Chapter I: Part 1

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Transcriber's note:

Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).

A carat character is used to denote superscription. A
single character following the carat is superscripted
(example: Gov^r).

This book is a 19th century edition of a 17th century
original, along with extensive commentary. The 19th
century edition used different page numbering. To
facilitate internal references to specific pages, the
original 17th century page numbers have been incorporated
into the text enclosed by curly braces, e.g. {123}.
References to these numbers in the text have been kept
as printed, e.g. *123.

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Publications of the Prince Society.

THE NEW ENGLISH CANAAN.

The Publications of the Prince Society. Established May 25th, 1858.

THE NEW ENGLISH CANAAN.

Boston: Printed for the Society, By John Wilson and Son. 1883.

Two Hundred and Fifty Copies.

THE NEW ENGLISH CANAAN OF THOMAS MORTON.

WITH INTRODUCTORY MATTER AND NOTES

by

CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS, JR.

Boston: Published by the Prince Society. 1883.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1883, by The Prince Society, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

Editor: CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS, JR.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

PAGE
PREFACE v-vi
THOMAS MORTON OF MERRY-MOUNT 1-98
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF NEW ENGLISH CANAAN 99-105
NEW ENGLISH CANAAN 106-345
Book I. The Origin of the Natives; their Manners and Customs 115-78
Book II. A Description of the Beauty of the Country 179-242
Book III. A Description of the People 243-345
TABLE OF CONTENTS OF THE NEW ENGLISH CANAAN 347-9

* * * * *

OFFICERS OF THE PRINCE SOCIETY 353
THE PRINCE SOCIETY, 1883 354-8
PUBLICATIONS OF THE PRINCE SOCIETY 359
VOLUMES IN PREPARATION BY THE PRINCE SOCIETY 360
INDEX 361-81

PREFACE.

Before undertaking the present work I had no experience as an editor. It is unnecessary for me to say, therefore, that, were I now to undertake it, I should pursue a somewhat different course from that which I have pursued. The _New English Canaan_ is, in many respects, a singular book. One of its most singular features is the extent of ground it covers. Not only is it full of obscure references to incidents in early New England history, but it deals directly with the aborigines, the trees, animals, fish, birds and geology of the region; besides having constant incidental allusions to literature,--both classic and of the author’s time,--to geography, and to then current events. No one person can possess the knowledge necessary to thoroughly cover so large a field. To edit properly he must have recourse to specialists.

It was only as the labor of investigation increased on my hands that I realized what a wealth of scientific and special knowledge was to be reached, in the neighborhood of Boston, by any one engaged in such multifarious inquiry. Were I again to enter upon it I should confine my own labors chiefly to correspondence; for on every point which comes up there is some one now in this vicinity, if he can only be found out, who has made a study of it, and has more information than the most laborious and skilful of editors can acquire.

In this edition of the _New Canaan_ I have not laid so many of these specialists as I now wish, under requisition; and yet the list is a tolerably extensive one. In every case, also, the assistance asked for has been rendered as of course, in the true scientific spirit. My correspondence has included Messrs. Deane, Winsor and Ellis on events in early New England history; Professor Whitney on geographical allusions; Professors Lane and Greenough, Dr. Everett and Mr. T. W. Higginson, on references to the Greek and Latin classics, or quotations from them; and the Rev. Mr. Norton on Scriptural allusions. Mr. J. C. Gray has hunted up for me legal precedents five centuries old, and Mr. Lindsay Swift has explained archaic expressions, to the meaning of which I could get no clew. On the subject of trees and herbs I called on Professors Gray and Sargent; in regard to birds, Mr. William Brewster was indefatigable; Mr. Allen, though in very poor health, took the chapter on animals; Professor Shaler disposed of the geology; Messrs. Agassiz and Lyman instructed me as to fish, and Professor Putnam as to shell-heaps. I met some allusions to early French and other explorers, and naturally had recourse to Messrs. Parkman and Slafter; while in regard to Indian words and names, I have been in constant correspondence with the one authority, Mr. J. Hammond Trumbull, who has recognized to the fullest extent the public obligation which a mastery of a special subject imposes on him who masters it.

In closing a pleasant editorial task, my chief regret, therefore, is that the notes in this volume contain so much matter of my own. They should have been even more eclectic than they are, and each from the highest possible authority on the subject to which it relates.

C. F. A., JR.

QUINCY, MASS., April 4, 1883.

MORTON OF MERRY-MOUNT.

In the second book of his history of Plymouth Plantation, Governor Bradford, while dealing with the events of the year 1628 though writing at a still later period, says:--

“Aboute some three or four years before this time, ther came
over one Captaine Wolastone (a man of pretie parts), and with
him three or four more of some eminencie, who brought with them
a great many servants, with provisions and other implaments for
to begine a plantation; and pitched themselves in a place within
the Massachusets, which they called, after their Captains name,
Mount-Wollaston. Amongst whom was one Mr. Morton, who, it should
seeme, had some small adventure (of his owne or other mens) amongst
them.”[1]

There is no other known record of Wollaston than that contained in this passage of Bradford.[2] His given name even is not mentioned. It may be surmised with tolerable certainty that he was one of the numerous traders, generally from Bristol or the West of England, who frequented the fishing grounds and the adjacent American coast during the early years of the seventeenth century. Nothing is actually known of him, however, until in 1625 he appeared in Massachusetts Bay, as Boston Harbor was then called, at the head of the expedition which Bradford mentions.

