The True Story of Thanksgiving: Squanto, the Pilgrims, and the Pope

We and the Mayflower Pilgrims owe thanks to the Pope and some Catholic priests for the Thanksgiving of 1621 with Squanto and the Plymouth Colony.

November 22, 2023 by Fr Gordon MacRae

Growing up within sight of Boston, Massachusetts meant lots of grade school field trips to the earliest landmarks of America. We looked forward to those excursions because they meant a day out of school. The only downside was the inevitable essay. Back then, I had no love for either history or essays. Go figure!

Some field trips are vividly remembered even six decades later. A visit to the deck of “Old Ironsides,” the U.S.S. Constitution in Boston Harbor, stands out as the most exciting. Visits to the sites of the Boston Massacre, the Boston Tea Party, and Paul Revere’s famous ride also stand out as great adventures in hands-on U.S. history — the essays notwithstanding.

Then there was the trip to Plymouth Rock (YAWN!), the most underwhelming national monument in America. Everyone of us emerged from the bus to file past Plymouth Rock while poor Mr. Dawson had to listen to an endless cascade of “That’s IT?!”

“Dedham granodiorite.” That’s the scientific name of the rock where the Mayflower Pilgrims were left to settle in the New World in what is now Plymouth, Massachusetts. Plymouth Rock was noted and described in the Pilgrims’ journals, but it fell into obscurity for a century until the town of Plymouth decided to build a wharf in 1741. That’s when 94-year-old church elder Thomas Faunce set out to identify Plymouth Rock and mark the site. Thirty-four years later, the town moved the rock to a more prominent location, accidentally breaking it in half in the process. Only the top half made its way to the town’s new site.

Then shopkeepers began chiseling away at it, selling chunks to tourists for $1.50 each. Over the ensuing years, Plymouth Rock was moved again and again, split in half a second time, cemented back together, then what was left of it ended up surrounded by a concrete portico to become the nation’s first national landmark.

You Can Say That Again!

Every year since 1961 on the day before Thanksgiving, The Wall Street Journal publishes the same two lead editorials by Vermont C. Royster. They are considered classics. “The Desolate Wilderness” describes the purpose and plight of the Puritan founders of New England who left such a deeply engraved mark, for better or worse, on the spirit of this nation. “And the Fair Land” lays out the free market foundation upon which American enterprise was built. These editorials are now a Thanksgiving tradition, and if the WSJ can get away with annual repetition, so can I.

This year I’m revisiting the story of Squanto and the Pilgrims, with a few additions and updates, and posting it before Thanksgiving in the hope it might be Tweeted, pinged, e-mailed, and otherwise shared.

The lack of awe inspired by Plymouth Rock is in inverse proportion to the story of how the Pilgrims came to stand upon it. Every grade school student knows the tale of the Mayflower. In 1620, its pilgrim sojourners fled religious persecution from the established Church of England. They embarked on a long and treacherous voyage across the Atlantic in the leaky, top-heavy Mayflower. Landing at Plymouth, Massachusetts, the Pilgrims befriended the native occupants, endured many hardships, then, after a successful first harvest in the New World, celebrated a Thanksgiving feast with their Native American friends in the autumn of 1621.

That story is true, as far as it goes, but the story your grade school history book omitted is downright fascinating, and every Catholic should know of it. Before boarding the Mayflower, the Pilgrims were called “Separatists.” The religious “persecution” they came here to flee consisted mostly of their determination to purge the remnants of Catholicism from the established Church of England.

Author, Philip Lawler summarized their agenda in his book, The Faithful Departed: The Collapse of Boston’s Catholic Culture (Encounter Books, 2008):

“[T]he Puritans were campaigning against the lingering traces of Catholicism. Decades of brutal persecution — first under Henry VIII, then under Elizabeth I — had eliminated the Roman Church from English public life in the sixteenth century; the country's few remaining faithful Catholics had been driven underground. For the Puritans, that was not enough . . . They were determined to erase any vestigial belief in the sacraments, any deference to an ecclesiastical hierarchy.”

— Philip Lawler in The Faithful Departed

The Pilgrims came here to establish a New World theocracy, a religiously oriented society that would reflect their religious fervor which was also anti-Catholic.

