Native communities could cooperate with Europeans in one moment and resist them in another.

The seventeenth-century world was not organized according to the clean categories later national myths imposed on it.

Tisquantum’s biography survives precisely because he crossed those categories constantly.

He was Patuxet and Atlantic traveler.

Captive and interpreter.

Teacher and political schemer.

Indispensable to Plymouth and distrusted by Wampanoag leadership.

His life becomes understandable only when all of those identities remain visible.

The Historical Tisquantum Is More Interesting Than The Myth

The simplified Squanto story is memorable because it is easy.