Mayflower

he “surely would.” In three years’ time, everything the captive had predicted had come to pass.
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    In the spring of 1619, the English explorer Thomas Dermer sailed south from Maine in a small open boat. Accompanying Dermer was a Native guide who’d been abducted by Thomas Hunt in 1614. The Indian’s name was Tisquantum, or Squanto, and after five long years in Spain, England, and Newfoundland, he was sailing toward his home at Patuxet, the site of modern Plymouth. In a letter written the following winter, Dermer described what they saw: “[We] passed along the coast where [we] found some ancient [Indian] plantations, not long since populous now utterly void; in other places a remnant remains, but not free of sickness. Their disease the plague, for we might perceive the sores of some that had escaped, who descried the spots of such as usually die. When [we] arrived at my savage’s native country [we found] all dead.” Squanto’s reaction to the desolation of his homeland, where as many as two thousand people had once lived, can only be imagined. However, at some point after visiting Patuxet, he began to see the catastrophic consequences of the plague as a potential opportunity.
    Upon Epenow’s return to Martha’s Vineyard, the former captive had become a sachem, and it seems that Squanto had similar, if not greater, ambitions. Squanto took Dermer to Nemasket, a settlement about fifteen miles inland from Patuxet, where Squanto learned that not everyone in his village had died. Several of his family members were alive and well. He may already have begun to think about reestablishing a community in Patuxet that was independent of Pokanoket control. In the wake of the plague, Massasoit was obviously vulnerable, and as Bradford later said of the former Indian captive, “Squanto sought his own ends and played his own game.” But first he had to see for himself the condition of Massasoit and the Pokanokets, so he convinced Dermer that they must push on to the sachem’s village.
    It took about a day to walk from Nemasket to Pokanoket. There they met what Dermer described as “two kings,” who were undoubtedly Massasoit and his brother Quadequina, and fifty warriors. In the immediate and stunning aftermath of the sickness, Massasoit was quite happy to see the Englishman and his Native guide. Dermer wrote that the sachem and his brother were “well satisfied with [what] my savage and I discoursed unto them [and] being desirous of novelty, gave me content in whatsoever I demanded.” Massasoit still had one of the French captives in his possession and agreed to hand him over to Dermer. After redeeming yet another Frenchman and meeting Epenow on Martha’s Vineyard, Dermer left Squanto with Native friends near Nemasket and headed south to spend the winter in Virginia.
    When Thomas Dermer returned to the region the following summer, he discovered that the Pokanokets possessed a newfound and “inveterate malice to the English,” and for good reason. That spring, an English ship had arrived at Narragansett Bay. The sailors invited a large number of Massasoit’s people aboard the vessel, then proceeded to shoot them down in cold blood.
    Almost everywhere Dermer went in the summer of 1620, he came under attack. He would certainly have been killed at Nemasket had not Squanto, who had spent the winter in the region, come to his rescue. But not even Squanto could save Dermer when he and his men arrived at Martha’s Vineyard. Epenow and his warriors fell on Dermer’s party, and only Dermer, who was badly wounded, and one other Englishman escaped, while Squanto was taken prisoner. Soon after reaching Virginia a few weeks later, Dermer was dead.
    Epenow appears to have distrusted Squanto from the start. He more than anyone understood the temptations that went with an intimate understanding of a culture that was a wondrous and terrifying mystery to most Native Americans. If the English should ever achieve a foothold in this land, those such as Squanto and himself, who could speak the Englishmen’s language, would possess a powerful and potentially dangerous advantage. They could claim to know what the English were saying, and no one would know whether or not they were telling the truth. For his part, Epenow had proven his loyalty to his people by attacking Dermer and his men. But Squanto’s true motives were anyone’s guess.
    It