), more commonly known as Squanto (/ˈskwɒntoʊ/), was a member of the Patuxet tribe of Wampanoags, best known for being an early liaison between the Native American population in Southern New England and the Mayflower Pilgrims who made their settlement at the site of Tisquantum's former summer village, now Plymouth, Massachusetts.

He eventually travelled to England and from there returned to his native village in America in 1619, only to find that an epidemic infection had wiped out his tribe; Tisquantum was the last of the Patuxet and went to live with the Wampanoags.

He introduced the settlers to the fur trade and taught them how to sow and fertilize native crops; this proved vital because the seeds the Pilgrims had brought from England mostly failed.

As food shortages worsened, Plymouth Colony Governor William Bradford relied on Tisquantum to pilot a ship of settlers on a trading expedition around Cape Cod and through dangerous shoals.

The tribes who lived in southern New England at the beginning of the 17th century referred to themselves as Ninnimissinuok, a variation of the Narragansett word Ninnimissinnȗwock meaning "people" and signifying "familiarity and shared identity".

[28] There was a class called the pniesesock among the Pokanokets which collected the annual tribute to the sachem, led warriors into battle, and had a special relationship with their god Abbomocho (Hobbomock) who was invoked in pow wows for healing powers, a force that the colonists equated with the devil.

The fishermen off the Newfoundland banks from Bristol, Normandy, and Brittany began making annual spring visits beginning as early as 1581 to bring cod to Southern Europe.

[46] Gorges worried about the prospect of "a warre now new begun between the inhabitants of those parts, and us",[47] although he seemed mostly concerned about whether this event had upset his gold-finding plans with Epenow on Martha's Vineyard.

[49] No truly primary sources of Tisquantum's arrival in Spain were known to exist until Spanish researcher Ms. Purificación Ruiz uncovered two deeds in public archives in Málaga, documenting the facts with original notarial records.

[50] It turns out that on October 22nd, 1614 one Thomas Hunt sold a grand total of twenty-five Native Americans to Juan Bautista Reales, a larger-than-life adventurer well known to historians for having been at the same time Catholic priest, businessman and spy.

This sudden and dramatic change from friendliness to hostility was due to an incident the previous year, when a European coastal vessel lured some Indians on board with the promise of trade, only to mercilessly slaughter them.

To decide the issue, according to Bradford's account, "they got all the Powachs of the country, for three days together in a horrid and devilish manner, to curse and execrate them with their conjurations, which assembly and service they held in a dark and dismal swamp.

Both the colonists and Massasoit's men were unwilling to make the first move, but Tisquantum shuttled between the groups and effected the simple protocol which permitted Edward Winslow to approach the sachem.

They also hoped to show their willingness to repay the grain that they took on Cape Cod the previous winter, in the words of Winslow to "make satisfaction for some conceived injuries to be done on our parts".

The Plymouth colonists waited until the tide allowed the boat to reach the shore, and then they were escorted to sachem Iyanough who was in his mid-20s and "very personable, gentle, courteous, and fayre conditioned, indeed not like a Savage", in Winslow's words.

[90] This mission resulted in a working relationship between the Plymouth settlers and the Cape Cod Indians, both the Nausets and the Cummaquid, and Winslow attributed that outcome to Tisquantum.

[98] Governor Bradford organized an armed task force of about a dozen men under the command of Miles Standish,[99][100] and they set off before daybreak on August 14[101] under the guidance of Hobomok.

Bradford expressed the sentiment with biblical allusion[n] that they found "the Lord to be with them in all their ways, and to bless their outgoings and incomings ..."[112] Winslow was more prosaic when he reviewed the political situation with respect to surrounding natives in December 1621: "Wee have found the Indians very faithfull in their Covenant of Peace with us; very loving and readie to pleasure us ...," not only the greatest, Massasoit, "but also all the Princes and peoples round about us" for fifty miles.

[134] Winslow (who was not there but wrote closer to the time of the incident than did Bradford) gave even more graphic details: The Native's face was covered in fresh blood which he explained was a wound he received when he tried speaking up for the settlers.

The conclusion reached, according to Winslow, was that Tisquantum had been using his proximity and apparent influence over the English settlers "to make himselfe great in the eyes of" local Natives for his own benefit.

Winslow explains that Tisquantum convinced locals that he had the ability to influence the English toward peace or war and that he frequently extorted Natives by claiming that the settlers were about to kill them in order "that thereby hee might get gifts to himself to work their peace ..."[138] Bradford's account agrees with Winslow's to this point, and he also explains where the information came from: "by the former passages, and other things of like nature",[139] evidently referring to rumors Hobomok said he heard in the woods.

Bradford avoided the question of Massasoit's right under the treaty[t] but refused the beaver pelts saying that "It was not the manner of the English to sell men's lives at a price ..." The governor called Tisquantum (who had promised not to flee), who denied the charges and ascribed them to Hobomok's desire for his downfall.

The ship had a cargo of knives, beads and other items prized by Natives, but seeing the desperation of the colonists the captain drove a hard bargain: He required them to buy a large lot, charged them double their price and valued their beaver pelts at 3s.

William Wood writing a little more than a decade later explained why some of the Ninnimissinuok began recognizing the power of "the Englishmens God, as they call him": "because they could never yet have power by their conjurations to damnifie the English either in body or goods" and since the introduction of the new spirit "the times and seasons being much altered in seven or eight years, freer from lightning and thunder, and long droughts, suddaine and tempestuous dashes of rain, and lamentable cold Winters".

He suggests that the "peace" Winslow says was lately made between the two could have been a "rouse" but does not explain how Massasoit could have accomplished the feat on the very remote southeast end of Cape Cod, more than 85 miles distant from Pokanoket.

"[189] As for monuments and memorials, although many (as Willison put it) "clutter up the Pilgrim towns there is none to Squanto..."[190] The first settlers may have named after him the peninsula called Squantum once in Dorchester,[191] now in Quincy, during their first expedition there with Tisquantum as their guide.

And while Henry Wadsworth Longfellow himself had five ancestors aboard the Mayflower, "The Courtship of Miles Standish" has the captain blustering at the beginning, daring the savages to attack, yet the enemies he addresses could not have been known to him by name until their peaceful intentions had already been made known: Let them come if they like, be it sagamore, sachem, or pow-wow, Aspinet, Samoset, Corbitant, Squanto, or Tokamahamon!

A more historically accurate depiction of Tisquantum (as played by Kalani Queypo) appeared in the National Geographic Channel film Saints & Strangers, written by Eric Overmyer and Seth Fisher, which aired the week of Thanksgiving 2015.

[199] This coincided, as Ceci noted, with the "noble savage" movement, which was "rooted in romantic reconstructions of Indians (for example, Hiawatha) as uncorrupted natural beings—who were becoming extinct—in contrast to rising industrial and urban mobs".

[y] The story of the selfless "noble savage" who patiently guided and occasionally saved the "Pilgrims" (to whom he was subservient and who attributed their good fortune solely to their faith, all celebrated during a bounteous festival) was thought to be an enchanting figure for children and young adults.