Puritanism deeply affected the American national character, but I wonder if the Pilgrims would even recognize the American religious landscape of today. It is far from what they envisioned.

The Puritan Pilgrims were not always considered the survivors of religious persecution American history made them out to be. Writer, H.L. Mencken described Puritanism as “the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” And G.K. Chesterton once famously remarked:

“In America, they have a feast to celebrate the arrival of the Pilgrims. Here in England, we should have a feast to celebrate their departure.”

— G.K. Chesterton

Pilgrim’s Progress

When the Pilgrims stepped off the Mayflower on December 11, 1620, they were not at all prepared for life in the New World. They were originally destined to colonize what is now Virginia, but the Mayflower veered badly off course. They also considered settling at the mouth of the Hudson River in modern day New York, but Dutch traders conspired to prevent it.

Before leaving England on September 16, 1620, the Pilgrims used their meager resources to purchase a second ship to sail along with the Mayflower and remain with them in the New World. That vessel was called the Speedwell. It was anything but well, however, nor was it speedy. Just 200 miles off the English coast, the Speedwell was sinking. Those aboard had to transfer to the crowded Mayflower while the Speedwell returned to England. There was evidence that the Speedwell was intentionally rigged to fail, leaving the colonists with no vessel with which to explore once the Mayflower departed.

The voyage across the Atlantic was delayed for months, finally landing the Pilgrims in New England at the start of winter. There were 102 aboard the Mayflower when it left England, but by the end of their first winter in the New World, only half that number were still alive. Unable to plant in the dead of winter, their first encounter with the indigenous people of coastal Massachusetts — known to those who lived there as “The Dawn Land” — came when the near starving Pilgrims stole ten bushels of maize from an Indian storage site on Cape Cod. It was not a good beginning.

Massasoit, the “sachem” (leader) of the once powerful Wampanoag tribe, was not at all enamored of the visitors, and the fact that they seemed intent on staying disturbed him greatly. The Pilgrims had no way to know that prior European visitors to those shores left diseases to which the people of The Dawn Land had no natural resistance. By the time the Pilgrims arrived, 95% of the indigenous population of New England, including the Wampanoag, had been decimated.

Still, Massasoit could have easily overtaken and destroyed the invaders, who were barely surviving, but they had something he wanted. Massasoit feared that his tribe’s weakened state might spark an invasion from rivals to the south, and he noted that the Pilgrims had a few cannons and guns that could help even the odds.

The Pilgrims Meet “The Wrath of God”

So instead of attacking the Pilgrims, Massasoit sent an emissary in the person of Tisquantum, known to history as Squanto. He was actually a captive of Massasoit and arrived just weeks before the Pilgrims. Tisquantum was likely not his original name. In the language of the people of The Dawn Land, Tisquantum meant the equivalent of “the wrath of God.” It may have been a name given to him, and, as you’ll see below, perhaps for good reason. 

Squanto was to become the primary force behind the Pilgrims’ unlikely survival in the New World. On March 22, 1621, the vernal equinox, Squanto walked out of the forest into the middle of the Pilgrims’ ramshackle base at Plymouth, a settlement known to Squanto as Patuxet. That place was once his home. To the Pilgrims’ amazement, Squanto spoke nearly perfect English, and arrived prepared to remain with them and guide them through everything from fishing to agriculture to negotiations with the nervous and well-armed Massasoit and the Wampanoag.

As historian Charles C. Mann wrote in “Native Intelligence,” (Smithsonian, December 2005), “Tisquantum was critical to the colony’s survival.” Squanto taught them to plant the native corn they had stolen instead of just eating it, and he negotiated a fair trade for the theft of the corn. The Pilgrims’ own supplies of grain and barley all failed in the New World soil while the native corn gave them a life-saving crop. Squanto taught them how to fish, and how to fertilize the soil with the remains of the fish they caught. Most importantly, Squanto served as an advocate and interpreter for the Pilgrims with Massasoit, averting almost certain annihilation of the weakened and distrusted foreigners.

A Catholic Rescue

For their part, the Pilgrims interpreted Squanto’s presence and intervention as acts of Divine Providence. They had no idea just how much Providence was involved. It is the story of Squanto — of how he came to be in that place at that very time, and of how he came to speak fluent English — that is the most fascinating story behind the first Thanksgiving.

