QI | How Did The Pilgrim Fathers Communicate With The Natives? 

How gifted was it, that Stephen let the comedy flow, without jumping in and explaining how incredibly accurate Bill was.

Note to myself: "Cheese and a bit of duck" makes Bill go angry. 2:42

I frequently return to this video just to hear Bill say Somerset

Rich may very well have known this already. The story of Squanto and Samoset is well known in America and often taught in schools. That's why he jumps straight to just talking in English to explain that the Pilgrims are not the first in America.

One of my favourite Sean Lock moments. RIP

I can watch Bill Bailey's reaction to the name Samoset over and over and over again.

I came to this video straight away after I heard about Sean Lock - This one makes me laugh so much, he will be missed!

And ever since, Americans have been convinced that the natives anywhere in the world will understand their English if only they'd speak loudly and slowly enough.

Squanto sounds like an amazing character. I wonder why there aren't movies about him... oh.

i could watch another 10-20 minutes of the "explorer vs. native" banter

That's quite the adventure. The vibe I got from the story is very similar to some sci-fi. A human gets captured and ends up travelling back and between his home and the advanced and alien civilization that he's the first of his kind to discover. Squanto himself even reminds me of Arthur Dent. He asks for beer and only gets some terrible foreign fowl. Great stuff.

"to Newfoundland. He found it was too far to walk home." Yeah and that whole thing about it being hard to walk underwater.

Squanto was definitely a patient man.

Sean's subtle humor is impeccable!

Glad to see Rich Hall got some gigs with BBC, I remember him on Fridays and SNL during their down years.

Later in life, Squanto, or Tisquantum as he was known to the Wampanoag tribe to which he belonged, was never really trusted by his tribe which questioned his allegiances. While traveling on Cape Cod on an embassy, he fell ill, died, and was buried in what is now the town of Chatham. It is speculated that he was poisoned.

Sean Lock is a beast. Love his performance.

This is one of the few clips where everyone was on fire!

"Hi how are ya" is so underrated as a joke

RIP and long live Sean Lock (April 22, 1963 - August 16, 2021), aged 58 You will always be remembered as a legend.

I shudder at the thought of sea travel in that time. To cross the Atlantic six times just blows my mind. I don’t know how long each journey would have taken but surely you’re looking at least a year of his life in total?

I love Bill's reaction when Fry tells him he's right. It's like "I am? Geez, I was just going for the laugh"

Makes me a bit sad watching this clip hearing the news of Sean's passing this is by far one of my favourite clips of his

Why doesnt someone make a movie about Squanto. That is one of the most interesting lives I have ever heard of. Imagine living in the stone age, then suddenly living in Victorian England.

Sean Lock had me in floods of tears.

Rest in peace Sean

I loved bill bailey's Sumerset accent!

What a remarkable story ! I'm always surprised what you can find out on RU-vid !

One of my favourite moments :)

Added factoid: one motivation for Tisquantum throwing in his lot with the weirdly dressed people from the tribe that kept kidnapping him was that his entire tribe was gone. While he was away being kidnapped and sailing around some fisherman visited Massachusetts with either the flu or smallpox and wiped out that particular group. For Tisquantum it was the Puritans or some neighboring tribe, and he had some status with the English.

"One of the most famous was Samosett" "SOMERSET?" "GET OFF MY LAHND!"

Yeah, I was fascinated to learn this all a few months ago when I wrote a lesson plan to teach the biography of Esquantum (ie Squanto) to my second graders. Fascinating life story! There was a lot of trading along the northern coast from New England to Labrador for a few decades before the pilgrims but they didn't teach me that in school.

such an interesting video , the best one for me. We never got told (Here in the UK) about this in our schools, I really think kids should know this stuff

What a life. Imagine the stories he could've told.

I about sh*t myself when they went into the Somerset dialect. "Have you got some cider?!"

Sean was brilliant😢 RIP

You can kind of see that Bill is genuinely annoyed by being solely associated with NMTB.

Rest easy, Sean. “Get off my land!!”

That should be a movie!

I'm from Plymouth and even I didn't know that the first native American asked for beer

fascinating

I had to click just to make sure I was right. And I was. 😁 If you've never been to Plymouth, it's an amazing place. All of the Separatists are represented by actors, but the Wampanoag are represented by their descendents and they will actually talk to you in "real time". The actors stay in character like you are back in the 1620's.

It just hit me that my Mayflower ancestor probably interacted with either or both Squanto and Samoset!

They should make a movie about Squanto.

Even though turkeys are native to the Americas the pilgrim fathers brought their own turkeys with them. By 1620 they were a staple food throughout Western Europe.

"Summerseeet" 02:15

If they brought him to Newfoundland, it was more than 'too far to walk home'... they brought him to an island.

2:13 - Bloody hell - Summo Set. Can't stop laughing.

The ship ride of Squanto sound like journey in London on a weekend.

Why is this story not a movie?

IMO That “ Hi, how are ya’ “ was very quick 😂

"By the time he'd crossed the Atlantic six time he was fluent in English." - Which he'd learned from talking to sailors... I dare say the pilgrim fathers fair popped their monocles out after the air turned blue.

it occurs to me after watching this a few times that the Pilgrims being in the radical wing of the Puritans would certainly not have used the book of common prayer

*reads title* *immediately thinks* AGGRESSIVELY Lol

he really didn't want to Squanto this opportunity. Huhehehehehee

Sean Lock: ah, it's a trick question Me: It's QI...

The Mayflower landed in Massachusetts. It's appropriate that the first sentence spoken was "You guys got any beeahs?"

"hi, how are ya?"

"Summerset!"

