Tisquantum
Tisquantum
Tisquantum
Thomas Hunt, however, had other plans. Offering to trade beaver, Hunt lured 24
Nauset and Patuxet Indians onboard his ship and took them captive. John Smith
would later write that Master Hunt "most dishonestly, and inhumanely, for their
kind usage of me and all our men, carried them with him to Malaga, and there for a
little private gain sold those silly salvages for rials of eight." Sir Ferdinando Gorges,
head of the Council for New England, remembered it similarly: "one Hunt (a
worthless fellow of our nation) set out by certain merchants for love of gain; who
(not content with the commodity he had by the fish, and peaceable trade he found
among the savages) after he had made his dispatch, and was ready to set sail,
(more savage-like than they) seized upon the poor innocent creatures, that in
confidence of his honesty had put themselves into his hands."
Hunt stored the Indians below the hatches, and sailed them to the Straits of
Gibraltar, and on to the city of Malaga, Spain, where he sold as many of them as he
could. But when some local Friars in Malaga discovered that they had been brought
from America, they took custody of the remaining Indians, and instructed them in
the Christian faith. As Sir Ferdinando Gorges states, the Friars "so disappointed this
unworthy fellow of the hopes of gain he conceived to make by this new and devilish
project."
The Nauset and Patuxet tribes were outraged by the kidnappings, and became
extremely hostile. English and French ships visiting Plymouth and Cape Cod were
no longer welcomed with profitable beaver trade, as an unwitting French captain
and crew would discover in 1617, when their ship was burned and almost everyone
killed (a few were enslaved) by the Nauset.
One Patuxet did survive, however: Tisquantum. He had somehow found himself
passage from Malaga, Spain into England, where he began living with John Slaney in
Cornhill, London, and began picking up the English language. John Slaney was the
treasurer of the Newfoundland Company which had managed to place a colony at
Cupper's Cove (Cupids), Newfoundland in 1610; he employed Tisquantum,
presumably as an interpreter and as an expert on North American natural
resources. He was sent to Newfoundland, and worked there with Captain John
Mason, governor of the Newfoundland Colony.
In 1619, Captain Dermer and Tisquantum set off for New England, to attempt to
make peace and re-establish trade with the Indians, and to map out the natural
resources that could be exploited by the Company. But upon arriving, they
discovered Tisquantum's town, all the Patuxet, were dead from the plague. He did
make contact with Massasoit, and his brother Quadequina, the heads of the
Wampanoag Confederation, and in the absence of his own people he took up
residence with them. Their plan to make peace foiled by the fact that Tisquantum's
tribe had been completely wiped out, Dermer continued on to see if he could make
peace with the Nauset. He was attacked and taken captive. Tisquantum, hearing
about the incident, came to Dermer's rescue and negotiated his release. Dermer
would continue on south without Tisquantum, where he was attacked again at
Martha's Vineyards. He would die of the wounds after reaching Jamestown,
Virginia.
Tisquantum's return home in 1619 was just in time for the Mayflower Pilgrims, who
pulled into Provincetown Harbor in November 1620. The Pilgrims sent out their
own exploration parties, and during their third expedition they were attacked in
camp early one morning by the Nauset. Shots were fired and arrows flew heavily,
but in the end nobody was injured and the Nauset fled back into the woods. The
Pilgrims continued their expedition around Cape Cod, eventually ending up in the
abandoned Patuxet territory, where they decided to settle (the area had been
named Plymouth by John Smith on his 1614 mapping expedition).
The Pilgrims lived out of the Mayflower, and ferried back and forth to land to build
their storehouses and living houses: they labored all through the winter months of
December, January, February, and didn't start moving entirely to shore until March.
And during that entire time, they saw almost no signs of any Indians, aside from a
few fires burning in the far distance. On March 16, they got a surprise: an Indian
named Samoset walked right into the Colony and welcomed them in broken
English. Samoset was from an Indian group in Maine, and had picked up a few
English words from the fisherman that came into the harbors there. He informed
them there was an Indian, Tisquantum, who had been to England and could speak
better English than he could. Tisquantum made his first appearance on March 22,
at which time he brought Massasoit and Quadequina. The Pilgrims used the
opportunity to negotiate a peace treaty and to establish trading relations.
But Squanto's new-found power soon began to corrupt him. He realized that the
Indians had a significant fear of the English, especially their guns and technology.
He leveraged this fear for his own private benefit, exacting tributes to put in a good
word for someone, or by threatening to have the English release the plague against
them. Squanto even went so far as trying to trick the Pilgrims into a show of military
action, by claiming certain Indian groups were in conspiracy together to fight the
English: but he went too far, and his treachery was discovered by both the Pilgrims
and the Indians.
When Massasoit learned that Squanto was abusing his power and deceiving for
personal gain, he ordered the Pilgrims to turn him over for punishment (death). The
Pilgrims were obligated to do so, by the peace treaty they had signed: but at the
same time they realized that the survival of their Colony depended on
communication with the Indians. But Massasoit had called their hand, and William
Bradford was minutes away from turning Squanto over for execution, when a ship
came onto the horizon. Not knowing whether it was friend or foe, and even
suspecting that perhaps the Indians were in conspiracy with the French, Bradford
refused to turn over Squanto until the identity of the ship was discovered. The ship
turned out to be the Fortune, and for Squanto it was very good fortune it arrived.
The new settlers, the shortage of food, and the oncoming winter distracted from
other events. Then as spring came, new settlers showed up to found another
colony, at Wessagussett: and they had all kinds of problems with the Indians that
required Squanto's interpreting skills. Massasoit, though clearly disappointed and
frustrated, did not bother asking for Squanto's life again.
But Squanto's life was not to last long anyway. On one trip to trade for some corn
seed for the subsequent growing season, he went with Governor Bradford south on
the ocean-side of Cape Cod, and they pulled into Manamoyick Bay because of
dangerous weather conditions. There, in November 1622, Squanto's nose began to
bleed. He told Governor Bradford it was a sign among the Indians of death. He
asked Bradford to pray for him so that he could go to the Englishman's God in
Heaven when he died, and asked Bradford to give various things as gifts to his
English friends back at Plymouth. Within a few days, he was dead.
Source: http://mayflowerhistory.com/tisquantum