Arrival of Samoset - Excerpt from Mourt’s Relation

A Relation or Journal of the Beginning and Proceeding of the English Plantation Settled at Plimoth in New England…, known as Mourt's Relation, was first published in 1622 to promote Plymouth Colony and encourage more people to financially support the project or join the colony as planters. The unknown authors wrote about Samoset, a sagamore or leader from modern-day Maine, who walked into Plymouth Colony in March 1621 and greeted the colonists in English, a language he had likely learned from the many English fishermen and traders who had been visiting New England for decades.

During his first of three documented visits to Plymouth Colony in 1621, Samoset told the English about Patuxet and the epidemics that had devastated it and other Indigenous communities from present-day northern Maine to western Rhode Island between 1616 - 1619. Although transmission of disease was unintentional on the part of the Europeans, the result was more disastrous than any calculated military attack. Known by many local tribal communities today as “the Great Dying,” the epidemic “swept a 15-mile-wide path right down the coast. Sort of took a left through the middle of Wampanoag country and stopped at Narragansett Bay. The Wampanoags…suffered anywhere from a 50 to a 90% loss in population."¹

The most severely affected areas, including Patuxet, were almost entirely depopulated and communities such as Patuxet were abandoned. The remaining survivors - possibly including some of Tisquantum’s family - dispersed to nearby Wampanoag communities, including Nemasket (Middleborough). Wampanoag people had no precedent for understanding such a devastating illness. The English colonists saw the resulting absence of Indigenous people as Divine Providence. They believed that God provided new lands for his chosen people.

That evening, Samoset spent the night in the house of Stephen Hopkins - the only known Mayflower passenger with any previous experience in the Americas. He returned a day later with more Indigenous men interested in trading with the English. Less than a week later, he returned a third time to announce the arrival of Massasoit, also known by his name Ousamequin, the Pokanoket sachem. Ousemequin was accompanied by a large entourage of men, including his brother Quadequina and translator Tisquantum (sometimes known as Squanto).

Transcription

“Friday the 16. a fair warm day… [Samoset] very boldly came all alone and along the houses straight to the Rendezvous…he saluted us in English, and bad [bade] us welcome, for he had learned some broken English amongst the English men that came to fish at Morattiggon [Monhegan]and knew by name the most of the Captains, Commanders, & Masters, that usually come…he said he was not of these parts, but of Morattiggon, and one of the Sagamores or Lords thereof, and had been 8. months in these parts, it lying hence a day’s sail with a great wind, and five days by land…the wind beginning to rise a little, we cast a horsemans coat about him, for he was stark naked, only a leather about his waist, with a fringe about a span long, or little more; he had a bow and 2 arrows, the one headed, and the other unheaded; he was a tall straight man, the hair of his head black, long behind, only short before, none on his face at all…he [Samoset] told us the place where we now live, is called, Patuxet, and that about four years ago, all the Inhabitants died of an extraordinary plague,²and there is neither man, woman, nor child remaining, as indeed we have found none, so as there is none to hinder our possession, or to lay claim unto it.”³

• Who is Samoset? Why has he come to Patuxet/Plymouth?
  
• How does the writer of Mourt’s Relation describe Samoset?
  
• How is Samoset able to communicate with the English colonists?
  
• Compare Champlain’s map and the description of Patuxet from Mourt's Relation. How did Patuxet change between 1605 and 1621?
  
• Some changes to culture are slow and occur over centuries; other changes happen very quickly. How would you characterize the changes in Patuxet in the 1500s and 1600s?
  
• Based on Samoset’s information, what can we learn about why the English believed it was ok to build their town on the abandoned site of Patxuet?
  

• ¹ Rick Burns. ”European Plague in Native New England, 1616-1619,”American Experience: The Pilgrims Premiered November 2014. Video.
• ² The areas most severely affected by the epidemics, including Patuxet, were almost entirely depopulated. This source suggests that everyone in Patuxet died; however, we know this was not the case. Some survivors - including members of Tisquantum’s family - dispersed to nearby Wampanoag communities, including Nemasket (Middleborough).
• ³Mourt’s Relation: A Journal of the Pilgrims at Plymouth ed. Dwight Heath (Bedford, MA: Applewood Books, 1963), 50