ONCE IS ENOUGH S
THE BOGUS DOUBLE KIDNAPPING OF SQUANTO/TISQUANTUM
quanto (or more precisely Tisquantum), the English-speak- ing Patuxet Indian, famously helped save the Puritan settle- ment in New Plimoth in 1621.
He learned English and about the English as the victim of a kidnapping in 1614 in a rogue slaving raid by Captain Thomas Hunt. Hunt was part of the New England explora- tion led by Captain John Smith, but the slaving venture was his own idea, and he was roundly denounced for ruining English relations with the Cape Cod tribes. Tisquantum was one of 27 Natives who were taken to Spain to be sold. After redemption in Spain by “the friars,” Tisquantum wound up in England as house guest of one Thomas Slanie, merchant and investor in a settlement in New- foundland. Tisquantum joined the colony of Cu- pid’s Cove as interpreter and for his services was given passage home to Patuxet. The kidnapping by Hunt and what followed are well documented. But there is an often-told tale, wide-
spread on the Internet, that Tisquantum was also one of five Natives kidnapped in Maine by the Waymouth expedition of 1605. This would give him the singular distinction of having been abducted by aliens twice. But the earlier kidnapping by Waymouth quite certainly never happened. The confusion comes from one sentence.
Two of Waymouth’s victims wound up as “guests” of Sir Ferdinando Gorges, commander of the fort at Plymouth, England. (See main article.) We know their names from reports of the expedition written by James Rosier and in recognizable variants in Gorges’ contemporary account – Manedo and Assacomoit. But in a late-in-life memoir, Gorges (or an editor) calls
them Manida and Skettwarrows. and adds Tasquantum to the list, even though the latter is totally absent from Rosier’s report. This last clearly garbled statement is the sole evidence for Squanto’s supposed first abduction. And the entire publication is problematic. Gorges wrote two histories of his American
ventures, confusingly called the “Brief Relation” (published in 1622) and the “Brief Narration” (published in 1659.) The 1622 account, dealing with Gorges’ personal involvement, picks up the story in 1606, with the Richard affair. Tisquantum or Squanto is not mentioned in any account of the affair.
is plausible in the sense that Sir Ferdinando’s faculties must have declined even more sharply after his death. This account was not published until 1659, in a posthumous edition supervised by his grandson, also named Ferdinando. It’s not even certain that the original Sir
Ferdinando wrote the conflated sentence, since his handwritten version of the book has not survived. And this publication was troubled in other aspects.
This posthumous narration was published
APOLOGIZED FOR IT PUBLICALLY IN A NEWSPAPER AD THE YEAR AFTER. YOUNG FERDINANDO, THE
PUTATIVE EDITOR, DECLARED HIMSELF ‘INJURED’ BY THE CONDUCT OF THE PUBLISHER.”
But Tisquantum does appear two pages
later in Gorges’s 1622 book, in an accurate account of his abduction in 1614 by Captain Hunt. It is clear from the context that he has no connection with the group brought over in 1605 or the two sent back with Captain Chal- lons. Gorges wrote, “Notwithstanding these disasters [the seizure of the Richard], it pleased God so to worke for our encouragement again, as hee sent into our hands Tasqantum, one of those salvages that formerly had been betrayed by this unworthy Hunt before named.” The conflation of Tisquantum with the first
group of captives comes at least two decades later, when Gorges wrote his second book, or even later than that, when the book was finally published. Many writers attribute the confusion to Gorges’ declining memory. The manuscript, they assume, must have been written after 1640, when he was in his 70s. This argument
“THE MISATTRIBUTION WAS SCANDALOUS ENOUGHTHAT FERDINANDO THE GRANDSON
as the third of four tracts in a single volume entitled America Painted to the Life (See title page on p. 33 ). The first tract was a history of Spanish misdeeds by the younger Gorges, but the second, attributed to Sir Ferdinando, was a previously published work by another author. (The fourth tract was a remaindered work by yet another writer, that the printer threw in for good
measure.) The misattribution was scandal- ous enough that Ferdinando the grandson apologized for it publically in a newspaper ad the year after. Young Ferdinando, the puta- tive editor, declared himself “injured” by the conduct of the publisher. We have to wonder how carefully he supervised any part of the publication. Was the conflation of Tisquantum with Waymouth’s captives the fault of sloppy editing, or even the error of a printer confused by all the strange names? Either way, we must conclude that the supposed first kidnapping of Tisquantum never happened. None of the first-hand sources support it. The tale is a historian’s extrapolation based solely on one conflated sentence in an unreliably edited publication. The tale should remind us of the dangers of relying uncritically on the Internet and on written histories themselves.
SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION 41
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