Most Americans first encounter Squanto in a classroom story about Thanksgiving.

He appears at exactly the moment the Pilgrims need him.

He speaks English.

He shows them how to plant corn.

He helps them communicate with Native leaders.

Then the story moves quickly toward a harvest feast and ends with an image of cooperation.

That version is not entirely invented.

Tisquantum, the Patuxet man later remembered as Squanto, did speak English.

He did help the Plymouth colonists.

He did act as an interpreter and guide.

His knowledge mattered enormously during the colony’s first years.

But beginning his story there removes the event that explains almost everything about him.

Tisquantum spoke English because Englishmen had kidnapped him.

He had spent years across the Atlantic, passing through a world of merchants, ships, ports, and forced displacement.

When he finally found a way back to the Wampanoag homeland in 1619, he discovered that Patuxet had been devastated by an epidemic.

His family and most of his community were gone.

Only after that did the Mayflower arrive.

Only after that did English settlers build Plymouth on the place where Patuxet had stood.