Squanto
Tisquantum, more commonly known as Squanto, was a member of the Patuxet tribe of Wampanoags, best known for being an early liaison between the Native American population in Southern New England and the Mayflower Pilgrims who made their settlement at the site of Tisquantum's former summer village, now Plymouth, Massachusetts. The Patuxet tribe had lived on the western coast of Cape Cod Bay, but were wiped out by an epidemic, traditionally assumed to be smallpox brought by previous European explorers; however, recent findings suggest that the disease was Leptospirosis, a bacterial infection transmitted to humans typically via "dirty water" or soil contaminated with the waste product of infected, often domestic animals, and also likely of European origin.
In 1614, Tisquantum was kidnapped by English slaver, Captain Thomas Hunt, who trafficked him to Spain, selling him in the city of Málaga. He and several other captives were said to have been ransomed by local Franciscan friars who focused on their education and evangelization. Having learned English during his captivity, he eventually travelled to England and managed to find a way back across the Atlantic. He arrived back to his native village in America in 1619, only to find that he had become the last of the Patuxet as his tribe had been wiped out by epidemic; so he then went to live with the Wampanoags.
The Mayflower landed in Cape Cod Bay in 1620, and Tisquantum worked to broker peaceable relations between the Pilgrims and the local Pokanokets. He played a crucial role in the early meetings in March 1621, partly because he could speak English. He then lived with the Pilgrims for 20 months as an interpreter, guide, and advisor. He introduced the settlers to the fur trade and taught them how to sow and fertilize native crops; this proved vital because the seeds the Pilgrims had brought from England mostly failed. As food shortages worsened, Plymouth Colony Governor William Bradford relied on Tisquantum to pilot a ship of settlers on a trading expedition around Cape Cod and through dangerous shoals. During that voyage, Tisquantum contracted what Bradford called an "Indian fever". Bradford stayed with him for several days until he died, which Bradford described as a "great loss".
Name
Documents from the 17th century variously render the spelling of Tisquantum's name as Tisquantum, Tasquantum, and Tusquantum, and alternately call him Squanto, Squantum, Tantum, and Tantam. Even the two Mayflower settlers who dealt with him closely spelled his name differently; Bradford nicknamed him "Squanto", while Edward Winslow invariably referred to him as Tisquantum, which historians believe was his proper name. One suggestion of the meaning is that it is derived from the Algonquian expression for the rage of the Manitou, "the world-suffusing spiritual power at the heart of coastal Indians' religious beliefs". Manitou was "the spiritual potency of an object" or "a phenomenon", the force which made "everything in Nature responsive to man". Other suggestions have been offered, but all involve some relationship to beings or powers that the colonists associated with the devil or evil. It is, therefore, unlikely that it was his birth name rather than one that he acquired or assumed later in life, but there is no historical evidence on this point. The name may suggest, for example, that he underwent special spiritual and military training and was selected for his role as liaison with the settlers in 1620 for that reason.Early life
Almost nothing is known of Tisquantum's life before his first contact with Europeans, and even when and how that first encounter took place is subject to contradictory assertions. First-hand descriptions of him written between 1618 and 1622 do not remark on his youth or old age, and Salisbury has suggested that he was in his twenties or thirties when he was captured and taken to Spain in 1614. If that was the case, he would have been born around 1585.Native culture
The tribes who lived in southern New England at the beginning of the 17th century referred to themselves as Ninnimissinuok, a variation of the Narragansett word Ninnimissinnȗwock meaning "people" and signifying "familiarity and shared identity". Tisquantum's tribe of the Patuxets occupied the coastal area west of Cape Cod Bay, and he told an English trader that the Patuxets once numbered 2,000. They spoke a dialect of Eastern Algonquian common to tribes as far west as Narragansett Bay. The various Algonquian dialects of Southern New England were sufficiently similar to allow effective communications. The term patuxet refers to the site of Plymouth, Massachusetts, and means "at the little falls" referencing Morison. Morison gives Mourt's Relation as authority for both assertions.The annual growing season in southern Maine and Canada was not long enough to produce maize harvests. Indian tribes in those areas were required to live a fairly nomadic existence, while the southern New England Algonquins were "sedentary cultivators" by contrast. They grew enough for their own winter needs and for trade, especially to northern tribes, and enough to relieve the colonists' distress for many years when their harvests were insufficient.
The groups that made up the Ninnimissinuok were presided over by one or two sachems. The chief functions of the sachems were to allocate land for cultivation, to manage the trade with other sachems or more distant tribes, to dispense justice, to collect and store tribute from harvests and hunts, and leading in war.
Sachems were advised by "principal men" of the community called ahtaskoaog, generally called "nobles" by the colonists. Sachems achieved consensus through the consent of these men, who probably also were involved in the selection of new sachems. One or more principal men were generally present when sachems ceded land. There was a class called the pniesesock among the Pokanokets which collected the annual tribute to the sachem, led warriors into battle, and had a special relationship with their god Abbomocho who was invoked in pow wows for healing powers, a force that the colonists equated with the devil. The priest class came from this order, and the shamans also acted as orators, giving them political power within their societies. Salisbury has suggested that Tisquantum was a pniesesock. This class may have produced something of a praetorian guard, equivalent to the "valiant men" described by Roger Williams among the Narragansetts, the only Southern New England society with an elite class of warriors. In addition to the class of commoners, there were outsiders who attached themselves to a tribe. They had few rights except the expectation of protection against any common enemy.
