Today is a historic landmark. His story is a real-life adventure marked by what some consider pure luck, while others classify it as miraculous.
Four hundred years ago – on March 16, 1621 – an English-speaking Indian from the Abenaki tribe entered the new settlement in Plymouth, in present-day Massachusetts. He greeted the astonished pilgrims and ordered a drink made from fermented cereal grains.
“Welcome, Englishmen!” proclaimed Samoset, whose name means “one who walks a lot.” In a strong, resonant voice, he asked, “Do you have beer?”
The pilgrims were certainly not abstainers, but at the time of their first close encounter with a Native American, the tap was dry. The Chronicles of Pilgrim Parents reveals that, instead, they offered “strong water” – probably cognac – as well as “biscuit, and butter, and cheese, and pudding, and a piece of wild duck; everything he liked very much. “
No beer, but still an exceptionally good meal for the settlers who emerged from their first winter in the New World! Many of them have died of starvation or died of disease since they landed three months earlier.
In the days that followed, Samoset returned with Indians from the Wampanoag tribe, who were eager to negotiate with the pilgrims. On March 22, Samoset brought with him another English-speaking Indian named S Quanto, who taught pilgrims how to cultivate certain local crops and find wild game. Later, when the colony abandoned its disastrous experience in communal socialism and embraced private property, things really started to improve. It is likely that free enterprise has also solved the beer shortage.
What were the chances that the Plymouth settlers might find perhaps the only two English-speaking Indians on the east coast in March 1621? You can understand why some saw it at the time as a gift from God, a sign that God wanted the colony to succeed.
Samoset, it turned out, had learned English from sailors and fishermen. While I heard about it in Europe after being kidnapped and taken there by an English ship captain. This terrible act accidentally saved Sthough’s life, because when he returned to America, just before the pilgrims arrived, he discovered that his entire Patuxent tribe had been killed by a plague. This fact also meant that the land the pilgrims took possession of (after the storms blew their ship, the Mayflower, off course) was empty and unclaimed. They didn’t steal from anyone.
Four centuries ago, the first encounter between pilgrims and a Native American started a peaceful relationship that lasted half a century. After providing invaluable information and connections, Samoset returned to his home in present-day coastal Maine, but he opened the door to a business relationship and a defensive alliance between pilgrims and wampanoags. Other nearby tribes, such as the Narragansetts, were not so friendly and could very well have eliminated the colony, had they not been deterred.
Samoset was a notable Indian for many reasons. The notes of the Encyclopedia of World Biography,
A talented diplomat for more than 30 years, Samoset recognized the need for alliances and mutually beneficial treaties with European settlers that would help his people survive wars, plagues and slave traders. On July 15, 1625, Samoset signed the first land sale transaction between the East Coast Indians and the settlers. He donated 12,000 acres of Pemaquid Point to John Brown, thus establishing that the real owners of the land in the new world were the Indians, not the English Crown. After Samoset signed another land deed in 1653, he disappeared from historical records and is believed to have died shortly after in what is now Bristol, Maine.
So, let’s remember Samoset and the 16th of March, the day when he met the Pilgrims and asked for a cold. He started events that are certainly more important in world history than the elves and Saint Patrick that we will celebrate tomorrow.