J—dVIt's Thanksgiving in the U.S. so once again I am here to tell you about Tisquantum. Did you ever wonder how the pilgrims communicated with the Wampanoag they encountered? Maybe you just assumed they used simple hand gestures (because that's how you communicate with “savages”). 🙅♂️ NOPE!!! When the colonizers landed out strolled Tisquantum, who greeted them in perfect English!
Tisquantum was abducted and enslaved in 1614. He lived first in Spain and then in England. Then in 1619 he sailed back home, serving as an interpreter, only to learn that everyone in his home village had died of disease. He eventually moved in with a neighboring band which is where the settler colonists met him. He ended up being an important diplomatic link between them and the locals.
From there the dealings and double dealings between the various local bands, Tisquantum, and the the settlers gets complicated. There is a lot of history there full of actual people with complex motivations. The bidirectional interaction between “new” and “old” world often get flattened into a single point, with a clean before and after. But there is so much more there!
All GNU social JP content and data are available under the