His purpose and that of his companions was to establish a plantation and trading-post in the country of the Massachusetts tribe of Indians. It was the third attempt of the kind which had been made since the settlement at Plymouth, a little more than four years before. The first of these attempts had been that of Thomas Weston at Wessagusset, or Weymouth, in the summer of 1622. This had resulted in a complete failure, the story of which is told by Bradford and Winslow, and forms one of the more striking pages in the annals of early New England. The second attempt, and that which next preceded Wollaston’s, had closely followed the first, being made in the summer of 1623, under the immediate direction of the Council for New England. At the head of it was Captain Robert Gorges, a younger son of Sir Ferdinando Gorges. Weston’s expedition was a mere trading venture, having little connection with anything which went before or which came after. That of Gorges, however, was something more. As will presently be seen, it had a distinct political and religious significance.

Robert Gorges and his party arrived in Boston Bay in 1623, during what is now the latter part of September. They established themselves in the buildings which had been occupied by Weston’s people during the previous winter, and which had been deserted by them a few days less than six months before. The site of those buildings cannot be definitely fixed. It is supposed to have been on Phillips Creek, a small tidal inlet of the Weymouth fore-river, a short distance above the Quincy-Point bridge. The grant made to Robert Gorges by the Council for New England, and upon which he probably intended to place his party, was on the other side of the bay, covering ten miles of sea-front and stretching thirty miles into the interior. It was subsequently pronounced void by the lawyers on the ground of being “loose and uncertain,” but as nearly as can now be fixed it covered the shore between Nahant and the mouth of the Charles, and the region back of that as far west as Concord and Sudbury, including Lynn and the most thickly inhabited portions of the present county of Middlesex.

Reaching New England, however, late in the season, Gorges’s first anxiety was to secure shelter for his party against the impending winter, for the frosts had already begun. Fortunately the few savages thereabouts had been warned by Governor Bradford not to injure the Wessagusset buildings, and thus they afforded a welcome shelter to the newcomers. These were people of a very different class from those who had preceded them. Among them were men of education, and some of them were married and had brought their wives. Their settlement proved a permanent one. Robert Gorges, it is true, the next spring returned to England disgusted and discouraged, taking back with him a portion of his followers. Others of them went on to Virginia in search of a milder climate and a more fertile soil. A few, however, remained at Wessagusset,[3] and are repeatedly referred to by Morton in the _New Canaan_[4] as his neighbors at that place.

When, therefore, Wollaston sailed into the bay in the early summer of 1625, its shores were not wholly unoccupied. His party consisted of himself and some three or four partners, with thirty or more servants, as they were called, or men who had sold their time for a period of years to an employer, and who stood in the relation to him of apprentice to master. Rasdall, according to Bradford, was the name of one of the partners, and Fitcher would seem to have been that of another. Thomas Morton, the author of the _New English Canaan_, was a third.

Not much more is known of Morton’s life prior to his coming to America than of Wollaston’s. He had certainly an education of that sort which was imparted in the schools of the Elizabethan period, for he had a smattering knowledge of the more familiar Latin authors at least, and was fond of classic allusion. Governor Dudley, in his letter to the Countess of Lincoln, says that while in England he was an attorney in “the west countries.”[5] He further intimates that he had there been implicated in some foul misdemeanor, on account of which warrants were out against him. Nathaniel Morton in his _Memorial_[6] says that the crime thus referred to was the killing of a partner concerned with him, Thomas Morton, in his first New England venture. Thomas Wiggin, however, writing in 1632 to Sir John Cooke, one of King Charles’s secretaries for foreign affairs and a member of the Privy Council, states, upon the authority of Morton’s “wife’s sonne and others,” that he had fled to New England “upon a foule suspition of murther.”[7] While, therefore, it would seem that grave charges were in general circulation against Morton, connecting him with some deed of violence, it is necessary to bear in mind that considerable allowance must be made before any accusation against him can be accepted on the word of either the Massachusetts or the Plymouth authorities, or those in sympathy with them. Yet Morton was a reckless man, and he lived in a time when no great degree of sanctity attached to human life; so that in itself there is nothing very improbable in this charge. It is possible that before coming to America he may have put some one out of the way. Nevertheless, as will presently be seen, though he was subsequently arrested and in jail in England, the accusation never took any formal shape. That he was at some time married would appear from the letter of Wiggin already referred to, and the allusions in the _New Canaan_ show that he had been a man passionately fond of field sports, and a good deal of a traveller as well. He speaks, for instance, of having been “bred in so genious a way” that in England he had the common use of hawks in fowling; and, in another place, he alludes to his having been so near the equator that “I have had the sun for my zenith.”[8] On the titlepage of his book he describes himself as “of Cliffords Inne gent.,” which of course he would not have ventured to do had he not really been what he there claimed to be; for at the time the _New Canaan_ was published he was living in London and apparently one of the attorneys of the Council for New England.[9] Bradford, speaking from memory, fell into an error, therefore, when he described him as a “kind of petie-fogger of Furnefells Inne.”[10] That in 1625 he was a man of some means is evident from the fact that he owned an interest in the Wollaston venture; though here again Bradford takes pains to say that the share he represented (“of his owne or other mens”) was small, and that he himself had so little respect amongst the rest that he was slighted by even the meanest servants.

