photo #9025476

I know the local tribe had saved the colonists but I’ve never heard this story. ~~~~~~~ Samoset's arrival was nothing short of miraculous for the struggling Plymouth colonists. This Abenaki sagamore from coastal Maine had learned English from fishermen who frequented the northern waters, and he used that knowledge to bridge two worlds at a critical moment. What many don't realize is that Plymouth was built on recently emptied land. The Patuxet villages that once thrived there had been decimated by epidemic disease just years before the Mayflower arrived. Samoset explained this painful history to the colonists, helping them understand the haunted landscape they now occupied. The alliance Samoset helped broker between the Pilgrims and Massasoit's Wampanoag Confederacy was a calculated political move on both sides. The Wampanoag had been weakened by disease and needed allies against rival tribes. The English needed everything: food, knowledge, and protection. Tisquantum (Squanto), whom Samoset brought to the colony, became an invaluable intermediary, teaching agricultural techniques that made the difference between starvation and survival. That peace treaty held for approximately 50 years, finally breaking down into the devastating King Philip's War in 1675. But in 1621, it gave a fragile settlement the breathing room it desperately needed. For further reading, see "Mayflower" by Nathaniel Philbrick, "1491" by Charles C. Mann, and primary sources from William Bradford's "Of Plymouth Plantation." The Plimoth Patuxet Museums also offer extensive historical documentation of this period.