Tisquantum’s biography shows how much more complicated it can be.

He survived kidnapping, but survival required learning how to function in a foreign society.

He survived years across the Atlantic, but survival depended on relationships with English merchants and sailors.

He survived the epidemic only because he was absent, yet that very survival meant returning to a place where so many others had died.

He survived Ousamequin’s anger because Plymouth protected him, but that protection tied him more closely to a colony whose long-term interests were not the same as those of the Wampanoag.

Every survival opened another problem.

That pattern helps explain why the heroic version of Squanto feels incomplete.

Hero stories usually move toward stability.

Tisquantum’s life moved from one unstable position to another.

He was constantly adapting.