In all probability this was not Morton’s first visit to Massachusetts Bay. Indeed, he was comparatively familiar with it, having already passed one season on its shores. His own statement, at the beginning of the first chapter of the second book of the _Canaan_, seems to be conclusive on this point. He there says: “In the month of June, Anno Salutis 1622, it was my chance to arrive in the parts of New England with thirty servants, and provision of all sorts fit for a plantation; and, while our houses were building, I did endeavor to take a survey of the country.”[11] There was but one ship which arrived in New England in June, 1622, and that was the _Charity_;[12] and the _Charity_ brought out Weston’s party, which settled at Wessagusset, answering in every respect to Morton’s description of the party he came with. Andrew Weston, a younger brother of the chief promoter of the enterprise, had then come in charge of it, and is described as having been “a heady yong man and violente.”[13] After leaving Weston’s company at Plymouth, the _Charity_ went on to Virginia, but returned from there early in October, going it would seem directly to Boston Bay and Wessagusset.[14] One part of the colonists had then been there three months, and it was during those three months that Morton apparently took the survey of the country to which he refers. As the Wessagusset plantation was now left under the charge of Richard Greene, it would seem that young Weston went back to England in the _Charity_, and the inference is that Morton, who had come out as his companion, went back with him.

In any event, the impression produced on Morton by this first visit to New England was a strong and favorable one. It looked to him a land of plenty, a veritable New Canaan. Accordingly, he gave vent to his enthusiasm in the warm language of the first chapter of his second book.[15] With the subsequent fate of Weston’s party he seems to have had no connection. He must at the time have heard of it, and was doubtless aware of the evil reputation that company left behind. This would perfectly account for the fact that he never mentions his having himself had anything to do with it. Yet it may be surmised that he returned to England possessed with the idea of connecting himself with some enterprise, either Weston’s or another, organized to make a settlement on the shores of Boston Bay and there to open a trade in furs. He had then had no experience of a New England winter; though, for that matter, when he afterwards had repeated experiences of it, they in no way changed his views of the country. To the last, apparently, he thought of it as he first saw it during the summer and early autumn of 1622, when it was a green fresh wilderness, nearly devoid of inhabitants and literally alive with game.

News of the utter failure of Weston’s enterprise must have reached London in the early summer of 1623. Whether Morton was in any way personally affected thereby does not appear, though from his allusions to Weston’s treatment by Robert Gorges at Plymouth, during the winter of 1623-4, it is not at all improbable that he was.[16] During the following year (1624) he is not heard of; but early in 1625 he had evidently succeeded in effecting some sort of a combination which resulted in the Wollaston expedition.

The partners in this enterprise would seem to have been the merest adventurers. So far as can be ascertained, they did not even trouble themselves to take out a patent for the land on which they proposed to settle,[17] in this respect showing themselves even more careless than Weston.[18] With the exception of Morton, they apparently had no practical knowledge of the country, and their design clearly was to establish themselves wherever they might think good, and to trade in such way as they saw fit.

When the party reached its destination in Massachusetts Bay, they found Wessagusset still occupied by such as were left of Robert Gorges’s company, who had then been there nearly two years. They had necessarily, therefore, to establish themselves elsewhere. A couple of miles or so north of Wessagusset, on the other side of the Monatoquit, and within the limits of what is now the town of Quincy, was a place called by the Indians Passonagessit. The two localities were separated from each other not only by the river, which here widens out into a tidal estuary, but by a broad basin which filled and emptied with every tide, while around it were extensive salt marshes intersected by many creeks. The upland, too, was interspersed with tangled swamps lying between gravel ridges. At Passonagessit the new-comers established themselves, and the place is still known as Mount Wollaston.

In almost all respects Passonagessit was for their purpose a better locality than Wessagusset. They had come there to trade. However it may have been with the others, in Morton’s calculations at least the plantation must have been a mere incident to the more profitable dealing in peltry. A prominent position on the shore, in plain view of the entrance to the bay, would be with him an important consideration. This was found at Passonagessit. It was a spacious upland rising gently from the beach and, a quarter of a mile or so from it, swelling into a low hill.[19] It was not connected with the interior by any navigable stream, but Indians coming from thence would easily find their way to it; and, while a portion of the company could always be there ready to trade, others of them might make excursions to all points on the neighboring coast where furs were to be had. Looking seaward, on the left of the hill was a considerable tidal creek; in front of it, across a clear expanse of water a couple of miles or so in width, lay the islands of the harbor in apparently connected succession. Though the anchoring grounds among these islands afforded perfect places of refuge for vessels, Passonagessit itself, as the settlers there must soon have realized, labored, as a trading-point, under one serious disadvantage. There was no deep water near it. Except when the tide was at least half full, the shore could be approached only in boats. On the other hand, so far as planting was concerned, the conditions were favorable. The soil, though light, was very good; and the spot, lying as it did close to “the Massachusetts fields,” had some years before been cleared of trees by the Sachem Chickatawbut, who had made his home there.[20] He had, however, abandoned it at the time when the great pestilence swept away his tribe, and tradition still points out a small savin-covered hummock, near Squantum, on the south side of the Neponset, as his subsequent dwelling-place. Morton says that Chickatawbut’s mother was buried at Passonagessit, and that the Plymouth people, on one of their visits, incurred his enmity by despoiling her grave of its bear skins.[21] So far as the natives were concerned, however, any settlers on the shores of Boston Bay, after the year 1623, had little cause for disquietude. They were a thoroughly crushed and broken-spirited race. The pestilence had left only a few hundred of the whole Massachusetts tribe, and in 1631 Chickatawbut had but some fifty or sixty followers.[22] It was a dying race; and what little courage the pestilence had left them was effectually and forever crushed out by Miles Standish, when at Wessagusset, in April, 1623, he put to death seven of the strongest and boldest of their few remaining men.

