George Weymouth (Waymouth) was an English explorer and colonist of the area now occupied by the state of Maine. George Weymouth was a native of Cockington, Devon, who spent his youth studying shipbuilding and mathematics. His travels are among the early recorded contacts between Wabanaki nations and people of Northern Europe.
In 1602 Weymouth was hired to seek a northwest passage to India by the recently formed East India Company.[1] He sailed the ship Discovery three hundred miles into Hudson Strait[2] but turned back on July 26, as the year was far spent and many men were ill. Weymouth reached Dartmouth on September 5, 1602.
In March 1605, members of the English nobility, Thomas Arundell and Henry Wriothesley, sent Captain Weymouth to found a colony in "Virginia" (the location "Virginia" referring, at that time, to the lands of the entire eastern coastline of North America not ruled by France or Spain) under the ruse of searching again for a northwest passage.[3] Weymouth sailed from England on March 31, 1605, on the ship Archangel[4] and landed near Monhegan off the coast of Maine on May 17, 1605.
A report of the voyage, written by James Rosier (hired by Arundell to make detailed observations), was published soon after the men returned from their expedition. The pamphlet described the physical resources available to settlers on the islands and coast of Maine (harbors, rivers, soil, trees, wild fruit and vegetables, and so forth). James Rosier, would write that Monhegan was "woody, growen with Firre, Birch, Oke and Beech, as farre as we say along the shore; and so likely to be within. On the verge grow Gooseberries, Strawberries, Wild pease, and Wilde rose bushes."[5]
Rosier also recounts the crew's encounters with the indigenous peoples living in the Maine coastal region around Penobscot Bay, likely members of Eastern Abenaki-speaking nations, which began eleven days after the Archangel first moored among the Georges Islands, on May 30, 1605. The ship was anchored in Muscongus Bay, and the captain and thirteen men had gone off in the shallop to explore. The report tells how the remaining crew had a chance encounter that afternoon with a hunting party, developed a sign language with them, and over several days encouraged their trust with gifts and then trade.
On his return, Weymouth joined the gathering, offering the Abenaki people bread and peas, with which they were unfamiliar, and showing them a sword magnetized with a lodestone.[6] After three days of hospitality and trading, Rosier suggested that the crew visit their homes to trade.
Rosier wrote that cultivating their trust was part of the plan to colonize once they had decided that the land was prime for European settlement.
On June 3, as they themselves had suggested, the English set out to visit their homes. They became skittish when a large assembly came to escort them and decided not to go.
Rosier claimed that they then decided to kidnap a number of Abenaki people, based on their belief that the Abenaki people intended "mischief."
On the next day, they abducted five people, three by duplicity and two through physical violence. In discussing the forcible kidnapping of two people, Rosier noted that the kidnapping had been long planned, saying that they would have resorted to harsher methods to secure their captives because the capture of indigenous people was "a matter of great importance for the full accomplement of our voyage".[7]
The idea was undoubtedly conceived by the entrepreneurs back in England as a way to become familiar with the land and inhabitants that they intended to colonize. The plan operated, however, at cross-purposes with their attempt to create good will. Weymouth and his crew made no secret of their abductions, though among some indigenous communities they were thought to have killed instead of kidnapped the five; not long after Weymouth's crew had left, French explorer Samuel de Champlain, sailing from the north, met a man named Anaffon, a minor trader in furs, at Monhegan Island on July 31. Anaffon told Champlain of a group of Englishmen who had been fishing there not long before and "under cover of friendship" had killed five inhabitants of the area.
Weymouth returned to England in mid June.[8] All five of his captives were taken to England. Their names were recorded as Amoret, Tahanedo, sagamore Manedo, Sketwarroes, and Sassacomoit, a servant; Weymouth presented the latter three to Sir Ferdinando Gorges, governor of Plymouth Fort, piquing his interest in exploration.[9] [10] Gorges was an investor in the Weymouth voyage and became the chief promoter of the scheme when Arundell withdrew from the project.[11]
In a book published in 1658, a decade after Gorges had died, and presumably written when Gorges was quite old, Gorges wrote of his delight in Weymouth's kidnapping, and wrongly named Squanto as one of the three given over to him.
Circumstantial evidence makes nearly impossible the claim that Squanto was among the three taken by Gorges, and no modern historian entertains this as fact. The abductions were an intentional policy of the English entrepreneurs. Gorges, chief among the entrepreneur in Englands, wanted to both impress on the Natives the superiority of English technology and encourage colonists to emigrate; additionally, colonial entrepreneurs wanted to learn as much as they could from their captives about the lands and peoples of the New World. The entrepreneurs displayed their captives prominently to attract financing and public support for their commercial project. It is more difficult to understand how they continued the policy after the experience with these first captives. Two of the captives, Manedo and Sassacomit, were sent back with Captain Henry Chollons in 1606, but the ship was intercepted by the Spanish. Manedo was lost, but Sassacomit, seriously injured, was lodged in a Spanish prison.[12] Sassacomit was forced to escape his bondage in Spain and make his way to England before he could be returned to his home in what is now Maine. Two other of the kidnapped Abenaki were returned to Maine in connection with Gorges's plan to found a trading colony there. His idea was that the returned Abenaki would act as liaison between the English settlers and the local population. Instead of providing a safe entrée for the English escorting him, however, one of the two, Skidwarres, had to be forced to identify himself so that the Natives would stop the attack they made on the English. Skidwarres once home, did not persuade the Abenaki to trade with the English but instead warned them to be wary of them. The conduct of Skidwarres and fellow abductee Tahanedo, nurtured the mistrust that would eventually lead to the failure of the Sagadahoc colony. This experience did not deter Gorges or other English entrepreneurs from continuing the practice of abducting local men to be transported to England, abducting Natives in the Cape Cod area as well.
Weymouth named the island Saint George after the patron saint of England.[4]
In Britain, the North American tree species Pinus strobus is referred to as the "Weymouth Pine", in honor of George Weymouth.
In July 2005 the Historical Society of Thomaston, Maine celebrated the 400 anniversary of Weymouth's voyage to Maine.[13]