It is likely that the balanced story of human slavery is yet to be told. Much has been glossed over as though no longer important, even though related to human history. We have some selected accounts of old African-American slaves and their children, stories of hope, repression, aspiration and sacrifice. One of the first books I read of my own choice, mentioned on another Page, was the story of the life of George Washington Carver, who became a scientist and devoted his life to teaching students at Tuskegee Institute. The story, read in my teens, has never left me. Squanto, the American Indian so valuable to the Pilgrims, ranks with Carver for me from the narratives I have read. I also read the life of Buffalo Bill Cody. For me the Indian won over the Cowboy in comparing the lives of the two men, Squanto and Cody.
One touching slave story is the story of the life of Squanto. I first heard of him when I was in elementary school, but all I learned was that he had befriended the pilgrim colony in the early months after their arrival at Plymouth. The focus of the stories of our classes was on the Pilgrims, their sacrifices, their resolve, their hunger, sufferings and deaths, and their prevailing social ways. We heard little of the Indians, except for the threat they were presumed to offer, and their visit to the Pilgrims on the first Thanksgiving proclamation, as well as their odd practices. We heard little of the realities of the faith of either the Pilgrims or the Indians, except for the writings that so fully documented the leadership and faith of the colonists. The stories did not touch the individual lives and day-by-day activities of the people. We do know that more than half of the colonists were deceased a year after they arrived. How did any of them survive in a rugged wilderness, and become, more than any other group, the parents of generations of Americans that followed? It seems like a miracle when the whole of the story is reported.
Squanto was not black or white – as we have identified people. He was indigenous to America, sometimes called a red-man. although not really red. As I recall the name was first given by Asiatics, and quickly adopted, as the white man gave yellow as the color of Asiatics – also quickly adopted. The American Indian appears to have descended from yellow-skinned Asiatics. When did yellow turn to red? Samoset was an Indian who spoke a bit of English learned from a sea captain who, with his crew, had predated the Pilgrims on the rugged rock-bound coast. The pilgrims learned from Samoset that the land they had platted out for themselves had been abandoned by the Indians four years earlier because of a plague that had decimated the tribe. No Indians wanted that acreage for themselves. His story brought some relief. It appears that he later informed Squanto of his visit, and Squanto, in March, 1621, walked into the Pilgrim village. So it was that Squanto began a personal program of helping the Pilgrims. Governor William Bradford wrote that Squanto was sent of God to help preserve the colony. This Christian, a former slave, assisted the strange new people seeking freedom, but was also Christian in community.
Squanto, years earlier, had been kidnapped with others of his tribe, transported to Spain, and sold as slaves. The Friars of the local monastery bought Squanto, educated him, especially in the Christian faith, and introduced him to other languages so that he gained some basic knowledge of English. When they felt he was ready the Friars freed him, and sent him back to his home with the specific purpose to evangelize Indians. His life otherwise was to be his own. He arrived home in late 1619. The pilgrims arrived in 1620, to be found by a kindly Indian Christian. Squanto befriended the pilgrims, taught them frontier skills, including fishing and planting. He negotiated peace between the English and the Indians that lasted for decades. In 1622 Squanto deceased from an unknown cause. We may never know fully how meaningful was God’s care to use an educated Indian to protect and build the community that survived to provide a way of life that was the most free, and well-marked by its Christian tradition – a people of opportunity and hope. In Squanto, Christ greeted Christian Pilgrims on arrival. There is also evidence that in repatriation of slaves from America back to Africa, there were lay missionaries in the repatriates. Deprived persons became missionaries in normal course. There is a God history. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020