Having selected a site, Wollaston and his party built their house nearly in the centre of the summit of the hill, on a gentle westerly slope. It commanded towards the north and east an unbroken view of the bay and all the entrances to it; while on the opposite or landward side, some four or five miles away, rose the heavily-wooded Blue Hills. Across the bay to the north lay Shawmut, beyond the intervening peninsulas of Squantum and Mattapan. Wessagusset was to the south, across the marshes and creeks, and hidden from view by forest and uplands.

]

During their first season, the summer of 1625, Wollaston’s party must have been fully occupied in the work of building their houses and laying out their plantation. The winter followed. A single experience of a winter on that shore seems to have sufficed for Captain Wollaston, as it had before sufficed for Captain Gorges. He apparently came to the conclusion that there was little profit and no satisfaction for him in that region. Accordingly, during the early months of 1626, he determined to go elsewhere. The only account of what now ensued is that contained in Bradford; for Morton nowhere makes a single allusion to Wollaston or any of his associates, nor does he give any account of the origin, composition or purposes of the Wollaston enterprise. His silence on all these points is, indeed, one of the singular features in the _New Canaan_. Such references as he does make are always to Weston and Weston’s attempt;[24] and he seems to take pains to confound that attempt with Wollaston’s. Once only he mentions the number of the party with which he landed,[25] and the fact that it was subsequently dissolved;[26] but how it came to be dissolved he does not explain. The inference from this is unavoidable. Morton was free enough in talking of what he did and saw at Passonagessit, of his revels there, of how he was arrested, and persecuted out of the country. That he says not a word of Wollaston or his other partners must be due to the fact that the subject was one about which he did not care to commit himself. Nevertheless Bradford could not but have known the facts, for not only at a later day was Morton himself for long periods of time at Plymouth, but when the events of which he speaks occurred Bradford must have been informed of them by the Wessagusset people, as well as by Fitcher. As we only know what Bradford tells us, it can best be given in his own words:--

“Having continued there some time, and not finding things to answer
their expectations, nor profit to arise as they looked for, Captain
Wollaston takes a great part of the servants and transports them
to Virginia, where he puts them off at good rates, selling their
time to other men; and writes back to one Mr. Rasdall, one of his
chief partners and accounted their merchant, to bring another part
of them to Virginia likewise; intending to put them off there, as
he had done the rest. And he, with the consent of the said Rasdall,
appointed one Fitcher to be his Lieutenant, and govern the remains
of the plantation till he, or Rasdall, returned to take further
order thereabout. But this Morton, abovesaid, having more craft than
honesty, in the others’ absence watches an opportunity, (commons
being but hard amongst them,) and got some strong drink and other
junkets, and made them a feast; and after they were merry, he began
to tell them he would give them good counsel. ‘You see,’ saith he,
‘that many of your fellows are carried to Virginia; and if you stay
till this Rasdall returns, you will also be carried away and sold
for slaves with the rest. Therefore, I would advise you to thrust
out this Lieutenant Fitcher; and I, having a part in the plantation,
will receive you as my partners and consociates. So may you be free
from service; and we will converse, trade, plant and live together
as equals, and support and protect one another:’ or to like effect.
This counsel was easily received, so they took opportunity and thrust
Lieutenant Fitcher out a-doors, and would suffer him to come no more
amongst them; but forced him to seek bread to eat, and other relief,
from his neighbors, till he could get passage for England.”[27]

Wollaston’s process of depletion to Virginia had reduced the number of servants at Passonagessit from thirty or thirty-five, as Morton variously states it,[28] to six at most.[29] It was as the head of these that Morton established himself in control at Merry-Mount, as he called the place,[30] sometime, it would seem, in the summer of 1626. He had now two distinct objects in view: one was enjoyment, the other was profit; and apparently he was quite reckless as to the methods he pursued in securing either the one or the other. If he was troubled by his former partners appearing to assert their rights, as he probably was, no mention is made of it. There were no courts to appeal to in America, and those of Europe were far away; nor would it have been easy or inexpensive to enforce their process in New England. Accordingly nothing more is heard of Wollaston or Rasdall, though Bradford does say that Morton was “vehemently suspected for the murder of a man that had adventured moneys with him when he first came.”[31] There is a vague tradition, referred to John Adams, that Wollaston was subsequently lost at sea;[32] but as a full century must have elapsed between the occurrence of the event and the birth of John Adams, this tradition is quite as unreliable as traditions usually are.

