Tisquantum was a Native American who lived in New England in the early 17th century. The white people, for reasons that can only be described as being total assholes, called him Squanto.
Squanto was a member of the Patuxet tribe of the Wampanoag Confederacy, a group of native tribes which controlled modern day Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Long Island. Squanto had a pretty good early childhood, living with his parents and hanging out with his peeps. This changed when Squanto saw his first white men at the age of 10. The white men, explorers from England, seeing Squanto just hanging out on the beach, collected him as though he was some strange type of bug, and took him back to England. When Squanto arrived in England he was given as a gift to the explorers' boss, because gifting people was totally okay back then. The boss, delighted with his new acquisition, taught Squanto English so he could act as an interpreter for future voyages.
After four years in England, Squanto was made part of a new expedition and taken back to New England, where he promptly escaped and started making his way home. However, before he could make it, another English explorer re-captured him, took him to Spain, and tried to sell him into slavery for around $3,500 in today's money. Luckily, some Catholic friars rescued Squanto before he could be forced into explicit servitude, rather than the implicit servitude he had already been putting up with. Unluckily, the friars then forced Squanto to become a Catholic. After hanging out with the friars for a bit, Squanto made his way back to England where he worked for a shipbuilder, and after a few years, got himself on a voyage to Newfoundland. However, when he tried to leave, the English explorers just kind of laughed, probably in a very snide manner, and took him back to England.
A full nine years after being captured, Squanto finally boarded a ship that took him home to New England to stay. Unfortunately, upon arrival, he discovered that pretty much everyone he had ever known had been killed by a plague of smallpox brought by some white dudes the previous year. In fact, it's estimated that up to 90 percent of the Wampanoag Confederacy died during the period of Squanto’s capture. Not sure what else to do, Squanto mostly spent the next two years hanging out in his abandoned village and occasionally visiting distant relatives from other nearby tribes. It was around this time that the Pilgrims, yes, those Pilgrims, showed up on the scene. The Pilgrims, who were long on religious convictions, but short on survival skills, nearly starved their first winter in Massachusetts. Squanto, feeling bad for them, which is impressive considering his life so far, never mind the fact that white people at the time weren't big on bathing, taught the Pilgrims how to grow corn.
For some reason, the Pilgrims and the surviving Wampanoag did not get along. Squanto, thanks to his English skills, and his ability to put up with the Pilgrims' terrible body odor, became an ambassador between the two groups, promoting peaceful co-existence. This position did not prove popular with everyone. A renegade group of Wampanoag kidnapped Squanto with plans to kill him, but he was rescued by a group of Pilgrims. Soon after, while on a peace mission, Squanto fell sick, probably due to being poisoned, and died. His efforts won the Wampanoag fifty years of peace. Peace in this case meant that the natives suffered a series of small pox epidemics and slowly got kicked off their lands by the growing number of white people.
Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Squantoteaching.png