Tisquantum still occupied a politically unstable position.

English settlers continued arriving.

Native communities continued evaluating the newcomers.

The harvest gathering did not resolve questions of land, authority, religion, trade, or sovereignty.

It was one event inside an ongoing relationship.

This is why placing too much symbolic weight on the feast distorts Tisquantum’s biography.

His most consequential political conflict with Ousamequin unfolded around the same general period.

The alliance he helped facilitate was already under strain.

The feast has survived because later generations wanted a founding ritual.

Tisquantum’s conflict has been forgotten because it complicates that ritual.