Thomas Dermer (c. 1590 in Plymouth, England – died in the summer of 1620, in Virginia) 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.
1614 to 1618: Explorations
Born in Plymouth, England, Dermer first went to New England with Captain John Smith, who was sent out in 1614 by London merchants to lay the foundations of a new plantation and to trade with the Native Americans there. Dermer was to accompany Smith on his 1615 voyage to New England but the ship, after encountering pirates and the French, finally made its way back to Plymouth with great difficulty.
Dermer then spent some time in Newfoundland, 1616–18, with his associate, Governor John Mason, at Cuper's Cove (now Cupids), where he was possibly engaged in the fishing business but more likely involved in explorations of the island's natural resources. He wrote a letter, dated September 9, 1616, from Cuper's Cove, in which he describes in favorable terms the fertility of the soil, abundance of wildlife, and mineral potentialities, an evidence of his interest in the commercial possibilities of the area.
Dermer meets Tisqantum (Squanto)
It was during this stay in Newfoundland that Dermer met Tisquantum (better known as Squanto), the Patuxet Native American, who, with 24 others from Patuxet and Nauset, had been seized by Capt. Thomas Hunt in 1614 to be sold into slavery in Málaga Spain. Tisquantum and others were redeemed by local friars in Spain and sent to England. He eventually came into the care of John Slany, a London merchant, treasurer of the Newfoundland Company, and shipbuilder. Tisquantum learned English and in 1616 was sent by Slany to Cuper's Cove as an interpreter.
Dermer saw the value in Tisquantum's ability to speak English and to become an interpreter between the New England colonizers and the Indians. Accompanied by Tisquantum, Dermer returned to England in 1618 to confer with Sir Ferdinando Gorges who was a leader of the Plymouth Company merchants attempting to colonize New England. Gorges, who favored co-operation with the Indians as a matter of policy, agreed with Dermer's plan. Gorges commissioned Dermer as commander of his 1619 expedition to New England with Tisquantum as interpreter and expert on North American natural resources.
Dermer's Letter of December 27, 1619
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 day's journey westward they arrived at the inhabited village of Namasket (Middleborough, MA).
