The discovery of skeletal remains in an unmarked Native American grave in Chatham last month has resurrected one of American history's lingering mysteries.

CHATHAM — The discovery of skeletal remains in an unmarked Native American grave last month has resurrected one of American history's lingering mysteries.



"I wonder if it's Squanto?" Donald Aikman, vice chairman of the town's historical commission, said last week after learning about the grave unearthed on Feb. 14 on Salt Marsh Way in North Chatham.



Evidence of a Christian burial prompted several local historians to think about the famous Native American, also known as Tisquantum, whose final resting place remains a mystery.



Before he suddenly fell ill and died in Chatham in November 1622, Squanto was the influential English-speaking guide and interpreter who helped the Pilgrims survive in a country already heavily settled by Native Americans.



At the time of his death, Squanto was on a trading expedition with the Pilgrims and had just helped them negotiate a deal to buy badly needed corn and other food from the Monomoyicks, a Wampanoag tribe on the shores of what is now Pleasant Bay.



Before he died, Squanto begged Governor William Bradford and other Pilgrims to pray for him so "that he might go to the Englishmen's God in heaven," according to Bradford in his book, "Of Plymouth Plantation."



"I think a lot of people immediately thought (of Squanto) because it's the only name we have, and he requested a Christian burial," Ann Westgate said.



Westgate is preparing a history trail of important Native American sites in Chatham for the town's 300th anniversary in 2012.



Squanto has "got to be one of the most fascinating people of that century," Cape archeologist Frederick Dunford said.



Squanto made two journeys to Europe — he and other Native Americans were kidnapped — and his eventual return to power in his homeland created a controversial bridge between two cultures.



"We joke about people being picked up by alien spacecraft and taken to a different world, but it's not hard to think that he experienced something like that," Dunford said.



He said in Native American burials of that period, the body is usually found flexed or in a fetal position.



"Without knowing anything at all about this case, my guess is that this person must have been laid out (flat), as if in a coffin or in a shroud, and perhaps the orientation was east to west," he said.



The recently found grave and its contents are under investigation by the Massachusetts Historical Commission, but the identity of the Native American buried there is likely to remain a mystery. The commission doesn't comment about grave investigation findings to preserve such sites from additional human disturbance, a spokesman said last week.



Also, Dunford said "hundreds of other Native Americans" were given a Christian burial and many rest in unmarked graves.



The grave site on Salt Marsh Way on a hill overlooking Chatham Harbor and North Beach is less likely than several other possible final resting places for Squanto.



More than two miles away is the center of the Monomoyick community in the Muddy Creek area, the boundary between Harwich and Chatham, Dunford said, and there are many known sites of Native American graves in that neighborhood.



The Cape Cod National Seashore says Squanto's body may be buried on a hill just west of Ryder's Cove and Route 28 in Chatham.



Historian Paul Brooks wrote that Squanto was buried on a hilltop in Chatham near the Nickerson family's burial ground, Westgate said.



And the Harwich Historical Commission places Squanto's grave near Round Cove, 50 feet from what is now Route 28.



W. Sears Nickerson, the late Pleasant Bay historian, wrote that Squanto's grave was probably in what is now the Eastward Ho! Golf Course above the bank that looks over the bay.



It's just impossible to tell 410 years later, but the great thing about discoveries such as an old grave site, is that "it causes people to reflect on the real deep history that this place has," Dunford said.



"We're so caught up in contemporary events that we don't necessarily think about the 10,000 years of history that is here," he said.



"We're just a blink of the eye on the continuum."