Native Americans taught survival skills to Pilgrims

Pilgrims who established the New Plymouth colony in present-day Massachusetts in 1620 believed God sent Chief Massasoit and the Wampanoag people to provide a lifeline that enabled the European emigrants to survive and sustain their existence in the New World.

“Our name, Wampanoag, means ‘People of the First Light,’” explained Nancy Eldredge of Plimoth Plantation, a living history museum in Plymouth, Mass.

In the 1600s, the Wampanoag (WOMP uh NO ag) nation consisted of an array of affiliated tribes, representing nearly 40,000 people in 67 villages, who inhabited what is now the heart of New England, Eldredge said.

The Pilgrims had sailed from Plymouth, England, on Sept. 6, 1620, with 102 passengers crowded aboard a sailing ship known as the Mayflower.

Known as “Separatists,” they were members of a sect that no longer accepted the Church of England. They were seeking religious freedom.

The Mayflower anchored off the Massachusetts coast about Nov. 11. Scouting teams spent another month going ashore to collect firewood and to select a good place to build a settlement. Bad weather prevented the Pilgrims from landing at Plymouth Rock until Dec.18 or thereabouts.

“The Pilgrims were ill equipped to survive,” Eldredge said. “They did not bring enough food. In the first several months, many died from poor nutrition and lack of adequate shelter.”

Historian Caleb Johnson wrote: “The Pilgrims actually lived out of the Mayflower and ferried back and forth to land to build their storehouses and living houses. They labored all through the winter months of December, January and February, and didn’t start moving entirely to shore until March.”

Dagnabbit, wouldn’t you know, Samoset just happened to be in the right place at the right time. He was visiting Chief Massasoit. Samoset, of the Abenaki tribe in Maine, had learned a few English words from the English fishermen who fished the waters off Monhegan Island in the Gulf of Maine.

On March 16, 1621, Samoset walked right into the Pilgrim colony, approached the white men, saluted them and announced, “Welcome! Welcome, Englishmen!”

The encounter was described in Chronicles of the Pilgrim Fathers, compiled by Alexander Young and published in 1841. According to Young, Samoset “asked for some beer, but we gave him strong water, and biscuit, and butter, and cheese, and pudding, and a piece of mallard; all which he liked well.”

Samoset informed the colonists that he would introduce them to Tisquantum (also known as Squanto), who could speak better English than he.

Tisquantum was a Patuxet, a branch of the Wampanoag tribal confederation. He was serving as special emissary to Chief Massasoit. Tisquantum had learned English while living in London, England, after being rescued from captivity as a slave in Málaga, Spain.

Ramona Peters of the Wampanoag confederation said Chief Massasoit “is a significant figure in our shared history. He stands at the crossroad between the indigenous people of this land and the origins of what would eventually become the United States of America.”

“Massasoit had a vision of how we could all live together,” she said. “There were 50 years of peace between the English and Wampanoag until he died in 1665.”

Squanto devoted himself to helping the Pilgrims. “With kindness and patience, he taught the English the skills they needed to survive, including how best to cultivate varieties of the ‘three sisters: beans, maize and squash,’” Peters commented.

Catherine Boeckman of The Old Farmer’s Almanac said: “Native Americans always inter-planted this trio of seeds because they thrive together, much like three inseparable sisters.”

“In legend, the plants were a gift from the gods, always to be grown together, eaten together and celebrated together. Each of the sisters contributes something to a single planting. As older sisters often do, the corn (or maize) offers the beans needed support,” Boeckman said.

“The beans, the giving sister, pull nitrogen from the air and bring it to the soil for the benefit of all three. As the beans grow through the tangle of squash vines and wind their way up the cornstalks into the sunlight, they hold the sisters close together.”

“The large leaves of the sprawling squash protect the threesome by creating living mulch that shades the soil, keeping it cool and moist and preventing weeds. The prickly squash leaves also keep away raccoons, which don’t like to step on them,” Boeckman said.