Read on! there is a connection between Daughters of Deliverance and Squanto’s story!
Reading Breakpoint this morning, I the learned the story of Squanto– a five year old Indian boy who was kidnapped by Spanish traders who had landed five years before the pilgrims. Squanto was fortunate enough to be sold to a well-meaning monk in Spain who taught him about the Christian God. Later Squanto made his way to England. There he worked in a stable for a kind Englishman who taught him English and looked for passage to the new world for Squanto. Ten years after he was captured, his benefactor found a way to send him home.
Sadly Squanto found his whole Wampanbog village had been decimated by an epidemic. A year later the Pilgrims arrived and settled on the very land where his village had stood. Squanto greeted them in English and became a friend to the Pilgrims.In the diary of Pilgrim Governor William Bradford, Squanto “became a special instrument sent of God for [our] good . . . He showed [us] how to plant [our] corn, where to take fish and to procure other commodities . . . and was also [our] pilot to bring [us] to unknown places for [our] profit, and never left [us] till he died.” Squanto died asking prayer that he would go to the Englishman’s God in heaven.
There are many people like Squanto whose lives of sacrifice and compassion for those who in need are lost to history. I was taught that Indians and Pilgrims praised God together for the harvest; today’s history books probably debunk that. But Squanto’s life is kept alive, written in the diary of Governor Bradford.
One of the reasons I researched and wrote about the life of Katharine Bushnell was to bring her life and work alive. Squanto helped to keep the early Pilgrims alive that first year they struggled against the elements in their new homeland. Katharine’s compassion and persistence against the sin of sexual slavery kept women and girls alive in the 19th century. Her story, told in my historical novel, Daughters of Deliverance comes out next Thursday, December 1, on Amazon or through me. lorrylutz.com
Thanks for Squanto’s story written in Breakpoint Commentary, originally by Chuck Coleson. John Stonestreet and Eric Metaxis currently write the daily commentary.
LORRY LUTZ 