d could comply with her humor, must be the man that would carry her” (140).
Listen below to Morton on the “Subtlety” of Massachusett Sachem Chikatawbak, in New English Canaan Book I, Chapter XIV ---
“While our houses were building,” Morton’s second first encounter (likely in 1625) was on a visit to Plimoth Plantation, where he found and praised much “industry” by William Bradford, Edward Winslow, Myles Standish, Isaac Allerton and others of the mixed “Saints and Strangers.” He must have seen the Native head(s) atop Plimoth’s fort, for he wrote a Book III chapter on the “Massacre” at Weymouth too, criticizing that and treatment of Weymouth investor Thomas Weston. Come over “in disguise” to see “how things were,” Weston was shipwrecked, stripped to his shirt by Merrimack Natives, and reached Plimoth with “things boiling in his mind.”
Here, where Morton’s and Plimoth’s (Time Line 3) stories join, Weston was helped out of town. But Morton, though served “fresh butter and a salad of eggs in dainty wise” there, made few friends among his fellow but “Separatist” countrymen. He considered their fort and watch-house “needless.” Its effects on trade had made them “Princes of Limbo.” Did he then outwit a Plimoth plot to strand him on an island, using a feast and “claret sparkling neat” to win back fellows tempted by Plimoth’s pious order? Before long the “notorious gun-runner” answered back:
“And this, as an article of the new creed of Canaan, would they have received of every newcomer there to inhabit; that the Salvages are a dangerous people, subtle, secret and mischievous, and that it is dangerous to live separated, but rather together, and so be under their lee; that none might trade for Beaver but at their pleasure….Nay, they will not be reduced to any other song yet of the Salvages to the southward of Plimoth, because they would have none come there….
“But I have found the Massachusetts Indians more full of humanity than the Christians….The more Salvages, the better quarter: the more Christians, the worser quarter, I found; as all the indifferent-minded planters can testify.” (Canaan 113)
Something like an experiment was unfolding. After a time of modest success by fair means in the Northeast, Plimoth’s Christians had tried their “new creed” approach. Now it was Thomas Morton’s turn. Hence, his second set of crimes:
“Now, to maintain this riotous prodigality and profuse excess, Morton, thinking himself lawless, and 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…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 for them…
Yea, it is well known that they will have powder and shot, when the English want it nor cannot get it….Yea, some…have told them how gunpowder is made, and all the materials in it, and that they are to be had in their own land….
O the horribleness of this villainy!...Oh! that princes and parliaments would take some timely order to prevent this mischief…by some exemplary punishment….” (Bradford History 2: 52-53)
Where not a noble stirred to make James’ Proclamation an actual law, Bradford painted the “crisis” without many clues to the game.
Within a year, Mount Wollaston was nearing its peak. From 1625-1627 Morton’s trading-boat, and “his” young men guided up-country to trap beaver, “gleaned away all” that year’s best trade from Maine, to the estima