Squanto = Thanksgiving1x
 I've always wanted to know more about Squanto, the Native American who helped the Pilgrims have a reason to celebrate the first Thanksgiving. However, as a kid I was taught precious little about Native American history, despite having been surrounded by towns with names like Massapequa and Cutchogue.
Movie producers and amateur historians have played fast and loose with the facts in order to tell a good yarn. As they see it, Squanto gets to be a kung fu fighting adventurer who speaks English better than a BBC announcer. Squanto also conveniently meets future fellow Native American friend, and Thanksgiving guest, Samoset while in England (thankfully not at the Algonquin Room1x). These digressions are a shame, because the real story of Squanto is fascinating.
Squanto, also known as Tisquantum, a member of the Patuxet tribe that lived in the Plymouth, Massachusetts area, was born about 1585. In 1605, Captain George Weymouth took him to England, probably involuntarily. There he was befriended by Sir Ferdinando Gorges, who brought him into his household and taught him English. Years later, Squanto returned to Plymouth on a mapping expedition with Captain John Smith. In 1614, he was captured by Captain Thomas Hunt, a slave trader, who took Squanto and other tribe members to Malga, Spain, where he was rescued from slavery by a group of friars. After living with the friars for a few years, Squanto traveled to Newfoundland, then England, and eventually back to New England.
In Plymouth, shocked to find that his entire tribe had been wiped out by disease, possibly a plague brought by the Pilgrims, Squanto joined the neighboring Wampanoag tribe, headed by their chief Massasoit, whose members included Samoset, who learned English from fishermen visiting his original home on the coast of Maine.
The idea that Squanto, twice captured, living in exile for most of his adult life, and now the sole surviving member of his tribe in the area, still chose to enthusiastically help the Pilgrims, is undoubtedly one of the more amazing and under appreciated aspects of the first Thanksgiving.
The Pilgrims, sometimes portrayed as a bunch of rubes, were more likely a hardy lot that simply were unschooled in the particular techniques required for survival in their new home. Having lost as many as half their number in the first year, they too, if not for Squanto's help, might have been completely wiped out.
Squanto, with Chief Massasoit's blessing, and for reasons probably entirely altruistic, acted as translator and teacher for the Pilgrims, showing them what they needed to know to fish and hunt locally, and how and what to plant in their rocky New England soil. Just as importantly, he negotiated a treaty by which the Wampanoag would fight along side the Pilgrims in case of attack from another tribe.
Some evidence suggests that Squanto's growing power and influence went to his head. But so did a bad fever, he died in 1622, the year after the first Thanksgiving.
The names of some Native Americans have become much more famous than others. Chief Pontiac is remembered through a car. Samoset, who may not have done a whole heck of a lot, has a town named for him in Maine. Even Geronimo, for whatever strange reason, often has his name shouted out by people jumping from things. Yet Squanto seldom rates more than a line or two in most history textbooks.
I, for one, will remember him in my Thanksgiving toast.
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More can be learned on Squanto, including the debunking of some of the more creative accounts regarding his travels, here.
By Vincent Kish
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