In 1614, six years before the arrival of the Mayflower, Captain John Smith — the same man rescued by Pocahontas in another famous tale — led two British vessels to the coast of Maine to barter for fish and furs. When Smith departed from the Maine shore, he left a lieutenant, Thomas Hunt, in command to load his ship with dried fish.

Without consultation, Thomas Hunt sailed his ship south to what is now called Cape Cod Bay. Anchored off the coast of Patuxet (now Plymouth) in 1614, Hunt and his men invited two dozen curious native villagers aboard the ship. One of them was Squanto. Once aboard, the Indians — as the Europeans came to call them — were forced into irons in the ship’s hold. Kidnapped from their homes and families, they were taken on a six-week journey across the Atlantic. Not all the captives survived the voyage. Those who did survive, Squanto among them, were brought to Malaga off the coast of Spain to be sold as slaves.

Fortunately for Squanto, and later for our Pilgrims, Spain was a Catholic country. Seventy-seven years earlier, envisioning injustices visited upon the indigenous peoples of the New World, Pope Paul III issued “Sublimus Dei,” a papal bull forbidding Catholic governments from enslaving or mistreating Indians from the Americas. The Pope declared that Indians are “true men” who could not lawfully be deprived of liberty. “Sublimus Dei” instructed that European intervention into the lives of Indians had to be motivated by benefit to the Indians themselves. It would take America another 300 years to catch up with the Catholic Church and abolish slavery.

As a result of the papal decree, the Catholic Church in Spain was opposed to the mistreatment of Indians, and opposed to bringing them to Europe against their will. Of course, the Catholic ideal did not always prevent slave trade on the black market. At Malaga, Thomas Hunt managed to sell most of his captives, and was about to sell Squanto when two Spanish Jesuit priests intervened. The Spanish-speaking priests seized Squanto who somehow convinced them to send him home. Not knowing where “home” was, the priests arranged for Squanto’s passage as a free man on a ship bound for London. It is likely that the Jesuits even baptized Squanto as a Catholic. It would have been a way to assure his status as a free man.

Squanto’s world tour was underway. In late 1614, having no idea where he was, Squanto walked into the London office of John Slaney, manager of the Bristol Company, a shipping and merchant venture that had been given rights to the Isle of Newfoundland by England’s King James I in 1610. Squanto spent the next three years stranded in London before being placed on a ship bound for St. John’s, Newfoundland in 1617. By now fully immersed in the language and ways of the English, Squanto spent another two years stranded in Newfoundland — 1,000 miles of sea and rocky coast still separating him from his native Patuxet.

Late in 1619, Squanto befriended Thomas Dermer, a British Merchant in Newfoundland who agreed to sail Squanto home, though neither knew where home was. They knew it was south, so south they sailed. Squanto eventually recognized a Patuxet landmark — maybe even what we came to call Plymouth Rock.

With Thomas Dermer’s ship anchored off Patuxet, Squanto stepped onto the shores of home after a nearly six year absence. But the people of The Dawn Land — Squanto’s people — were no more. Squanto was devastated to learn that disease had ravaged his home in his absence, and not a single Patuxet native had survived. Squanto was alone.

Squanto knew he could not remain there. He convinced Thomas Dermer to accompany him inland in search of anyone among his people who might have survived. There was no one. It wasn’t long before both men were taken captive by Massasoit, sachem of what had been a confederation of 20,000 native Massachuset and Wampanoag tribal peoples. By the time Squanto and Thomas Dermer stood captive before Massasoit, however, all but 1,000 of them were dead from diseases carried to the New World aboard European vessels.

Just weeks later, it was to this setting that the Mayflower’s naive and ill-prepared Pilgrims arrived to face the winter of 1620 in the New World. Squanto, now alone — his life ravaged and his home and people destroyed — convinced Massasoit to send him to the Pilgrims as a negotiator and interpreter instead of attacking them. Squanto put his wrath aside, and became a bridge linking two disparate worlds.

