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 estimated value of 1000 English pounds. That was the kind of commerce for which Bristol contraband reached out. It helped the Mount Wollaston men to “sail inside” thick competition, bypassing fishermen, the planters of Piscataqua (who were “threatening” to pursue a land-patent, in Bradford’s History 1: 449); and Plimoth, for all its travail of six long years.
Just as “all planters” were beginning to taste “the sweetness of the country” (Bradford Letters 36), Plimothers reached the Kennebec River in Maine, where Winslow took their first surplus corn to trade with Abenakis, to “good success.” At the same time (Bradford 2: 49), “all the scum of the country” were gathering at Mount Wollaston. By no means could Plimoth allow a new rival to interfere with their sole profitable enterprise (Willison 229). Morton’s deeds and plans “bred a kind of heart-burning” in his neighbors (Canaan 155), and they were bound to act.
From the Inns of Court, Morton brought the skill to “make emblems” that wove together different realities into a language with effect. He went “the surest way to work first” and wove together people’s desires for every kind of human intercourse, for which by tradition a Maypole stood. The Inns had also taught him the immense bonding value of “solemn foolery,” from dance and performance to public oratory, and these too were values in common with Native traditions (see Bragdon, “’Emphaticall Speech’”). Not surprisingly, young men with Morton hoped for wives, but no one wanted to “ship home” for one. Here, then, came the largest open Native-English intermarriage on any credible early record. Spain’s hildagos were doing it for Native land rights, French men often took Native wives: it became much rarer for the English.
Well, the grandest, most infamous new start in early New England was on.
“As if this jollity would have lasted ever,” Bradford croaked.
We recognize every element of this multicultural event. Indeed, Morton was here “like the others,” to colonize. But his “moderate” means meant a world of difference. H