 1622 as detailed in the New England Quarterly, Squanto's efforts to undermine
Massasoit were paying off.
Wampanoags who typically went to the sachem for protection were now turning to Squanto.
This was in part motivated by fear.
Squanto was warning his fellow Wampanoags that the English could release the plague
at will, and only he could control them.
Governor William Bradford wrote that Squanto's words, quote, "did much to terrify the Indians
and made them depend more on him, and see more to him, than to Massasoit."
According to Smithsonian Magazine, Squanto had been warning the Pilgrims that Massasoit
would betray them by allying with the Narragansett and then attack.
This was a set up on the part of Squanto.
In April, just after Squanto left with some Pilgrims as part of a trading expedition with
the Massachusetts, a member of the reconstituted Patuxets came running into the settlement.
The Patuxet warned the Pilgrims that Massasoit and the Narragansetts were about to attack
the Plymouth colony.
But the ploy failed.
Suspicious, Bradford in response sent the wife of Hobamak to Massasoit's village.
She reported that in fact, all was quiet.
It became clear to Massasoit that Squanto was trying to use the Pilgrims to eliminate
him.
He called for the Pilgrims to hand over Squanto so he could execute him.
His envoys offered Governor William Bradford a knife so that he could cut off Squanto's
head and hands.
Bradford refused.
He told Massasoit that while he would chastise Squanto, he could not lose him because he
was too valuable for his colony.
This created a terrible tension between the colony and Massasoit, since it, in effect,
went against their treaty of friendship.
And Squanto now could not leave the Plymouth colony without an escort.
In October 1622, Squanto and Massasoit seemingly made peace - but just a month later, Squanto
suddenly took ill and died with no warning.
Though his death is usually ascribed to one of the many European diseases, the fact that
Squanto would have been exposed to these in Europe and thus gained a measure of immunity
has led some historians to speculate that he may have been poisoned.
According to the New England Quarterly, at the time of Squanto's death, the political
situation between the Native Americans and the colonists had grown incredibly complicated.
It took several months for relations to reestablish themselves.
Peace remained between the Wampanoags and the English for the remainder of Massasoit's
life.
As for Squanto, he has passed on into popular memory as the stereotypical "noble savage"
or as Smithsonian Magazine pronounces, the "friendly Indian."
This popular conception of Squanto is unfair.
As his history has shown, he was not only a highly intelligent and skilled person, he
was also highly ambitious.
It was this ambition which nearly undermined the fragile alliances of the early Plymouth
colony.
Perhaps this ambition stemmed from his tragic experiences as a captive followed by the destruction
of his people.
In all cases, Squanto must be appreciated as a considerable individual more than anything
else.
In the end, however, his untimely death was a capstone tragedy for this icon of American
history.
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