Squanto: A Warrior's Tale

Native Americans are tricked into helping English traders, then kidnapped and enslaved. Men punch and wrestle each other as the Native Americans struggle to escape. Arrows and bullets are exchanged. Squanto must wrestle with a bear and is clawed on the shoulder. A little blood is seen. Squanto learns that his entire village had been wiped out by disease brought by the English. After having been kidnapped, enslaved, and otherwise tricked by the English, when he returns with them to his village, the Native American and his tribe sneak out to the docked British ship in the middle of the night, kill those on board, and burn the ship. Squanto, hands bound behind him, bites an Englishman. Armed Englishmen searching for Squanto attack a monastery and threaten the monks. A man is shot through the arm with an arrow. Another is killed by an arrow. No blood is seen.

Squanto advises the monks who have saved him that their tribe will die out without women.

Englishmen call Squanto a "beast," "livestock," and "less than human."

Parents need to know that Squanto: A Warrior's Tale is a sweeping narrative -- packed with the violence of slavery and conquest -- about the arrival of foreign explorers and settlers on the shores of America when it was still the New World, all told from a well-known Native American's point of view. This fictionalized compression of Squanto's adventurous life depicts his kidnapping, enslavement, his stay in England, his learning English, and his efforts to make peace back in his homeland, which would one day be known as Massachusetts. His story led to the first Thanksgiving feast with Pilgrims in 1621. Younger kids may be upset when Squanto is mistreated and chased by people who call him subhuman, but the subject of the gifts and know-how of American native people and their mistreatment at the hands of settlers and explorers may be a gateway to more learning on the subject.

To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails.