Massasoit

As of the 1610s, the confederation had a fairly powerful paramount sachem, whose given name was Usamequin, and that's generally how I'm going to refer to him.

although he also used the title of Massasoit, meaning great leader or great spokesman, and that is how the European colonists came to know him as Massasoit.

But Usamequin came from a village called Poconoket, a relatively large and powerful village on the slopes of a large hill called Montauk or Mount Hope, which overlooks Mount Hope Bay, a major inlet on the eastern side of Narragansett Bay.

And this village probably became a very important center of power and defense during this long feud with the Narragansetts.

So this basic cadre, Bradford, Standish, Winslow, and Brewster, and a few of their friends and kin, they would basically run the colony and provide it with remarkable stability and continuity for about the next 30 years.

Now still, the colony would likely not have survived without the Anglo-Wampanoag alliance, which provided external stability.

And over the course of 1621, small English delegations made the several-day-long overland trip to Poconoket to visit and exchange gifts with the Massasoit.

Usamequin, for his part, agreed to stop natives from making too many random visits to Plymouth in search of food and entertainment.

I'll get there.

It was a 50-foot tall granite outcrop that the local Wampanoag believed was an image of Massasoit.

On June 19th, 2019, part of the outcrop broke off.

Oh, kind of old man in the mountain style? It kind of went old man in the mountain style.

what

might

be considered Massasoit.

I was just wondering if you look up and you see ghostly images of the Profile

Yeah.

And so, like, literally, Governor Bradford helps do a peace treaty with Chief Massasoit, the chief of the Wampanoag Indians.

Goes for more than 50 years, the longest lasting peace treaty between any whites and any natives in American history.

And, again, worth pointing out, uh, that first winter when the Pilgrims arrive, they, they, they don't really get to Plymouth.

He then in 1619 comes back.

Not to digress too much in the story, it's incredible, but what's worth noting is when the Pilgrims, they, that, that second winter is when we had, they had the fir- or that, that fall, they had the first Thanksgiving.

They're having a Thanksgiving because they're gonna thank God that God brought them friends and allies like Squanto and Samoset and Chief Massasoit, and that Squanto had showed them how to grow crops, and they, they, they thought, "This year we might not starve." [laughs]

Yeah.

At night, the five Indians went away, but Samoset had made up his mind to stay longer with his new friends.

A few days later, seeing that he had no idea of going home, the Puritans sent him to find Massasoit, who, as Samoset had told them, was the chief of the Indian tribes in that neighborhood, the Wampanoags.

Soon, Massasoit, the chief, came with sixty armed and painted warriors, terrible to look at in their feathers and paint.

But Massasoit did not come to fight.

He wanted peace between his tribe and the strange people.

After a little talk, he sat down with John Carver, the governor of this little colony, smoked the pipe of peace with him, and promised to befriend the colony as long as he should live.

This treaty he always kept, and as he was a very powerful chief, the Puritans were safe from Indian attack as long as he lived.

It was after his death that their real trouble with Indians began.

So what are you going to do? Finally, you have the Pilgrims and New England, and they actually had a significantly more peaceful start making an alliance with the Wampanoag, who were a weaker tribe in the area in search of alliances facilitated by Squanto, who had spent a little time abroad, learned English.

He was able to help facilitate contact and trade, but he would also inflame the tensions by playing his own power politics between himself and Massasoit would eventually demand the English hand over Squanto to be killed, and their refusal to do so would strain these kinds of relations.

However, there wouldn't be a major conflict until the Pequot War, and the Pequot were heavily resented by the Narragansett and the Mohegan due to their aggressive pushes for territory and control and kind of subjugating surrounding tribes into subordinate relationships of offering tribute.

When they killed the English traitor John Oldham, the Massachusetts Bay Colony would respond with their own attacks, aided by these other tribes basically sick of the Pequot eventually resulting in victory over them after the attack on Mystic Village.

In March 1621, they made first contact with the Wampanoag.

The Wampanoag chief, Massasoit, was hesitant to trust the Pilgrims.

Also uncertain of the Puritans was Squanto, a Patuxet native who had been taken in by the Wampanoag.

Squanto, or Tisquantum, spoke English and had spent time in Europe after he'd been kidnapped by an English explorer in 1614.

From their earliest settlement in St. Augustine, the Spanish traveled inward toward their territorial conquests in Mexico and upward toward Canada, carving a path through the center of the North American continent.

By the end of the 17th century, Spain's North American empire would cover much of the Deep South, Midwest, and western portions of the continent.

France, England's longtime rival and chief competitor in North America, set their sights for permanent settlement along the St. Lawrence River.

Still hoping for an easy path to the Pacific, the settlements, Tadoussac, Quebec, Trois-Rivières, and Montreal, followed the winding St. Lawrence further and further inland.

His knowledge of both languages made him indispensable for any negotiation or trade.

The Pilgrims arrived in 1620, and within months, Squanto had already begun negotiating with Chief Massasoit.

He helped translate not just words, but customs, explaining how to sow corn and harvest beans, which were critical to the settlers' survival.

The early Thanksgiving story is often romanticized, but at its core, it was a negotiation mediated by an interpreter.