The American, Squanto, was born in the late 1500s in the village of Patuxet on Cape Cod Bay, later named by the English Plymouth, Massachusetts. Lacking written records, we may assume that he grew up there learning to catch fish, plant corn, hunt deer, ducks and turkeys and other wild game. His people often traveled far from Patuxet on trading expeditions. Perhaps on one of these, he met Samoset, who lived on Louds Island on Muscongus Bay, Maine, and who was also a traveler.
In 1605 Squanto was visiting Samoset on Louds Island and heard that a party of Englishmen had landed at Georges Harbor. With other American men, women and children, he visited the Englishmen, traded beaver skins, which they valued highly, for knives, hatchets and iron pots. Americans, who had had nothing but stone tools, were eager for these. On the surface, the camp was an American Eden. Captain George Waymouth invited the Americans aboard his ship for dinner and the Englishmen came ashore for massive clambakes. Together they smoked tobacco through the big claws of lobsters.
However, the Americans, eager for trade goods, planned an ambush at New Harbor. Waymouth avoided it, but planned and executed one himself. He trapped three of his dinner guests below in Archangel and tied them up to take back to England. Squanto and another American, knowing nothing of this, were having a picnic ashore with three Englishmen. Suddenly the Englishmen jumped on the Americans and after a sharp struggle, the Americans were seized by the hair of their heads and taken aboard Archangel. Squanto must have been deeply hurt by this betrayal.
Archangel soon got under way on her voyage back to England and the five Americans were released. Besides Squanto, they were Saffacomit, Maneddo, Nahanada and Skidwarres. Being of remarkably pleasant and forgiving dispositions, they made friends with the English sailors, expanded the English they had already picked up from fishermen, and found that they were being taken to England to describe to Englishmen the woods, streams, fish, animals and people of Maine. They were to serve as walking advertisements for future colonists.
When they arrived in England in August 1605, they were well treated, respected and listened to. Waymouth’s plan for a colony was scuttled, and Squanto and the other Americans were taken over by Georges and Popham to promote a colony for the Plymouth Company. The Americans were to serve as guides and advisers to the new settlers.
The company’s first exploring expedition was sent out the following spring, 1606, under Captain Challons with Saffacomit and Maneddo as guides. Unfortunately, their ship was captured by Spaniards. Challons, Saffacomit and a few others were sent back to England, but Maneddo probably ended his life pulling an oar in a Spanish galley.
At almost the same time, Captain Pring was sent out with Nahanada as guide. Nahanada was returned to his people at Pemaquid and Pring returned to England with an enthusiastic report on Maine.
The next year, 1607, Skidwarres guided Raleigh and Popham to the mouth of the Kennebec and he, too, was returned to his people. Nahanada and Skidwarres were very helpful to the new colony, but unfortunately it failed.
Saffacomit and Squanto lived in England for seven long years. In 1614, Saffacomit was taken to Marthas Vineyard and Squanto sailed with Captain John Smith — of Pocahontas fame — to Monhegan on a voyage to demonstrate that fish and furs would support a colony. Smith in a small boat explored and traded along the coasts of Maine and Massachusetts and Squanto stayed on Monhegan to fish with the others. Smith returned to find one his two ships loaded with salt cod and the other almost loaded. He took Squanto in the first ship and set him ashore at Provincetown. At last, after nine years, Squanto was back within 20 miles of home, Patuxet.
Captain Hunt finished loading the other ship and headed for Spain to sell his fish, but he too stopped at Provincetown, where he found Squanto and an active American community. Playing the part of a good host, Hunt invited a number of Americans aboard for a party. Squanto, who had fished with Hunt and his crew on Monhegan, joined the party. The treacherous Hunt clapped the hatches down on 27 of his guests, including the unfortunate Squanto, betrayed again by Englishmen.
Hunt sold the Americans as slaves in Malaga, Spain, but Squanto, who seemed to have a way of coming to the top, was taken by charitable monks intent on saving the souls of ignorant savages. Of course by this time Squanto was no ignorant savage. He made it to England again, where he lived with John Slanie, treasurer of Newfoundland Company. Here he met Captain Dermer, bound for the Maine coast on an exploring and trading expedition. In the summer of 1619, Dermer set Squanto ashore in Provincetown.
Imagine with what joy Squanto covered the 20 miles across to Patuxet, whether by sea or land. How eagerly he must have expected to greet his family and his old friends he had not seen for 14 years.
Imagine the depth of his grief at finding Patuxet deserted. No wigwams along the shore. Cornfields and pumpkin patches overgrown. A few sad sticks sagging in the mud, remains of the fish traps. The whole village had been wiped out by a white man’s disease, probably smallpox. He went sadly back along the Cape, choked down his grief as best he could, and spent the winter with the Wampanoags.
A year later, in December of 1620, a party of Englishmen, later called Pilgrims, landed at Provincetown, stole some of the Americans’ seed corn and crossed to Patuxet, which they called Plymouth. Squanto saw them build camps on land where he had grown up and it would seem strange if he did not hold some resentment against them. But as the winter wore on, pity must have overcome resentment, for the Englishmen had a miserable time. They were ignorant townspeople who had last lived in Holland. They were starving but had no idea of how to catch fish and no hooks, lines or nets. They had muskets and blunderbusses but no idea where to find game. They lived on hard ship’s bread, a little beer, and what meal they could cadge from Mayflower’s reluctant crew. They lived in miserable huts of wattle and daub, brush packed with clay and roofs thatched with rushes and straw. Half of them died of scurvy, pneumonia and tuberculosis. Those who could did heroic work in helping the sick.
Local Americans, of whom the English were afraid, did nothing, perhaps remembering the treacherous Captain Hunt. In the spring, Samoset turned up from Maine, rejoined Squanto, made friends with the chief of the Massachusetts Americans and determined to help. In the spring of 1621, Squanto walked into the Pilgrim village with the words “Welcome, Englishmen,” to the great astonishment of the Pilgrims. Little did they know that they were talking with a man who had talked with King James.
From this time on, Squanto did not leave the Pilgrims. He showed them how to plant corn in hills with five fish in each for fertilizer. He taught them to make fish traps for the spring run of herring and alewives. He dealt with other tribes of Americans to avert misunderstandings and conflict. Without doubt, he saved the Plymouth colony.
How remarkable that a man born on another continent in another culture, betrayed into captivity and again into slavery by Englishmen, bereft of family and friends by a deadly disease carried into his village by Englishmen and with no incentive but Christian charity, could come to the aid of English people in truly mortal distress! Surely here was a Native American Good Samaritan. q
— Roger F. Duncan