page_title: Thomas Dermer
section_title: Dermer's Letter of December 27, 1619
hierarchical_section_title: Thomas Dermer / Dermer's Letter of December 27, 1619
caption_attribution_description: English: Capt. Nicholas Hobson's ship is attacked by Wampanoag warriors in 1614 on Martha's Vineyard, allowing Hobson's captive Epenow to escape.
context_page_description: Thomas Dermer was a 17th-century navigator and explorer. Thomas Dermer explored the eastern coastline of America from 1614 to 1620. He was associated with Captain John Smith, The Newfoundland Company, Sir Ferdinando Gorges, Jamestown, The Plymouth Company, and The Merchant Adventurers. Dermer, working side by side with Squanto, is credited with starting to normalize the relations between the Native Americans and Europeans. He was known to the Pilgrims from copies of his letters, that they had obtained. The Pilgrim colony directly benefited from the diplomatic ground work of Dermer and Squanto.
context_section_description: Captain Dermer's small fleet arrived at the Monhegan (Maine) fishing grounds in May 1619. After "leaving the fishermen to their labour at Monhegan", Dermer, a small crew, and Tisquantum, left on an open pinnace of five tons to locate Patuxet. They arrived at Patuxet in June 1619. The journey from Monhegan revealed that there had been a terrible depopulation of the Natives in the last three years. Dermer writes "...found some ancient Plantations, not long since populous, now utterly void". Patuxet, as well as all the villages up and down the coast, were deserted; most of the inhabitants dead from some sort of great epidemic. Thomas Morton, would say "and the bones and skulls upon several places of their habitations made such a spectacle after my coming into these parts, that, as I traveled in the Forest near the Massachusetts, it seemed to me a new found Golgotha".
  After their initial survey of the abandoned Patuxet village, the English and Tisquantum, proceeded inland to find survivors and to learn more of what had happened. After a days journey westward they arrived at the inhabited village of Namasket (Middleborough, MA).
  The outrage of Hunt's actions of 1614 caused hatred and distrusted between the Europeans and the Indians, to the point that when in 1617 a French fishing ship was shipwrecked on the shores of Cape Cod a few men escaped death only by being enslaved by the Nausets; all the others were killed. Dermer wrote: "...for which cause (the previous kidnappings and acts of violence of the Europeans) Squanto cannot deny but they would have killed me when I was at Namasket, had not he (Squanto) entreated hard for me..." Afterwards Dermer sent a messenger "...a day's journey farther west to Poconaokit (Bristol,Rhode Island), which bordereth on the sea, whence came to see me two kings, attended with a guard of fifty men, who being well satisfied with what my savage (Tisquantum) and I discoursed unto them, (being desirous of novelty,) gave me content in whatsoever I demanded, where I found that former relations were true". The 'kings' were Massasoit and his brother Quadequina. Dermer then writes: "...Here I redeemed a Frenchman, and afterwards another at Mastachusit, who three years since escaped shipwreck at the north-east of Cape Cod...".
  Dermer returned with his men and Tisquantum to the boat at Patuxet, where they explored a few more days what are now the islands of Boston Harbor, prospecting for gold. By mid-June 1619, Dermer and his crew returned to Monhegan; Tisquantum was dropped off at Sawahquatooke (now Saco, Maine) 'to stay with some of our (Indian) friends'. Dermer supervised the dispatching of the fishing vessels to England. He put most of his provisions on board Captain Ward's ship, The Sampson, which was bound for Virginia. Dermer and a few others then explored the Eastern coastline of America in a small open pinnacle, from Monhegan to Virginia.
  During the voyage south, the boat and crew endure storms and leaks. At one desperate moment they throw most of their provisions overboard to regain control of the ship, before it is dashed upon some stormy rocks. He writes that his relations within the Indians are now strained without Tisquantun to intercede. On the southern tip of Cape Cod, Dermer is captured by the still seething Nausets. The Indians try to kill his men on the pinnace. But then, in a bold move (Dermer described it as 'after a strange manner'), Dermer escapes with a Nauset leader and two others as prisoners. Dermer then ransoms them back to the Nausets for hatchets and a canoe full of corn and hastily departs.
  Dermer's expedition then headed to Capaock, or Martha's Vineyard, (named by Bartholomew Gosnold in 1602) to discover the truth behind the conflicting stories of what happened to Epenow, a sachem taken from Capaock in 1611 by a Capt Harlow and brought to England. After paraded around London as a wonder, he became an interpreter, and claimed to know where gold might be found in New England, a gambit that would provide a chance for him to return home. Captain Nicholas Hobson brought him back
caption: Artist's depiction of the attack on Capt. Nicholas Hobson's ship by Wampanoag warriors in 1614 on Martha's Vineyard, allowing Epenow to escape.
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