Squanto: A Native Odyssey

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, PROSE Award in Biography from the Association of American Publishers ● Winner, 2025 Early American Literature Book Prize ● Winner, 2025 New York State Society of Colonial Wars Distinguished Book Award ● Winner, 2025 New England Society Book Award ● 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.

Andrew Lipman is professor of history at Barnard College, Columbia University. His first book, The Saltwater Frontier, won the Bancroft Prize in American History. He lives in New York City.