That Time a Native American Walked Into Plymouth and Asked for Beer: How Samoset Accidentally Saved the Pilgrims

On March 22, 1621, the Pilgrims at Plymouth Colony experienced what must have been an absolutely jarring moment when a tall Native American man strode directly into their settlement and greeted them in English with the words "Welcome, Englishmen!" This was Samoset, an Abenaki sagamore from present-day Maine who had learned English from fishermen along the coast. Imagine the scene: these Pilgrims had been huddling in their settlement for months, half of them having died over the brutal winter, stealing corn from buried Native stores, fully aware they were trespassing on someone else's land, probably expecting retaliation at any moment. And then this fellow just walks in, bold as brass, speaking their language and asking for beer. According to William Bradford's account, Samoset stayed the night (they gave him a coat, some trinkets, and presumably not enough beer for his liking), regaled them with information about the local tribes, and explained why the land they'd settled on was conveniently empty—a plague had wiped out the Patuxet people who'd lived there just a few years before. A few days later, Samoset returned with Squanto, the famous Patuxet who spoke even better English, having actually been kidnapped and taken to Europe years earlier. Without this remarkably strange coincidence of English-speaking Native Americans literally walking up to introduce themselves, the Plymouth Colony would likely have joined Roanoke in the "failed colonial ventures" column of history. Instead, we got Thanksgiving and several centuries of problematic mythology. This content was created in partnership and with the help of Artificial Intelligence AI.