by Victoria Rose Perkins

Created on: November 02, 2009

Squanto, a native American Indian of the Pawtuxet tribe, was instrumental in helping the Pilgrims when they arrived in Plymouth harbor in 1620. He served as a guide, advisor of agriculture, interpreter and played the role of an unoffical ambassador between the Pilgrims and the surrounding tribes. However, the question of how did he know the English language, begs for an answer.

You might say, Squanto became an early world traveler, albeit an unwilling one. Captured and kidnapped, in 1614, by Captain Thomas Hunt, Squanto was sold as a slave in Malaga, Spain. Here he was befriended by some local Spanish monks, who had hoped " to instruct him in the Christian faith."

Squanto lived with the monks for about a year and then met a wealthy Englishman who took him to live with him in England. Sir John Slaney was "Treasurer of the Newfoundland Company." Squanto remained for 4 years as an indentured servant, before being sent by Sir John as a guide and interpreter to Newfoundland, to help lead the ship's captain and crew so that they could begin fur trading with Native Americans. Also, helping them to explore the area for any natural resources, to be taken back to England.

Squanto was told he would be returned home, once he completed being a scout and successfully established trading relations with the local Indian tribes. In 1619, a Captain Dermer returns Squanto to Plymouth harbor. Squanto soon discovers that his whole family and tribe were wiped out by a plague.

Squanto then joins up with the nearby Wampanoag tribe. A year later, the Pilgrims arrived and settled on the very same area that had been Squanto's tribal home.

What is interesting here is, Squanto could have been a very bitter man, having been taken away from his home, made to live in two strange countries and then return four years later only to discover his tribe and family were all deceased.

Instead, he becomes the go-between for the Pilgrims and the Wamponag tribe. He uses all his skills, both Indian, and what he had learned in the way of the Englishman, by living in London for four years, and happily helps the struggling Pilgrims survive, and later begin to thrive.

After his initial help, teaching better ways to grow and secure food, during his two remaining years spent with the colonists, he takes them as far as Rhode Island on guided tours to learn how to trade with other tribes.

Without a doubt, Squanto was an invaluable assistant in helping the Pilgrims. He became great friends with the Pilgrim's Govenor William Bradford. On one of their expeditions to trade with another Massachusetts tribe, Squanto took ill, with what was then called, Indian fever. Just before he died, Governor Bradford reported Squanto asked, "to pray for him, that he might go to the Englishmen's God in heaven, and bequeathed sundry of his things to sundry of his English friends as rememberances of his love, of whom they had a great loss."

Pilgrim's regarded Squanto as a "God-send," and indeed, he was.

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