I'm disappointed that when Stephen paused after "How...?" (0:25), nobody raised their hand and chimed in with "Hau!"

It's a shame that Wednesday wasn't the first person they encountered.

I lived on Samoset Avenue in Hull, Massachusetts....the colony where the Mayflower landed.

In 1615 a french fishing ship was marooned of the cost of new England and they were captured and imprisoned by the Wampanoags who had grown wary of Europeans after a century of contact with European sailors and fishermen, some of which were occasionally kidnapped and enslaved natives. There was supposedly (who can say for sure?) an exchange between one of the french captives and a Wampanoag where the Frenchman said his god would punish the natives for their beastly lifestyle, and the Wampanoag (if Samoset and Tisquantum knew English, then some native who encountered French/Breton fisherman probably knew french) replied with disbelief saying that they were too numerous, and the Frenchman replied that his god had mysterious ways to punish them. Anyways the 1617 epidemic happened and killed so many of the natives, such that they were terrified of the Europeans. Even though the Wampanoags (and other tribes) still outnumbered the pilgrim settlers and could easily kill them, they were terrified, and that is the background of the first thanksgiving; A bunch of terrified American Indians came and helped the pilgrims establish themselves and they had peace for 50 years. It's honestly hard to blame the pilgrims and natives for giving the events spiritual significant. For the pilgrims it was a complete black swan event which for them was like winning the lottery at least a hundred times in a row, and for the natives it was an apocalyptic event far more devastating than almost anything else in human history. I mean, Covid so far has killed 0.08% of the global population, and people already treat that event with superstitious significance. Imagine if 90% of everybody you know died within the next 5 years from something you knew almost nothing about, you would be both terrified and desperately grasping for meaning.

How is Squanto's life not a movie ?

They worked to the method of grab a native, point to a object/landmark, speak loudly and slowly, write down what the native said. That why so many things are What, Your finger, Is this guy nuts.

"He was an interesting fellow, Squanto..." proceeds to list a series of ways in which Squanto is not interesting but actually extremely tragic.

samosed is valid portmantou in russian - it means "self-sitting [person]"

Somerset?!

Coastline looks like Maine

HI HOW ARE YA

Our English ancestors were the traditionalists of their time, forging settlements where ones already existed. "Hello, we're living here now. We hate you and we won't leave until you clean up this mess."

Thanksgiving is a completely manufactured or construct holiday. It was not, in fact, started by the Pilgrims as we have been taught, or as popularly believed. It was started by another group from England, the Puritans. The “First Thanksgiving” is an etiologic tale, a story told to explain and define the holiday through an account of its alleged origins. It is also an almost exclusively “American” holiday, as most other nations around the world do not have this holiday. The reason that we have so many myths associated with Thanksgiving, is because it is an invented tradition. It doesn't really originate with any one documented event. It is based on the New England puritan Thanksgiving, which is a religious Thanksgiving, and the traditional harvest celebrations of England and New England and maybe other ideas like commemorating the pilgrims. All of these have been gathered together and transformed into something different from the original parts. Most likely you were taught that Thanksgiving was started by the “Pilgrims”. The traditional story begins with a treacherous Atlantic crossing on the Mayflower, and after the Pilgrims landed, they were helped by local Indians. Then later, after a good harvest, the Pilgrims invited the Indians to the first Thanksgiving. The problem with the traditional Thanksgiving story is that it's a myth. It did not happen, and could not have happened the way the story is told.

Muskets.

never think you're the first to do anything

The idea of the Pilgrims making first contact is very widespread throughout the US; however, for all the faults of our educational system, you can't blame that for this misconception. We *are* taught the proper history of American colonization by the Europeans (or, at least, the proper _timeline;_ certain unsavory events are often left out). Sadly, we have a culture that glorifies ignorance, so students often get the impression that they shouldn't bother paying attention to anything they don't feel they "need" to learn in school.

0:25 I see what you did there, Stephen.

Ah, back in the good old days when Stephen Fry hosted, Sean Lock was alive, and hair was in colour.

Can you imagine landing somewhere with abundant lobster and no butter?

3:34 WHAT did you say, Stephen?

One word answer: SAMOSET. Look him up.

And here I thought I was going to find out squato didn't actually exist.

"Hi- how ya doin'" X-D

That's funny; The puritans leave the UK, thinking it too immoral and not strict enough religiously, they arrive on the shores of America and the first thing the locals ask for, is beer! xD

What else would you ask for really... 🍺

Samoset LMAO

“Greetings savage”

Load...Aim...FIRE...Reload...Aim...

We learn these things in 2nd grade in the US. We make "leather" vests out of repeatedly- crumpled paper grocery bags and put on a play for the parents. Hasn't anyone seen the Addams Family?

I would have thought that his initial 9 years in England would have been enough time to learn English with the help from journeying fishermen!

eye glasses, like you get glasses for your baws

WTH!!

Eye glasses! 😆 As opposed to ear glasses, nose glasses?

You're here for 2:13.

Rich is part Native American.

"explorers" is not quite the term we use over here in North America anymore

No, his name wasn't "Squanto." His name was "Tisquantum."

Rather like Stargate SG1. Every planet throughout the galaxy speak fluent American English.

So when mankind lands on another inhabitable planet and meets the local tribe, I guess they will be asked if their world still exists because "we came back here to look after ours properly".

Quite sure it was because of Hugh Cabot that sailed and helped refind NewFoundland and the Great Banks for the best fisheries at the time. Since England during Henry VII's time could not actually do so well as the other natio around them. Thus the King sent Cabot in 1497 to find better fisheries. Most likely English fishermen met up with the Aboriginals.

Email