Great Leader: Samoset of the Abenaki

At many points during their history, American settlers owed their survival to the timely assistance of Natives who were more than willing to help.  On March 16, 1621, the Pilgrims in Plimouth Plantation, Massachusetts were in a dire situation.  They had not brought seed or farm implements with them in the Mayflower, and many of them were townspeople who wouldn't have had the faintest idea how to farm back in England, let alone in America.  As they set about building crude shelters and worrying about defense, a Native walked into the camp and greeted them, "hello, Englishmen."

By their own account, the shocked Pilgrims collected their scattered wits and prevented Samoset from entering into one of the cabins.  They were even more shocked at his extensive knowledge of English and Englishmen, even knowing the names of several fishing captains who frequented the Maine coast.  Had they known more about Samoset, they would've solved the mystery immediately.  The Abenaki, an Algonquian-speaking people, inhabited what is now Maine and portions of New Hampshire and Vermont.  The Wampanoag and Massachusett tribes were also Algonquian speakers, so it would've been easy for Samoset, a Sagamore or sub-chief of the Abenaki, to converse and communicate with Massassoit Ousamequin.  Samoset had been visiting the Great Sachem of the Wampanoag throughout the winter and his handy grasp of English would help both Settlers and Natives immensely.

The Gulf of Maine has always been a bountiful fishing area.  Soon after Jean Cabot's expedition in 1497, word had arrived back in England and Europe of the shoals of cod, herring and other fish just waiting for the taking.  Herring in particular could be salted down, preserved and used as bait fish or food.  Often, these fishermen had landed on the coast and had interacted with the Abenaki.  The Abenaki were experiencing White foodstuffs and trade goods for the first time.  They and other coastal peoples were also experiencing a few other things, like diseases and the fact that some unscrupulous captains weren't above snatching Native people to sell to passing Spanish slavers.  That had happened to a young Patuxet warrior named Squanto, who was sold into Spanish slavery and arrived home to discover that his tribe had been wiped out by disease.  Whenever Samoset approached the fishermen, he was taking life and liberty into his own hands.  But he was lucky.

Unlike Massassoit, no one knows for sure what Samoset's real name was.  Samoset may be a corruption of an Algonquian word.  Or, it may be a corruption of the English name Somerset.  Some of he Pilgrims would've been familiar with the city of Somerset back home and might have found it a convenient nickname.  Samoset stayed with them overnight and two days later, brought back other Natives offering deerskins in trade.  As it was Sunday, the Pilgrims refused any deals but that didn't put Samoset off.  He persuaded Massassoit, who had every reason to view these strangers as a threat, that they were harmless.  He introduced Squanto to the Pilgrims, and Squanto agreed to help them learn the Native ways of agriculture and hunting.  This was all free hospitality on the part of the Natives.  Squanto didn't have to help.  Samoset didn't have to talk Massassoit out of any hostile moves.  They all could have stood by and let the Pilgrims become the next Lost Colony.

Samoset appears in the record again when English sea captain Christopher Levett entertained him and other ranking Abenaki leaders to a feast aboard Levett's ship while docked near what is now Portland, Maine.  Rumors of Samoset's death reached the colonists around 1653, in what is now Bristol, Maine.  The Boy Scouts of America maintain a Samoset Council named after Samoset.  Some schools and a town in Florida of all places are named for him. 

Captivity Narrative: Hannah Dustin

Violence on the frontier went both ways, with both sides committing what would now be termed atrocities, but were at the time justified as self defense.  The case of Hannah Dustin of Haverhill, Massachusetts is one such event.

Hannah Emmerson (1657-c 1737) was the oldest of 15 children.  Her family had already appeared in the local records when one of her sisters was convicted of infanticide and hanged.  At the age of 20, Hannah married Thomas Dustin, a farmer who supplemented their income by making bricks.  Nine children followed and nothing else seemed remarkable about their life together.  However, during King William's War (1688-1697), Abenaki warriors working for the French staged a raid on Haverhill, Massachusetts.  Thomas was able to gather the oldest 8 children and flee with them into the woods.  Hannah, her six-day-old baby girl Martha, and her nursemaid Mary Neff were captured and forced to march into the wilderness.  As was common practice during these marches, the warriors seized little Martha out of Hannah's arms and smashed the infant's head against a tree. 

The two women were assigned to a Native American family which included another captive, a teenager named Samuel Lennardson.  They continued their journey to what is now Penacook, New Hampshire.  There, while their host family lay asleep, Hannah found a small hatchet (not necessarily a tomahawk).  She killed one of the men of the family while Lennardson found a weapon and slew the other.  They and Mary Neff also killed eight other members of the family.  Only an old woman and an older child, both severely wounded, escaped to tell the tale.  Then, the three Settlers took scalps to prove the incident, found a canoe and headed back to Haverhill, traveling by water and only at night so as not to be detected.  The Massachusetts General Court awarded Hannah 25 pounds in scalp bounty.  Lennardson and Neff divided another 25 between themselves.  In those days, this was not an insignificant sum of money.

Hannah and Thomas reunited their family and there the matter rested.  Hannah later told her story to Cotton Mather, who included it in one of his many books about the history of New England.  But it wasn't until the 19th century, when writers like Nathaneal Hawthorne, John Greenleaf Whittier and Henry David Thoreau came along that the story was embellished and dramatized.  Several memorials were erected to Hannah around Massachusetts but her story remains controversial today.  Was her action self-defense, or murder in vengeance for her infant daughter?  By retelling her story, would that be considered glorifying violence toward Native Americans?  By making her a heroine, was that not racism?  I'll leave that for the reader to decide, I'm just reporting the facts.