But Plimoth Patuxet historians and Wampanoag interpretations also treat Tisquantum as a complicated figure rather than a simple hero.

He appears to have tried to build independent power.

The Disease Story He Used

One of the most striking accusations against Tisquantum involved the epidemic that had devastated Native communities.

According to colonial accounts, he suggested to some Native people that the English possessed the power to unleash disease and that he could influence whether they used it.

The claim was false.

But it was believable in a world where catastrophic epidemic death had arrived alongside increasing European contact and where Native communities did not yet understand the biological mechanisms involved.

If Tisquantum presented himself as someone close enough to the English to control such a terrifying force, that could make him enormously influential.

This episode reveals a side of him almost entirely absent from the Thanksgiving myth.

He was not merely helping people understand each other.