Squanto (1585"-1623) was the guide for many of the Pilgrim settlers of the Plymouth Colony.

Squanto is remembered as the interpreter, guide, and agricultural advisor who shepherded the Pilgrim settlers of Plymouth Colony through their precarious early existence in the New World and did more than anyone else to secure the survival of the settlement.

Squanto was a member of the Patuxet band of the Wampanoag tribe, which dominated the area in which the colonists eventually settled. He first enters written history in 1614, as one of 20 Patuxet Indians kidnapped by English explorer Thomas Hunt. Hunt carried his captives to Spain, where he sold them into slavery. Squanto, however, was one of a number who were rescued by Spanish friars, and he eventually made his way to England, where he next surfaced in the employ of John Slaney, whose interests extended to exploration in the New World. He sent...