No, the phrase doesn’t quite fit, but the comparison is intriguing, because four hundred years ago today Samoset walked into the new Plymouth Colony and introduced himself in English to the weary and wary Pilgrims, asking for a beer just as one might today. He had encountered English fishermen earlier along the Maine coast and had learned some English, but to the settlers, a “savage” speaking their language must have been an incongruous shock.
After a time, Samoset brought with him Tisquantum, or “Squanto,” the last surviving member of the Patuxet tribe, which had been decimated by disease, possibly brought to the land by earlier Europeans. Squanto had been “saved” by being kidnapped and taken to Spain as a novelty of sorts, though he was wily enough to make his way back home. Squanto in turn introduced the Pilgrims to the leader of the local confederated tribes, Massasoit. Their forty year, sometimes rocky, alliance with Massasoit included the first Thanksgiving with his tribe and certainly helped the Pilgrims survive in a land they were poorly prepared for. As history and Nathaniel Philbrick recount, however, the natives were far from ultimately thanked for their hospitality.
American history is stained throughout its pages with the blood of its natives, killed by European diseases and driven down the Trail of Tears to reservations, which were themselves exploited by “the White Man.” Within that shameful context, it is finally fitting that yesterday the US Senate confirmed the first Native American, Deb Haaland, as Secretary of the Interior, which oversees US policy toward its native nations. Now after four hundred years, we find ourselves in the worthy hands of one of those who owned and belonged to this land long before we “discovered” it. It makes me wonder what she might lead us to do if tomorrow we encountered first contact with aliens from another land on another planet.
