ALIEN ABDUCTIONS RETURN TO SAGADOHOC
Popham dispatched his own ship to resupply the projected colony. Challons wasn’t at the rendezvous, so the ship explored the coast and chose a site, Sagadohoc, for the colony. This expedition, led by Thomas Hanham
T
and Martin Pring, was highly important but we know little of its details. The travel anthol- ogist Samuel Purchas said he had prepared Hanham’s journal for publication but left it out to save space. It has since disappeared. We can deduce, however, that Hanham had returned Nahanendo home. The colonial expedition proper,
led by
Captain George Popham (nephew of the Chief Justice) and Raleigh Gilbert (son of the famous Humphrey) arrived in Maine the next year, 1607. Nahanendo (or Nahanada, in its ac-
he seizure of the Richard was a major loss for Gorges, but Lord Chief Jus- tice Popham was determined to push forward. Shortly after Challons sailed,
count) was waiting to meet them. Skicowaros (or Skidwarres) arrived with Popham and Gil- bert and translated for them. In the year since his homecoming, Nah-
anendo had regained his leadership position in his tribe. He now played a crucial, if ambigu- ous role, in relations with the new settlement. George Popham reported to King James that Nahanendo had spread word among the Na- tives about the King’s virtues, so that “among the Virginians and Moassons [Mawooshins] there is no one in the world more admired.” Na- hanendo apparently was fi ghting a propaganda campaign against the local deity Tanto, “an evill spirit which haunts them every Moone.” Tanto’s adherents were warning the tribesmen not to have dealings with the English. But Nahanendo was playing a double
game in his own dealings with the colony, or so Gorges ultimately concluded. Nah- anendo and Skidwarres promised rich trade with the Bashebas, and produced several high-level relatives of the chief, but a face-
to-face meeting with the great chief never happened. Reporting to the King’s minister in Febru-
ary 1608, in an apology for the poor return from Sagadohoc, Gorges blamed the Abenaki returnees. “They shew themselves exceeding subtill and cunning, concealing from us the places, wheare they have the commodityes we seeke for, and if they fi nd any, that hath prom- ised to bringe us to it, those that came out of England instantly carry them away, and will not suffer them to com neere us any more.” If Nahanendo had learned in England that
the settlers needed to show a profi t to make the colony last, he had calculated shrewdly and successfully. Three deaths eliminated the colony’s leadership, those of Justice Popham in England, George Popham in Maine and the older brother of Raleigh Gilbert, which gave him an inheritance to go home to claim. Discouraged by the poor payoff, internal dis- sension and a bitingly cold winter, the Sagado- hoc settlers packed up and went home. The Popham interests continued to send ships to trade, but for a while longer the Natives con- trolled the terrain.
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The strategy of kidnapping Natives might have reached a peak with the Mawooshin Five, but it showed itself to be double-edged. Waymouth’s captives did provide extensive in- formation and linguistic skills that smoothed contact with the English. Ten years later, John Smith listed as one of his colonizing assets “my acquaintance with Dohoday [another permu- tation on Nahanendo], one of their greatest Lords, who had lived long in England.” But the Abenaki also learned signifi cant lessons about the English. Above all they learned what the English wanted from their settlement at Sagadohoc, and how to frustrate it. As Europeans were rapidly learning, a sig-
nifi cant portion of their repatriated abduct- ees, like Epenow, emerged as implacable and well-informed enemies. Although perhaps not as subtle as Nahanendo in attacking the economics of the colonial ventures, abductees up and down the coast became the core of resistance to the intruders. X
James Ring Adams is senior historian at the National Museum of the American Indian – Smithsonian and managing editor of American Indian magazine.
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