History | Native Guides
The World Travels of Tisquantum, or
Squanto
How a lost people’s lone—and lonely—survivor saved the Pilgrims WRITTEN BY
W. Kesler Jackson
I
n 1614, a Patuxet lad named Tisquantum was kidnapped by English explorer Thomas Hunt. The Patuxet lived in what would later be called coastal Massachusetts, one of many bands spread out over scores of villages and towns collectively organized as the Wampanoag Confederacy. Tisquantum was never seen by his people again. Not long after the kidnapping, a devastating disease swept through the region. Tens of thousands of American Indians—indeed, the vast majority of the area’s native inhabitants—perished. Now, entire villages lay completely empty. One of them was a seaside community that had previously been home to the Patuxet. An eerie quiet fell upon the place. Six years passed. When the Mayflower landed at a location its passengers—the Pilgrims— called New Plymouth, the ship was actually landing at the now-empty site of the forsaken Patuxet village, completely reclaimed by nature since the time of the plague. Pilgrim leader William Bradford described the area as “a hideous and desolate wilderness, full of wild beasts and wild men.” The relationship between those “wild men” and the newly arrived colonists was uncertain, to say the least. Bradford characterized his native neighbors as “savage barbarians … readier to fill [our] sides full of arrows than otherwise.” Far to the south, in Virginia, English colonists at Jamestown (founded a decade earlier) had experienced much turmoil in their interactions with the natives, who at various times had played the parts both of friend and blood enemy. 74
A depiction of Native American Squanto, of the Patuxet tribe, serving as guide and interpreter for the pilgrim colonists at the Plymouth Colony and Massasoit, circa 1621. above
AMERI CAN ESSE NCE