Without Squanto — and, indirectly at least, the Pope and some Jesuit priests — the fate of the Puritan Pilgrims would have been vastly different, and Thanksgiving would likely have never taken place. Squanto was, as Governor William Bradford of Plymouth Plantation wrote of him,

“A spetiall instrument sent of God for their good beyond their expectations.”

On that point, both Puritans and Catholics might agree. At your Thanksgiving table this year, say a prayer of thanks for Tisquantum — Squanto. Our national ancestors were once pilgrims and strangers in a strange land, and that land’s most disenfranchised citizen assured their survival.

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The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”

For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”

Lead, Kindly Light: A Christmas Card to Our Readers

Abraham first heard God 21 centuries before the Magi followed a star to Bethlehem. We now live in the 21st century after. At the center of all faith Christ is born.

December 21, 2022

Note from Fr. Gordon MacRae: Dear Readers, Some elements of our Annual BTSW Christmas Card may seem a bit familiar to you. We have used some of these elements in our posts of Christmas past. Since 1949, The Wall Street Journal has published as its top editorial each Christmas Eve an outstanding piece of writing from the late Vermont C. Royster, the WSJ’s former Editorial Page Editor. His yearly repeated Christmas essay is “In Hoc Anno Domini,” (In this year of the Lord). It is one of the finest examples of historical Christian writing I have encountered, and one of the most faith-filled. Mr. Royster was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and was a two-time recipient of the Pulitzer Prize. So at the expense of sounding a bit pretentious, if The Wall Street Journal can get away with publishing an annual Christmas gem, then so can I.

I begin our Christmas Card this year with Vermont C. Royster and his “In Hoc Anno Domini.”

When Saul of Tarsus set out on his journey to Damascus the whole of the known world lay in bondage. There was one state, and it was Rome. There was one master for it all, and he was Tiberius Caesar.

Everywhere there was civil order, for the arm of the Roman law was long. Everywhere there was stability, in government and in society, for the centurions saw that it was so.

But everywhere there was something else, too. There was oppression — for those who were not the friends of Tiberius Caesar. There was the tax gatherer to take the grain from the fields and the flax from the spindle to feed the legions or to fill the hungry treasury from which divine Caesar gave largess to the people. There was the impressor to find recruits for the circuses. There were executioners to quiet those whom the Emperor proscribed. What was a man for but to serve Caesar?

There was the persecution of men who dared think differently, who heard strange voices or read strange manuscripts. There was enslavement of men whose tribes came not from Rome, disdain for those who did not have the familiar visage. And most of all, there was everywhere a contempt for human life. What, to the strong, was one man more or less in a crowded world?

Then, of a sudden, there was a light in the world, and a man from Galilee saying, Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God’s.

And the voice from Galilee, which would defy Caesar, offered a new Kingdom in which each man could walk upright and bow to none but his God. Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. And he sent this gospel of the Kingdom of Man into the uttermost ends of the earth.

So the light came into the world and the men who lived in darkness were afraid, and they tried to lower a curtain so that man would still believe salvation lay with the leaders.

But it came to pass for a while in divers places that the truth did set man free, although the men of darkness were offended and they tried to put out the light. The voice said, Haste ye. Walk while you have the light, lest darkness come upon you, for he that walketh in darkness knoweth not whither he goeth.

Along the road to Damascus the light shone brightly. But afterward Paul of Tarsus, too, was sore afraid. He feared that other Caesars, other prophets, might one day persuade men that man was nothing save a servant unto them, that men might yield up their birthright from God for pottage and walk no more in freedom.

Then might it come to pass that darkness would settle again over the lands and there would be a burning of books and men would think only of what they should eat and what they should wear, and would give heed only to new Caesars and to false prophets. Then might it come to pass that men would not look upward to see even a winter's star in the East, and once more, there would be no light at all in the darkness.

Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.

— Vermont C. Royster, The Wall Street Journal, December 24, 1949

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The liturgies of Christmas set out in the Roman Missal and Lectionary express the spirituality of the entire ecclesial body of the baptized into the Life, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, our communal past and hopeful future.

