Saturday Scenes

On the 16th of March in 1621, the early settlers in Massachusetts met their first Native American (er, “savage” as they referred to him). The pilgrims from the Mayflower had settled here and knew that there were native Americans in the area but had not yet spoken to them. Samoset strolled directly into the middle of their settlement and asked them for beer. In English. Specifically, he said, “Greetings, Englishmen. Do you have any beer?”

From The Recamier

A member of an Abenaki tribe that resided at that time in what is now Maine, Samoset was a sagamore (subordinate chief) of his tribe and was visiting Chief Massasoit, the sachem, or leader, of the Pokanoket, and “Massasoit” of the Wampanoag Confederacy. He had learned his broken English from the English fishermen that came to fish off Monhegan Island. After spending the night with the Pilgrims, he came back two days later with Squanto, who spoke English much better than Samoset, and who was able to translate when the Pilgrim leadership met with Chief Massasoit. Samoset was entertained with other Native American leaders in the harbor of present-day Portland, Maine in 1624; after that, the first Native American to contact the Pilgrims fades from history. (The Pilgrims in their accounts kept calling him Somerset instead of Samoset; most of the Pilgrims were from South West England, and the county of Somerset.)

On the 16th of March in 2013, natives from all over the world posted photographs to amaze the hardiest pilgrim:

And here are the photographers who took them:

• pendrift
• robdavies
• ernmander
• exRAFairman
• JanetIsserlis
• marksmith1986
• Namasqui
• FrauKulli
• akrabat
• tonystanford
• annemnicholas
• davey_steven
• RacingHippo
• Pewari
• jamesnnb
• oxonlady
• RobStormchaser
• icklemouse
• SockYarnShop
• JLM1974
• martin_chrisj
• HeideSpruck
• CarolineBignell
• mousewords
• madyline
• dndtsa
• gwenthing
• maidbloke
• dudleypj
• IrishInAtlanta
• Jo_1067
• NeilJackson10

Would you like to see your photograph featured here?

Simply take a photo on a Saturday and tweet it to @SatScenes! Every week I retweet the Saturday Scenes and then collect them all for a special post here. We’d love to see yours.