Passionately fond of field sports, Morton found ample opportunity for the indulgence of his tastes in New England. He loved to ramble through the woods with his dog and gun, or sail in his boat on the bay. The Indians, too, were his allies, and naturally enough; for not only did he offer them an open and easy-going market for their furs, but he was companionable with them. They shared in his revels. He denies that he was in the habit of selling them spirits,[33] but where spirits were as freely used as Morton’s account shows they were at Merry-Mount, the Indians undoubtedly had their share. Nor were his relations confined to the Indian men. The period of Elizabeth and James I. was one of probably as much sexual incontinency as any in English history. Some of the earlier writers on the New England Indians have spoken of the modesty of the women,--Wood, in his _Prospect_, for instance, and Josselyn, in the second of his _Two Voyages_.[34] Morton, however, is significantly silent on this point, and the idea of female chastity in the Indian mind, in the rare cases where it existed at all, seems to have been of the vaguest possible description.[35] Morton was not a man likely to be fastidious, and his reference to the “lasses in beaver coats”[36] is suggestive. Merry-Mount was unquestionably, so far as temperance and morality were concerned, by no means a commendable place.[37]

Morton’s inclination to boisterous revelry culminated at last in that proceeding which scandalized the Plymouth elders and has passed into history. In the spring of 1627 he erected the May-pole of Merry-Mount. To erect these poles seems at that time to have been a regular English observance, which even the fishermen on the coast did not neglect. When, for instance, the forerunners of Weston’s colony at Wessagusset reached the Damariscove Islands, in the spring of 1622, the first thing they saw was a May-pole, which the men belonging to the ships there had newly set up, “and weare very mery.”[38] There is no room for question that in England, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, May-day festivities were associated with a great deal of license. They were so associated in the minds of Governor Bradford and his fellows. Christmas was at least a Christian festivity. Not so May-day. That was distinctly Pagan in its origin. It represented all there was left of the Saturnalia and the worship of the Roman courtesan. May-day and May-day festivities, accordingly, were things to be altogether reformed. They were by no means the innocent, grateful welcoming of spring which modern admirers of the so-called good old times--which, in point of fact, were very gross and brutal times--are wont to picture to themselves. “I have heard it credibly reported,” wrote Stubbes in his _Anatomy of Abuses_, “(and that _viva voce_) by men of great gravitie, credite and reputation, that of fourtie, three score, or a hundred maides goyng to the woode over night [a-Maying], there have scarcely the thirde parte of them returned home againe undefiled.”[39] All this it is necessary to now bear in mind, lest what Bradford wrote down in his history of Morton’s doings should seem grotesque. He was speaking of what represented in his memory a period of uncleanness, a sort of carnival of the sexes.

Morton’s own account of the festivities at Merry-Mount on the May-day of 1627, which came on what would now be the 11th of the month, will be found in the fourteenth chapter of the third book of the _Canaan_.[40] It does not need to be repeated here. Bradford’s account was very different:

“They allso set up a May-pole, drinking and dancing aboute it many
days togeather, inviting the Indean women, for their consorts,
dancing and frisking togither, (like so many fairies, or furies
rather,) and worse practises. As if they had anew revived and
celebrated the feasts of the Roman Goddes Flora, or the beasly
practieses of the madd Bacchinalians. Morton likwise (to shew
his poetrie,) composed sundry rimes and verses, some tending to
lasciviousnes, and others to the detraction and scandall of some
persons, which he affixed to this idle or idoll May-polle.”[41]

Morton’s verses can be found in their proper place in the _New Canaan_, but the principal charge now to be made against them is their incomprehensibility. Judged even by the standard of the present day, much more by that of the day when they were written, they are not open to criticism because of their “lasciviousnes.” They are decent enough, though very bad and very dull. As to the “detraction and scandall of some persons,” alleged against them,--if indeed they contained anything of the sort,--it was so very carefully concealed that no one could easily have understood it then, and Morton’s own efforts at explanation fail to make it intelligible now.

The festivities around the May-pole were, however, but Morton’s amusements. Had he confined himself to these he might, so far as the people at Plymouth at least were concerned, to the end of his life have lived on the shores of Boston Bay, and erected a new pole with each recurring spring. The only resistance he would have had to overcome would have been a remonstrance now and then, hardly less comical than it was earnest. The business methods he pursued were a more serious matter. He had come to New England to make money, as well as to enjoy the license of a frontier life. He was fully alive to the profits of the peltry trade, and in carrying on that trade he was restrained by no scruples. The furs of course came from the interior, brought by Indians. In his dealings with the Indians Morton adopted a policy natural enough for one of his reckless nature, but which imperilled the existence of every European on the coast. The two things the savages most coveted were spirits and guns,--fire-water and fire-arms. Beads and knives and hatchets and colored cloth served very well to truck with at first. But these very soon lost their attraction. Guns and rum never did. For these the Indians would at any time give whatever they possessed. The trade in fire-arms had already attained some proportions when, in 1622, it was strictly forbidden by a proclamation of King James, issued at the instance of the Council for New England. The companion trade in spirits, less dangerous to the whites but more destructive to the savages, was looked upon as scandalous, but it was not prohibited. Morton cared equally little for either law or morals. He had come to New England for furs, and he meant to get them.

