Squanto: A Native Odyssey

By Andrew Lipman and Andrew Lipman

Book Overview

Taken to Europe as a slave, he found his way home and changed the course of American history

"A captivating, elegantly written biography."--Melanie Kirkpatrick, Wall Street Journal

Winner of the PROSE Award in Biography from the Association of American Publishers ● Winner of the Society of Colonial Wars Distinguished Book Award ● Finalist, 2025 New England Society Book Awards ● Named a Best Native Studies Book of 2024 by Tribal College Journal

American schoolchildren have long learned about Squanto, the welcoming Native who made the First Thanksgiving possible, but his story goes deeper than the holiday legend. Born in the Wampanoag-speaking town of Patuxet in the late 1500s, Squanto was kidnapped in 1614 by an English captain, who took him to Spain. From there, Englishmen brought him to London and Newfoundland before sending him home in 1619, when Squanto discovered that most of Patuxet had died in an epidemic. A year later, the Mayflower colonists arrived at his home and renamed it Plymouth.

Prize-winning historian Andrew Lipman explores the mysteries that still surround Squanto: How did he escape bondage and return home? Why did he help the English after an Englishman enslaved him? Why did he threaten Plymouth's fragile peace with its neighbors? Was it true that he converted to Christianity on his deathbed? Drawing from a wide range of evidence and newly uncovered sources, Lipman reconstructs Squanto's upbringing, his transatlantic odyssey, his career as an interpreter, his surprising downfall, and his enigmatic death. The result is a fresh look at an epic life that ended right when many Americans think their story begins.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0300238770
• ISBN13: 9780300238778
• Release Date: September 2024
• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Length: 264 Pages
• Weight: 2.24 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.2" x 6.8"

Customer Reviews

A new perspective on one of early America's most famous figures

Lipman does an excellent job of examining the myths and scholarship on Squanto, and reimagining the man as a whole, complex, and nuanced person with unique desires, ambitions, and experiences. The author does an excellent job of explaining the historian's craft to laypersons, and of describing the process of reconstructing the lives of human beings who were not able to leave their own voice in the written record. A fantastic foray into the interdisciplinary practice of doing history, this book is well-suited for anyone who is interested in learning about untold histories in good faith. In the same wheelhouse as Camilla Townsend and Alain Corbin, this historical-text-for-the-everyone is enjoyable, engaging, and informative.