The Mass at Night for the Christmas Vigil begins with a moving recitation of the Roman Martyrology which places the Birth of the Messiah into a real historical context:

The twenty-fifth day of December when ages beyond number had run their course from the creation of the world, when God in the beginning created heaven and earth, and formed man in His own likeness; when century upon century had passed since the Almighty set his bow in the clouds after the Great Flood, as a sign of covenant and peace — In the twenty-first century since Abraham, our father in faith, came out of Ur of the Chaldees; in the thirteenth century since the people of Israel were led by Moses in the Exodus from Egypt; in the tenth century since David was anointed King; in the sixty-fifth week of the prophecy of Daniel; in the one hundred and ninety-fourth Olympiad; in the year seven hundred and fifty-two since the founding of Rome; in the forty-second year in the reign of Caesar Octavian Augustus, the whole world being at peace

— Jesus Christ, eternal God and Son of the eternal Father,

desiring to consecrate the world by his most loving presence, was conceived by the Holy Spirit, and when nine months had passed since His conception, was born of the Virgin Mary in Bethlehem of Judah, and

was made man.

— The Nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ according to the flesh

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I am forced by circumstance to live in a place with men who are banished, not just from home and family and freedom, but too often also from hope. Some with even the darkest pasts have come into the light to thrill us with their stories of grace and true repentance and conversion. You have read of several in these pages and there are other stories yet to come. Some of these wounded men become saints, I am not fit to fasten their sandals. We live East of Eden, most justly so, but some not.

The Magi of the Gospel saw a star and heard good news, the very best of news: Freedom can be found in only one place, and the way there is to follow the Star they followed. If you follow Beyond These Stone Walls, never follow me. Follow only Christ.

My Christmas Card to you is this message, a tradition of sorts for Beyond These Stone Walls. My small, barred cell window faces East. It is there that I offer Mass for our readers. So my gaze is always toward the East, a place to which we were all once banished to wander East of Eden.

At the end of these cold and gray December days I step outside to watch toward the West as the sun descends behind towering prison walls. It reminds me of my favorite prayer,

Lead, Kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom, Lead Thou me on;

The night is dark, and I am far from home; Lead Thou me on.

Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see

The distant scene; one step enough for me.

I was not ever thus, nor prayed that Thou shouldst lead me on;

I loved to choose and see my path, but now, Lead Thou me on.

I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears,

Pride ruled my will; Remember not past years.

So long Thy power hath blessed me, sure it still will lead me on,

O’er moor and fen, o’er crag and torrent, till the night is gone.

And with the morn those Angel faces smile,

Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile.

— Saint John Henry Newman

This moving prayer by Saint John Henry Newman has been set to music as a tribute to Saint John Paul II:

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My favorite Christmas hymn, “O Holy Night,” was originally based on a French poem entitled Cantique de Noël by Placide Cappeau in 1843. Composer Adolphe Adam set it to music in 1847. The English version (with small changes to the initial melody) is by John Sullivan Dwight. The hymn reflects on the birth of Jesus as humanity’s redemption.

This wonderful hymn has been performed by many noted vocalists over the last two centuries. Few have performed it with more beauty and heartfelt faith than Celine Dion. Celine today suffers from a neurological disorder that may inhibit her voice. Please offer a prayer for her. Celine Dion’s beautiful voice should be long remembered for her rendition of this most beautiful of Christmas hymns.

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Some of our Readers around the world live in difficult circumstances. There are many who come to this site from Ukraine besieged by war over the last year. Many others have lost loved ones and are now besieged by loneliness. I drafted this Christmas message as a place where perhaps we could all meet for a time in this Christmas Season. One of our Patron Saints, Saint Maximilian Kolbe, founded a religious site in his native Poland called Niepokalanowa. Today the Chapel has a real-time live feed for a most beautiful adoration chapel where people around the world can spend time in Eucharistic Adoration. We invite you to come and spend some quiet time this Christmas celebrating the rebirth of the Messiah in your own life.

As you can see the monstrance for Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament is most unusual. It is an irony that all of you can see it but I cannot. So please remember me while you are there. For an understanding of the theology behind this particular monstrance of the Immaculata, see my post “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae:

Blessings to you all during this joyous Christmas Season. We are living in darker times, and this Christmas is like no other, but we are children of the Light and we are promised that the darkness will never overcome it. May God Bless you and keep you safe. Feliz Navidad!

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