The Mawooshin Five, 1605 (Plymouth Fort)

Close to this spot are the only remains of Plymouth’s Elizabethan fort, built before the Citadel but after the Castle. It was constructed by order of Elizabeth I to deter further Spanish attacks after the Armada in 1588. It was completed by 1595/6 and its first Governor was Ferdinando Gorges, a prolific figure in the colonization of what is now the United States. We know that he kept three Indigenous North American men captive here in the city in the early 1600s, possibly at the fort itself.

Five Abenaki men had been captured by the Torquay seafarer George Weymouth in 1605. They were Sassacomoit, Tahenado, Skicowares, Amoret, and Maneddo. We know their names thanks to a diary written by Weymouth’s associate, James Rosier. During their voyage to Mawooshin in present-day Maine, he wrote about the Native Americans they saw and then captured -

The shape of their body is very proportionable, they are wel countenanced, not very tal nor big, but in stature like to vs: they paint their bodies with blacke, their faces, some with red, some with blacke, and some with blew.

Their clothing is Beauers skins, or Deares skins, cast ouer them like a mantle, and hanging downe to their knees, made fast together vpon the shoulder with leather; some of them had sleeues, most had none; some had buskins of such leather tewed: they haue besides a peece of Beauers skin betweene their legs, made fast about their waste, to couer their priuities.

They suffer no haire to grow on their faces, but on their head very long and very blacke, which those that haue wiues, binde vp behinde with a leather string, in a long round knot.

They seemed all very ciuill and merrie: shewing tokens of much thankefulnesse, for those things we gaue them. We found them then (as after) a people of exceeding good inuention, quicke vnderstanding and readie capacitie.

Ferdinando Gorges had part-funded Weymouth’s voyage, so the three men may have been a ‘return on his investment’. Sassacomoit, Maneddo, and Skicowares remained in Plymouth, while Tahanedo and Amoret travelled onto London. Like Manteo and Wanchese, these men were seen as important sources of information about their homelands. Gorges, in particular, praised them as “the meanes under God of putting on foote, and giving life to” England’s colonies in New England.

As for the Indigenous men themselves, they did go back to America. Tahenado and Amoret returned in 1606 as ambassadors, and Skicowares returned with the Popham colonists in 1607.

Sassacomoit and Maneddo tried to return in 1606, but were taken prisoner by a Spanish fleet somewhere off the coast of Puerto Rico and enslaved. Sassacomoit was eventually ransomed and lived with Gorges in Plymouth for three years. While here, he was joined by Epenow, an Aquinnah Wampanoag from Martha's Vineyard who had been brought to England as a captive. Eventually, Epenow convinced Gorges that there was gold on Martha's Vineyard and Gorges commissioned a voyage there in 1614. Epenow managed to let his people know that he was being held captive on board the ship when it arrived and they helped him escape. He led resistance efforts against the colonists who landed at Plymouth six years later. Follow the YouTube link to listen to Linda Coombs of the Aquinnah Wampanoag tell Epenow's story in "Captured: 1614, Freedom for Fool's Gold."

Sassacomoit, however, disappeared from the colonists’ records in 1614.

While we don’t know what happened to all of them as individuals, the Abenaki men's tribal descendants still live in Maine today. The Abenaki (Wabanaki) peoples museum is the Abbe Museum in Bar Harbor and you can learn more about their history and their lives today here: https://www.abbemuseum.org/about-the-wabanaki-nations.