Contact with Europeans
The Ninnimissinuok had sporadic contact with European explorers for nearly a century before the landing of the Mayflower in 1620. The fishermen off the Newfoundland banks from Bristol, Normandy, and Brittany began making annual spring visits beginning as early as 1581 to bring cod to Southern Europe. These early encounters had long-term effects. Europeans very likely introduced diseases for which the Indian population had no resistance. When the Mayflower arrived, the Pilgrims discovered that an entire village was devoid of inhabitants. European fur traders traded goods with different tribes, and this exacerbated intertribal rivalries and hostilities.First kidnappings
In 1605, George Weymouth set out on an expedition to explore the possibility of settlement in upper New England, sponsored by Henry Wriothesley and Thomas Arundell. They had a chance encounter with a hunting party, then decided to kidnap a number of Indians. The capture of Indians was "a matter of great importance for the full accomplement of our voyage".They took five captives to England and gave three to Sir Ferdinando Gorges. Gorges was an investor in the Weymouth voyage and became the chief promoter of the scheme when Arundell withdrew from the project. Gorges wrote of his delight in Weymouth's kidnapping, and named Tisquantum as one of the three given to him.
Captain George Weymouth, having failed at finding a Northwest Passage, happened into a River on the Coast of America, called Pemmaquid, from whence he brought five of the Natives, three of whose names were Manida, Sellwarroes, and Tasquantum, whom I seized upon, they were all of one Nation, but of severall parts, and severall Families; This accident must be acknowledged the meanes under God of putting on foote, and giving life to all our Plantations.
However, it is unlikely that the "Tasquantum" identified by Gorges refers to the same man. Circumstantial evidence makes this nearly impossible. The Indians taken by Weymouth and given to Gorges were Eastern Abenaki from Maine, whereas Tisquantum was Patuxet, a Southern New England Algonquin. He lived in Plymouth, and the Archangel did not sail that far south on the voyage of 1605. Adams maintains that "it is not supposable that a member of the Pokánoket tribe would be passing the summer of 1605 in a visit among his deadly enemies the Tarratines, whose language was not even intelligible to him... and be captured as one of a party of them in the way described by Rosier." No modern historian entertains this supposition.
Abduction
In 1614, an English expedition headed by John Smith sailed along the coast of Maine and Massachusetts Bay collecting fish and furs. Smith returned to England in one of the vessels and left Thomas Hunt in command of the second ship. Hunt was to complete the haul of cod and proceed to Málaga, Spain, where there was a market for dried fish, but Hunt decided to enhance the value of his shipment by adding human cargo. He sailed to Plymouth harbor ostensibly to trade with the village of Patuxet, where he lured 20 Indians aboard his vessel under promise of trade, including Tisquantum. Once aboard, they were confined and the ship sailed across Cape Cod Bay where Hunt abducted seven more from the Nausets. He then set sail for Málaga.Smith and Gorges both disapproved of Hunt's decision to enslave the Indians. Gorges worried about the prospect of "a warre now new begun between the inhabitants of those parts, and us"; he seemed mostly concerned about whether this event had upset his gold-finding plans with Epenow on Martha's Vineyard. Smith suggested that Hunt got his just deserts because "this wilde act kept him ever after from any more imploiment to those parts."
According to Gorges, Hunt took the Indians to the Strait of Gibraltar where he sold as many as he could. But the "Friers of those parts" discovered what he was doing, and they took the remaining Indians to be "instructed in the Christian Faith; and so disappointed this unworthy fellow of his hopes of gaine".
No truly primary sources of Tisquantum's arrival in Spain were known to exist until Spanish researcher Purificación Ruiz uncovered two deeds in public archives in Málaga, documenting the facts with original notarial records. Ruiz' findings show that on October 22, 1614, Thomas Hunt sold twenty-five Native Americans to Juan Bautista Reales, an adventurer known to historians for having been a Catholic priest, businessman and spy. The sale of the captives was thinly disguised owing to its illegal nature, because while slavery of North African captives was rampant, enslavement of Native Americans was against the law. Further research by Ruiz found two more notarial records showing that only two weeks later Málaga's Corregidor had regained control of twenty captives and distributed them among a number of local notables, with orders to have them educated in the Catholic faith and local mores. Tisquantum is said to have been baptized a Catholic.
No records show how long Tisquantum lived in Spain, what he did there, or how he "got away for England", as Bradford puts it. Prowse asserts that he spent four years in slavery in Spain and was then smuggled aboard a ship belonging to Guy's colony, taken to England, and then to Newfoundland. Smith attested that Tisquantum lived in England "a good time", although he does not say what he was doing there. Plymouth Governor William Bradford knew him best and recorded that he lived in Cornhill, London with "Master John Slanie". Slany was a merchant and shipbuilder who became another of the merchant adventurers of London seeking to make money from colonizing projects in America and was an investor in the East India Company.