“Hearing what gain the French and fishermen made by trading of
pieces, powder and shot to the Indians, he, as the head of this
consortship, began the practice of the same in these parts. And
first he taught them how to use them, to charge and discharge, and
what proportion of powder to give the piece, according to the size
and bigness of the same; and what shot to use for fowl and what for
deer. And having thus instructed them, he employed some of them to
hunt and fowl for him, so as they became far more active in that
employment than any of the English, by reason of their swiftness
of foot and nimbleness of body; being also quick sighted, and by
continual exercise well knowing the haunts of all sorts of game. So
as when they saw the execution that a piece would do, and the benefit
that might come by the same, they became mad, as it were, after them,
and would not stick to give any price they could attain to for
them; accounting their bows and arrows but bawbles in comparison of
them.”[42]

This was Bradford’s story, nor does Morton deny it. That he would have denied it if he could is apparent. The practices complained of were forbidden by a royal proclamation, issued at the instance of Sir Ferdinando Gorges. In his speech in defence of the great patent, before the House of Commons in Committee of the Whole, in 1621, Gorges had emphatically dwelt on the sale of arms and ammunition to the savages as an abuse then practised, which threatened the extinction of the New England settlements.[43] Fifteen years later, when he wrote the _New Canaan_, Morton was a dependent of Gorges. The fact that he had dealt in fire-arms, in contemptuous defiance of the proclamation, was openly charged against him. He did deny that he had sold the savages spirits. These, he said, were the life of trade; the Indians would “pawn their wits” for them, but these he would never let them have. In the matter of fire-arms, however, he preserved a discreet and significant silence. He made no more allusion to them than he did to Wollaston or his partners at Merry-Mount.

In the whole record of the early Plymouth settlement, from the first skirmish with the Cape Cod savages, in December, 1620, to the Wessagusset killing, there is no mention of a gun being seen in an Indian’s hands. On the contrary, the savages stood in mortal terror of fire-arms. But now at last it seemed as if Morton was about not only to put guns in their hands, but to instruct them in their use.

“This Morton,” says Bradford, “having thus taught them the use of
pieces, he sold them all he could spare; and he and his consorts
determined to send for many out of England, and had by some of
the ships sent for above a score. The which being known, and his
neighbors meeting the Indians in the woods armed with guns in this
sort, it was a terror unto them, who lived straglingly, and were
of no strength in any place. And other places (though more remote)
saw this mischief would quickly spread over all, if not prevented.
Besides, they saw they should keep no servants, for Morton would
entertain any, how vile soever, and all the scum of the country, or
any discontents, would flock to him from all places, if this nest was
not broken; and they should stand in more fear of their lives and
goods (in short time) from this wicked and debauched crew than from
the savages themselves.”[44]

Thus, in the only branches of trade the country then afforded, Morton was not only pressing all the other settlers hard, but he was pressing them in an unfair way. If the savages could exchange their furs for guns, they would not exchange them for anything else. Those not prepared to give guns might withdraw from the market. The business, too, conducted in this way, was a most profitable one. Morton says that in the course of five years one of his servants was thought to have accumulated, in the trade in beaver skins, no less than a thousand pounds;[45] and a thousand pounds in 1635 was more than the equivalent of ten thousand now. This statement was undoubtedly an exaggeration; yet it is evident that at even ten shillings a pound in England, which Morton gives as the current price, though Bradford says he never knew it less than fourteen, beaver skins, which cost little or nothing in America, yielded a large profit. As Morton expressed it, his plantation “beganne to come forward.”[46] When, in 1625, the Plymouth people found their way up into Maine,[47] and first opened a trade with the savages there, Morton was not slow in following them. In 1628 they established a permanent station on the Kennebec,[48] yet apparently as early at least as 1627, if not in 1626, Morton had forestalled them there, and hindered them of a season’s furs.[49]

The injury done to the other settlers in a trading point of view, however, serious as it unquestionably was, became insignificant in comparison with the consequences which must result to them from the presence on the coast of such a resort as Merry-Mount. The region was vast, and in it there was no pretence of any government. It was the yearly rendezvous of a rough and lawless class of men, only one step removed from freebooters, who cared for nothing except immediate gain. Once let such a gathering-place as that of which Morton was now head become fixed and known, and soon it would develop into a nest of pirates. Of this there could be no doubt; the Plymouth people had good cause for the alarm which Bradford expressed. It mattered not whether Morton realized the consequences of what he was doing, or failed to realize them; the result would be the same.

