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<\/p>\nPlymouth, MA…Today marks an historic milestone. Its story is a real-life adventure marked by what some regard as pure luck while others label as miraculous.\u00a0 Four hundred years ago\u2014on March 16, 1621\u2014an English-speaking Indian from the Abenaki tribe strode into the new settlement of Plymouth in present-day Massachusetts. He greeted the astonished Pilgrims and requested a beverage brewed from fermented cereal grains.<\/p>\n
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\u201cWelcome, Englishmen!\u201d proclaimed Samoset, whose name meant \u201che who walks over much.\u201d In a stout, resonant voice he asked, \u201cDo you have beer?\u201d<\/p>\n
The Pilgrims were certainly not teetotalers, but on this occasion of their very first, up-close meeting with a Native American, the tap was dry.\u00a0The Chronicles of the Pilgrim Fathers<\/em>\u00a0reveals that they instead offered \u201cstrong water\u201d\u2014likely a brandy\u2014as well as \u201cbiscuit, and butter, and cheese, and pudding, and a piece of mallard; all of which he liked well.\u201d<\/p>\n No beer, but still an exceptionally good meal from settlers emerging from their first winter in the New World! Many of their number had starved or died from disease since their landing three months earlier.<\/p>\n In the coming days, Samoset returned with Indians from the Wampanoag tribe who were eager to trade with the Pilgrims. On March 22, Samoset brought with him another English-speaking Indian named Squanto, who famously taught the Pilgrims how to raise certain local crops and find wild game. Then later, when the colony abandoned its\u00a0disastrous experiment in communal socialism<\/a>\u00a0and embraced private property, things really began to improve. It is likely that free enterprise fixed the beer shortage too.<\/p>\n What were the chances that the Plymouth colonists would meet perhaps the only two English-speaking Indians on the eastern seaboard in March 1621? You can understand why some saw it at the time as a godsend, a sign that God meant for the colony to succeed.<\/p>\n Samoset, it turned out, had picked up English from sailors and fishermen. Squanto learned it in Europe after he was kidnapped and taken there by an English ship captain. That dreadful act fortuitously saved Squanto\u2019s life because when he returned to America shortly before the Pilgrims arrived, he found that his entire Patuxent tribe had been killed by a plague. That fact also meant that the land of which the Pilgrims took possession (after storms blew their ship, the Mayflower, off course) was vacant and unclaimed. They didn\u2019t steal it from anyone.<\/p>\n Four centuries ago today, that first meeting between Pilgrims and a Native American began a peaceful relationship that lasted for half a century. After providing invaluable information and connections, Samoset returned to his home in present-day coastal Maine, but he had opened the door to a trading relationship and a defensive alliance between the Pilgrims and the Wampanoags. Other nearby tribes such as the Narragansetts were not so friendly and might well have wiped the colony out if not so deterred.<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n