NRO Weekend, Thanksgiving 2000
Squanto, Pilgrim
The remarkable tale of one of the original guests at the Thanksgiving table.

Compiled by Jack Walsh

In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed the last Thursday in November as a day to give thanks, making Thanksgiving Day America's first national holiday. But most Americans think of the first "official" Thanksgiving as the one that took place at Plymouth Colony in 1621. The Pilgrims of Plymouth were joined in their three-day feast by Massasoit, the chief of the Wampanoag tribe, and about ninety of his fellow tribesmen. In his history A New World, Arthur Quinn of the University of California at Berkley recounts the remarkable tale of one of Massasoit's party. His presence helped ensure that Lincoln had a national holiday to proclaim 242 years later.

espite all the frightening stories of Indians, the Pilgrims could scarcely find any human beings at all. People had lived here before, that was certain. The Pilgrims found large caches of corn to which they helped themselves freely. Human bones were also evident. Not just the occasional skeleton, but larger collections — as if this had been a battlefield where the corpses had been left to rot.

Four years before, the tribe of Plymouth, the Pawtuxet, had been wiped from the earth by a mysterious plague. With the Pawtuxet gone, the nearest great chief was Massasoit. He did not regard the Pilgrims as invaders; and unlike Champlain's Hurons, he did not expect military favors in exchange for his friendship.

Within the retinue of Massasoit was the sole surviving member of the Pawtuxet, Squanto. Years before, Squanto had been kidnapped by an unscrupulous European trader coasting in North America. Squanto was apparently lured on board and then carried back to Spain. He escaped from his Spanish owners and went to England, where he became fully conversant in English and the English way of life. He eventually talked himself into passage back to the New World, and had then made his way slowly to Cape Cod, arriving six months before the Mayflower. His return, which should have been the occasion of joyful celebrations, was rather met with silence. No one was left alive to greet him. Instead of a village, he found a desolation. So he drifted into the service of Massasoit, his life having become purposeless.

But he saw now a new people at the site of the old Pawtuxet village, as if sprung up from dry bones. The Pilgrims provided a purpose for his own earlier wanderings. He understood their language, and something of their customs and the ways of their old land. He could now teach them the customs of this land, of this place. He could teach them how to plant corn and fertilize the fields to ensure growth, how and where to catch the fishes and the eel and the clam and the lobster, where and when to gather the wild fruits, to hunt game. He would do all this, and serve as their interpreter with the neighboring tribes. And they would be his new people, providing him with what he had lost while he was away, struggling to free himself from the slavery of their world.