It gradually, therefore, became apparent to all those dwelling along the coast, from the borders of Maine to Cape Cod, that either the growing nuisance at Merry-Mount must be abated, or they would have to leave the country. The course to be pursued in regard to it was, however, not equally clear. The number of the settlements along the coast had considerably increased since Wollaston’s arrival.[50] The Hiltons and David Thomson had established themselves at Dover Neck and Piscataqua as early as 1623; and sometime in 1625 apparently, Thomson, bringing with him his young wife and a servant or two, had moved down into Boston Bay, and established himself, only a mile or two away from Mount Wollaston, on the island which still bears his name. He had died a little while after, and in 1628 his widow was living there alone, with one child and some servants. In 1625 or 1626 the Wessagusset settlement had divided. Those of Gorges’s following who remained there had never been wholly satisfied. It was no place for trade. Accordingly Blackstone, Maverick and Walford, the two last being married and taking their wives with them, had moved across the bay, and established themselves respectively at Shawmut or Boston, at Noddle’s Island or East Boston, and at Mishawum or Charlestown. Jeffreys, Bursley and some others had remained at Wessagusset, and were Morton’s neighbors at that place, whom he says he was in the custom of visiting from time to time, “to have the benefit of company.”[51] At Hull, already known by that name,[52] there were the Grays and a few other settlers. These had been joined by Lyford and Oldham and their friends, when the latter were expelled from Plymouth in the spring of 1625; but the next year, finding the place probably an uninviting one, Lyford had crossed over to Cape Ann, and thence a year later passed on to Virginia. Oldham still remained at Nantasket.

Such were those neighbors of Morton, the chiefs of the straggling plantations, referred to by Bradford as being of “no strength in any place.” Together they may possibly have numbered from fifty to an hundred souls. The Plymouth settlement was, comparatively speaking, organized and numerous, consisting as it did of some two hundred persons, dwelling in about forty houses, which were protected by a stockade of nearly half a mile in length. Nevertheless even there, by the summer of 1627, the alarm at the increase of fire-arms in the hands of the savages began to be very great. They had spread “both north and south all the land over,”[53] and it was computed that the savages now possessed at least sixty pieces. One trader alone, it was reported, had sold them a score of guns and an hundred weight of ammunition. Bradford thus takes up the story:--

“So sundry of the chiefs of the straggling plantations, meeting
together, agreed by mutual consent, to solicit those of Plymouth,
(who were then of more strength than them all,) to join with them to
prevent the further growth of this mischief, and suppress Morton and
his consorts before they grew to further head and strength. Those
that joined in this action, (and after contributed to the charge of
sending him to England,) were from Piscataqua, Naumkeag, Winnisimmet,
Wessagusset, Nantasket, and other places where any English were
seated. Those of Plymouth being thus sought to by their messengers
and letters, and weighing both their reasons and the common danger,
were willing to afford them their help, though themselves had least
cause of fear or hurt. So, to be short, they first resolved jointly
to write to him, and, in a friendly and neighborly way, to admonish
him to forbear these courses; and sent a messenger with their letters
to bring his answer. But he was so high as he scorned all advice, and
asked--Who had to do with him?--he had and would trade pieces with
the Indians in despite of all: with many other scurrilous terms full
of disdain.

“They sent to him a second time, and bade him be better advised,
and more temperate in his terms, for the country could not bear the
injury he did; it was against their common safety, and against the
King’s proclamation. He answered in high terms, as before; and that
the King’s proclamation was no law: demanding, what penalty was
upon it? It was answered, more than he could bear, his Majesty’s
displeasure. But insolently he persisted, and said the King was
dead, and his displeasure with him; and many the like things; and
threatened, withal, that if any came to molest him, let them look to
themselves; for he would prepare for them.”[54]

However it may have been with the position he took as a matter of public policy, Morton at least showed himself in this dispute better versed in the law of England than those who admonished him. On the first of the two points made by him he was clearly right. King James’s proclamation was not law. This had been definitely decided more than fifteen years before, when in 1610, in a case referred to all the judges, Lord Coke, in reporting their decision, had stated on his own authority that “the King cannot create any offence, by his prohibition or proclamation, which was not an offence before, for that was to change the law, and to make an offence, which was not; for _ubi non est lex, ibi non est transgressio_; _ergo_, that which cannot be punished without proclamation cannot be punished with it.”[55]

In regard to the second point made by Morton, that the King’s proclamation died with him, the same distinction between statutes and proclamations, that the former were of perpetual obligation until repealed and that the latter lost their force on the demise of the crown,--this distinction was, a century and a half later, stated by Hume[56] to have existed in James’s time. Lord Chief Justice Campbell has, however, exclaimed against the statement as a display of ignorant “audacity,” and declares that he was unable to find in the authorities a trace of any such doctrine.[57] On this point, therefore, the law of Thomas Morton was probably as bad as that of David Hume. Nevertheless the passage in Bradford affords a curious bit of evidence that some such distinction as that drawn by Hume, though it may not have got into the books, did exist in both the legal and the public mind of the first half of the seventeenth century.

Whether Morton’s law on the subject of proclamations was or was not found mattered little however. It was not then to be debated, as the question with the settlers was one of self-preservation. The Plymouth magistrates had gone too far to stop. If they even hesitated, now, there was an end to all order in New England. Morton would not be slow to realize that he had faced them down, and his insolence would in future know no bounds.

