Here I'm copying from the suberb delanceyplace website where they select a
page or two from a (fairly) recent book.
"In today's encore excerpt -- Thanksgiving. The meeting in 1621 between
'Squanto', other Native Americans and the Pilgrims, as seen from the
perspective of those Native Americans:"
<<<<
On March 22, 1621, an official Native American delegation walked through
what is now southern New England to negotiate with a group of foreigners
who had taken over a recently deserted Indian settlement. At the head of
the party was an uneasy triumvirate: Massasoit, the sachem
(political-military leader) of the Wampanoag confederation, a loose
coalition of several dozen villages that controlled most of
southeastern Massachusetts; Samoset, sachem of an allied group to the
north; and Tisquantum ['Squanto'], a distrusted captive whom Massasoit had
reluctantly brought along as an interpreter.
Massasoit was an adroit politician but the dilemma he faced would have
tested Machiavelli. About five years before, most of his subjects had
fallen before a terrible calamity. Whole villages had been depopulated
[from disease] -- indeed the foreigners ahead now occupied one of the
empty sites. It was all he could do to hold together the remnants of his
people. Adding to his problems, the disaster had not touched the
Wampanoag's longtime enemies -- the Narragansett alliance to the west. Soon
Massasoit feared they would take advantage of the Wampanoag's weakness and
overrun them.
Desperate threats require desperate countermeasures. In a gamble Massasoit
intended to abandon, even reverse, a long-standing policy. Europeans had
been visiting New England for at least a century. Shorter than the natives,
oddly dressed, and often unbearably dirty, the pallid foreigners had
peculiar blue eyes that peeped out of the masks of bristly animal-like hair
that encased their faces. They were irritatingly garrulous, prone to fits
of chicanery, and often surprisingly incompetent at what seemed to Indians
like basic tasks.
But they also made useful and beautiful goods -- copper kettles, glittering
colored glass, and steel knives and hatchets -- unlike anything else in New
England. Moreover they would exchange these valuable items for cheap furs
of the sort used by Indians as blankets. It was like happening upon a dingy
kiosk that would swap fancy electronic goods for customers' used socks.
Over time, the Wampanoag, like other native societies in coastal New
England, had learned how to manage the European presence. They encouraged
the exchange of goods, but would only allow their visitors to stay ashore
for brief, carefully controlled excursions . . . . Now Massasoit was
visiting a group of British with the intent of changing the rules. He would
permit the newcomers to stay for an unlimited time -- provided they
formally allied with the Wampanoag against the Narragansett.
Tisquantum the interpreter had shown up alone at Massasoit's home a year
and a half before. He spoke fluent English because he had lived for several
years in Britain. But Massasoit didn't trust him . . . And he refused to
use him to negotiate with the colonists until he had another independent
means of communication with them.. . . Their meeting was a critical moment
in American history. The foreigners called their colony Plymouth; they
themselves were the famous Pilgrims. As schoolchildren learn, at that
meeting the Pilgrims obtained the services of Tisquantum -- usually known
as 'Squanto.'
[In our high school texts the story is told that] 'a friendly Indian named
Squanto helped the colonists. He showed them how to plant corn and how to
live on the edge of the wilderness. A soldier, Captain Miles Standish,
taught the Pilgrims how to defend themselves against unfriendly Indians.'
The story isn't wrong so far as it goes. But the impression it gives is
entirely misleading.
>>>>
From 1491 by Charles C. Mann (Vintage 2005, 2006)
Keith Hudson, Saltford, England
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