Adaptation can look admirable from a distance, but living through it can be exhausting and morally complicated.

People under pressure may make alliances they would not choose under safer conditions.

They may bargain with dangerous partners.

They may use information aggressively.

They may try to become indispensable because being indispensable feels safer than being powerless.

Tisquantum appears to have done all of those things.

His life therefore belongs to a broader history of Indigenous survival under early colonial pressure.

Native communities did not respond to Europeans in one unified way.

Some leaders traded.

Some resisted.