Lies
My Teacher Told Me by James Loewen, 1995, Excerpts
In 1614 a British
slave raider seized Squanto and two dozen fellow Indians and sold them into
slavery in Malaga, Spain. What happened next makes Ulysses look like a
homebody. Squanto escaped from slavery; escaped from Spain, and made his way
back to England. After trying to get home via Newfoundland, in 1619 he talked
Thomas Dermer into taking him along on his next trip to Cape Cod.
Squanto set foot
again on Massachusetts soil and walked to his home village of Patuxet, only to
make the horrifying discovery that he was the sole member of his village still
alive. All the others had perished in the epidemic two years before. Squanto
threw in his lot with the Pilgrims.
As translator,
ambassador, and technical advisor, Squanto was essential to the survival of
Plymouth in its first two years. Like other Europeans in America, the Pilgrims
had no idea what to eat or how to raise or find it until Indians showed them.
William Bradford called Squanto a special instrument sent of God for their good
beyond their expectation.” He directed them how to set their corn, where to
take fish, and to procure other commodities, and was also their pilot to bring
them to unknown places for their profit.” Squanto’s travels acquainted him with
more of the world than any Pilgrim encountered. He had crossed the Atlantic
perhaps six times, twice as a British captive, and had lived in Maine,
Newfoundland, Spain, and England, as well as Massachusetts.
Squanto was not the
Pilgrims’ only aide: in the summer of 1621 another Indian, Hobomok, lived among
the Pilgrims for several years as guide and ambassador. Hobomok helped Plymouth
set up fur trading posts in Maine, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. Europeans
had neither the skill nor the desire to “go boldly where none dared go before.”
They went to the Indians.
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