“So they mutually resolved to proceed, and obtained of the Governor
of Plymouth to send Captain Standish, and some other aid with him, to
take Morton by force. The which accordingly was done; but they found
him to stand stiffly in his defence, having made fast his doors,
armed his consorts, set divers dishes of powder and bullets ready
on the table; and, if they had not been over armed with drink, more
hurt might have been done. They summoned him to yield, but he kept
his house, and they could get nothing but scoffs and scorns from him;
but at length, fearing they would do some violence to the house, he
and some of his crew came out, but not to yield, but to shoot. But
they were so steeled with drink as their pieces were too heavy for
them; himself, with a carbine (overcharged and almost half filled
with powder and shot, as was after found) had thought to have shot
Captain Standish; but he stept to him, and put by his piece and took
him. Neither was there any hurt done to any of either side, save that
one was so drunk that he ran his own nose upon the point of a sword
that one held before him as he entered the house; but he lost but a
little of his hot blood.”[58]

Morton’s own account of “this outragious riot,” as he calls it, is contained in the fifteenth chapter of the third book of the _New Canaan_.[59] It differs considerably from Bradford’s, but not in essentials. He says that the occurrence took place in June; and as Bradford’s letters of explanation, sent with the prisoner to England, are dated the 9th of June,[60] it must have been quite early in the month. He further says that he was captured in the first place at Wessagusset, “where by accident they found him;” but escaping thence during the night, through the carelessness of those set on guard over him, he made his way in the midst of a heavy thunder-storm to Mount Wollaston, going up the Monatoquit until he could cross it. The whole distance from point to point was, for a person familiar with the country, perhaps eight miles. Getting home early the next morning he made his preparations for resistance in the way described by Bradford. Of the whole party at Merry-Mount more than half, four apparently, were then absent in the interior getting furs. This fact, indeed, was probably well known to his neighbors, who had planned the arrest accordingly. Standish, having eight men with him, followed Morton round to Mount Wollaston, probably by water, the morning succeeding his escape; and what ensued seems to have been sufficiently well described by Bradford. One at least of the Merry-Mount garrison got extremely tipsy before the attacking party appeared, and Morton, seeing that resistance was hopeless, surrendered, after in vain trying to make some terms for himself.

Having been arrested he was at once carried to Plymouth, and a council was held there to decide upon the disposition to be made of him. According to his own account certain of the magistrates, among whom he specially names Standish, advocated putting him to death at once, and so ending the matter. They were not in favor of sending him to England. Such a course as this was, however, wholly out of keeping with the character of the Plymouth colony, and it is tolerably safe to say that it was never really proposed. Morton imagined it; but he also circumstantially asserts that when milder councils prevailed, and it was decided to send him to England, Standish was so enraged that he threatened to shoot him with his own hand, as he was put into the boat.[61]

Either because they did not care to keep him at Plymouth until he could be sent away, or because an outward-bound fishing-vessel was more likely at that season to be found at the fishing-stations, Morton was almost immediately sent to the Isles of Shoals. He remained there a month; and of his experiences during that time he gives a wholly unintelligible account in the _New Canaan_.[62] At last a chance offered of sending him out in a fishing-vessel bound to old Plymouth, England. He went under charge of John Oldham, who was chosen to represent the associated planters in this matter, and who carried two letters, in the nature of credentials, prepared by Governor Bradford, the one addressed to the Council for New England and the other to Sir Ferdinando Gorges personally.[63] In these letters Bradford set forth in detail the nature of the offences charged against Morton, and asked that he might be brought “to his answer before those whom it may concern.” These letters were signed by the chiefs of the several plantations, at whose common charge the expenses of Oldham’s mission, as well as Standish’s arrest, were defrayed, and towards this charge they contributed as follows, though Bradford says the total cost was much more:--

£ s
From Plymouth, 2 10
„ Naumkeag, 1 10
„ Piscataqua, 2 10
„ Wessagusset, 2
„ Nantasket, 1 10
„ David Thomson’s widow, 15
„ William Blackstone, 12
„ Edward Hilton,[64] 1
--------
£12 7

Oldham and Morton reached Plymouth during the later summer or early autumn of 1628. They must, therefore, have passed the outward-bound expedition of Endicott, the forerunners of the great Puritan migration of 1630-7, in mid-ocean, as on the 6th of September the latter reached Naumkeag. The grant of the Massachusetts Company, which Endicott represented, had been regularly obtained from the Council for New England, and bore date the 19th of March, 1628. It covered the sea-front within the space of three English miles to the northward of the Merrimack and to the southward of the Charles, “or of any and every part of either of these streams;” while it extended “from the Atlantick and Western Sea and Ocean on the East Parte, to the South Sea on the West Parte.” It also included everything lying within the space of three miles to the southward of the southernmost part of Massachusetts, by which was meant Boston Bay.[65] It was clear, therefore, that Mount Wollaston was included in this grant.

Morton’s establishment was thus brought within Endicott’s government. Its existence and character must already have been well known in England, and it is not at all improbable that its suppression had been there decided upon. Whether this was so or not, however, Endicott certainly learned, as soon as he landed at Naumkeag, of the action which had been taken three months before. It commended itself to him; though he doubtless regretted that more condign punishment had not been administered to Morton and his crew on the spot, and did not delay to take such steps as were still in his power, to make good what in this respect had been lacking. As Bradford says, “visiting those parts [he] caused that May-polle to be cutt downe, and rebuked them for their profannes, and admonished them to looke ther should be better walking; so they now, or others, changed the name of their place againe, and called it Mounte-Dagon.”[66]