rian Edmund S. Morgan puts it: "The Indians. . . could have done the English in simply by deserting them." When the colonists landed at Plymouth in 1620, the Indians did not desert them. A Pemaquid named Somoset and three Wampanoags named Massasoit, Squanto, and Hobomah became self-appointed missionaries to the Pilgrims. (Brown pp. 3) All spoke some broken English, as a result of contact with earlier explorers. The new colonists were viewed as helpless children. The colonists were shown how to fish, and were given corn from the winter store of the Indians. The next Spring, the Indians showed the colonists how to plant corn. Despite the horrors they had endured in recent decades, the Indians continuing ability to produce enormous amounts of food impressed and even awed many of the earliest British explorers. (Stannard pp. 103) The gardens were tended with such care that they looked like huge gardens rather than farmlands. Early settlers also admired the Indians democratic government which contrasted sharply with the hierarchical ruler, King James I, whom they had left in Europe. And it is especially telling that throughout the seventeenth and on into the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, while almost no Indians voluntarily lived among the colonists, the number of whites who ran off to live with the Indians was a problem often remarked upon. (Stannard pp. 103) In an exclamation of his discontent, Benjamin Franklin wrote: "When an Indian child has been brought up among us, taught our language and habituated to our Customs, yet if he goes to see his relations and makes one Indian Ramble with them, there is no persuading him ever to return. [But] when white persons of either sex have been taken prisoners young by the Indians, and lived a while among them, tho ransomed by their Friends, and treated with all imaginable tenderness to prevail with them to stay among the English, yet in a Short time they become disgusted with our manner of lif...
