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When Samoset (Abenaki) walked into Plymouth Colony in March of 1621, he announced an unexpected meeting between the Pilgrims and the local Algonquians who were led by the Massasoit Osamequin. The following day, he returned to Plymouth with five Natives in regalia, who ritually prepared the designated meeting ground by dancing, singing, and making corn and tobacco offerings. This gathering was intentionally scheduled to coincide with the vernal equinox, an important ceremonial time for agricultural Algonquians. For both parties, the parley was portentous for Native–European relations and for Plymouthean survival. At this meeting, the Pilgrims negotiated for the Patuxet land on which they were living; they made a non-aggression pact with the Wampanoags; and they agreed to have Tisquantum (Squanto) and Hobomok live with them inside the palisade.

This chapter initially discusses the temporalities of race implied by Thomas Gray’s poem “Change,” which places Indians in an ancient temporality where they are victims of change, making them seem passive by nature and dismissing their continuing participation in future endeavors. Local narratives also contained the practice of “lasting”, a rhetorical technique claiming that Indians can never be modern. This technique is usually found in discourses pertaining to “blood”, such as stories regarding the “last full-blooded” Indians. The chapter cites the stories of Squanto, Charles Josias, Eunice Mahwee, and Esther Kenyon as examples of the famous “last” Indians, as well as James Fenimore Cooper’s novel Last of the Mohicans which exemplifies the theme of lasting. It also addresses the various local texts containing specific explanations for Indian extinction that strengthened the myth of the vanishing Indians.

This chapter outlines the book’s key concepts by sketching out a history of American unsettlement that finds its origins story in La Navidad, the first European colony in the New World. Drawing upon examples ranging from Columbus’s Diario to the captivity of John Smith to the speculative figure of “Hispanophone Squanto,” this chapter proposes an alternative historical narrative centered on instances of failed settlements, lost colonies, disappeared colonists, and abandoned colonial efforts as well as willfully false and other kinds of failed translations. The chapter suggests a kind of reparative critical approach to the material explored in the ensuing chapters — an approach that seeks to construct imaginative or speculative possibilities, rather than merely to expose or destabilize an ideological position.

The colonists’ relief at surviving the dangerous Atlantic passage was followed by the challenges of surviving in their new world. After they decided to settle along Cape Cod, they spent time exploring the region in search of a suitable harbor. During these expeditions they encountered Native encampments abandoned for the season, and took corn that the inhabitants had put aside for spring planting. Though only one passenger had died in the crossing, cold, food shortages, disease, and the debilitating work of cutting down trees and building shelters took their toll, and half of the settlers died over the winter and early spring. Fears of Native attacks added to anxiety. In March an English-speaking native, Samoset, entered the village as a spokesman for the Wampanoag Massasoit Ousamequin, leading to a mutual defense pact and Native aid in understanding and managing the land.