hi, I'm death...

[thanate]

"Consider Tisquantum, the "friendly Indian" of the textbook. [aka Squanto] More than likely Tisquantum was not the name he was given at birth. In that part of the Northeast, tisquantum referred to rage, especially the rage of manitou, the world-suffusing spiritual power at the heart of coastal Indians' religious beliefs. When Tisquantum approached the Pilgrims and identified himself by that sobriquet, it was as if he had stuck out his hand and said, Hello, I'm the Wrath of God."

--from Charles C Mann, 1491, New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, which is fascinating and everyone should read. :)

Comments

[thanate.livejournal.com]

No, the rival tribe was what they were worried about after the epidemic, thus prompting them to allow the Pilgrims to stay (although given their vastly depleated numbers, it would have been really inconvenient to get rid of even starving interlopers.) Unfortuantely for them, there was insufficient contact between the Massachusset groups (one of which T. belonged to) and their enemy Narragansetts that whatever the plague was didn't spread inland.

Definately kidnapping. "Hi, come see our ship & trade with us" and then bashing everyone over the head (with about 50% casualties) and sailing off to Spain to sell them. Although the Church confiscated most of them before they got sold, hence Tisquantum's escape to England and eventual return to the new world.

The whole point of the book I'm reading is "what you were taught in High School is WRONG" which is to say that the popular knowledge on this hasn't changed since about the 1950s or maybe earlier, and with all the new ways of collecting evidence (and looking at what we had before) there's a lot more, often completely contradictary, that we know now.

Oh, and I'd also dispute that NoVa is part of the south, even as far as education is concerned. But that's different. :)