Squanto biography

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Squanto

(Tisquantum)
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Tisquantum, better known by his English name Squanto, was an American Indian guide and interpreter who was essential to the survival of the Plymouth colonists in their first years in the New World. A member of the Patuxet tribe, Squanto was kidnapped in by Englishman Thomas Hunt, a lieutenant under Captain John Smith.

'WELCOME, ENGLISHMEN.'

After travelling to Spain, Hunt attempted to sell his native prisoners, but his plot was discovered by several local friars, who took the men instead. The clergymen attempted to convert the Indians, but Squanto convinced them to let him try to return home. He travelled first to England, where he took a position as a shipbuilder under John Slany and greatly improved his English. Slany brought Squanto with him to Newfoundland, but when the latter was unable to obtain further passage to America, he returned to England. At last, Squanto returned home in , as part of an exploratory expedition. Finding tha

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For generations, the dominant cultural narrative of America’s Thanksgiving holiday has told how a Native American man named Squanto showed the Pilgrims how to get food after they arrived on the Mayflower in Massachusetts in Having fled their native England, the new émigrés endured hardship and privation in both their journey and their adjustment to the new land. Those who survived in the early settlement are said to have gathered with the Native people in a feast of gratitude, establishing the time-honored tradition of having a “Thanksgiving” dinner on the fourth Thursday of November.

The historical details of this somewhat mythologized story are far more complicated—as was the life of Squanto, whose actual name was Tisquantum. He and his Indigenous relatives would have been quite familiar with the tradition of “thanksgiving” because it was, and still is, an essential aspect of their regular spiritual practices, one that predates by many generations the American holiday o

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The story of Squanto

Tisquantum was born in and became known as Squanto, though little is known of his early life.

Some believe Tisquantum was captured as a young man on the coast of what is now Maine by Captain George Weymouth in Weymouth was an Englishmen commissioned to explore the American coastline and thought his financial backers might like to see Native American people.

It is said by some that Tisquantum was captured and brought to England along with four others. Whether or not this is the case, he was in his homeland again by , watching another English explorer called Thomas Hunt arrive on his people’s shores.

Hunt lured 24 Native Americans on board his ship under the premise of trade. Their number included Tisquantum. Hunt locked them up below deck, sailed for Spain and sold these people into the European slave trade.

It is thought Tisquantum was liberated some years later, when it is thought he returned to America in working as an interpreter for Captain Thomas Derme