r ed., Narratives of Early Virginia). For eight more weeks, Morton’s company somehow, somewhere awaited Rastall’s return. But Rastall sent a letter in August instead, demanding that Wollaston bring Unity’s human capital to Jamestown.
Without “vittles” for that voyage, Wollaston gained some at Monhegan Island --- which may suggest that they still lacked much connection to the land. (Morton had been “cloyed” with plentiful lobster “the first day I went ashore,” 87.) Or, Morton and a smaller group might have encamped to scout the land while waiting on Unity. Whale-bones and hill-sized heaps of clam-shells marked Native presences. Beyond question they were being watched. In any case, Unity tried for Virginia through a month of autumn’s “contrary winds,” then turned for home.
Somewhere that summer, Lt. Fitcher, Thomas Morton and his “consociates” disembarked and were set up at “Mount Wollaston,” on the southerly rim of Massachusetts Bay. He first referred to their household as “nine persons, besides dogs.”
Though the harbor at the foot of the “mount’s” rise was shallow for ships, it was protected and serviceable with coastal boats. Fresh brooks and streams bubbled everywhere. The view of the bay showed Brereton’s “white sandy and very bold” island-shores, a little half-moon sand-isle right in front of them (sometimes there, sometimes not); herons and sanderlings, ducks, geese, turkeys and deer plentiful, more than ever. A short walk away was “great store of plain ground without trees” (Wood 57): the Massachusetts’ fields, or what might have remained of their Three Sister gardens, since “plague” had swept away nine of out ten Native people (1616-18).
When adventurers “broke up” on the land, men had “liberty to shift for themselves” until new arrangements. Fitcher, at his duty, must have held to the undesirable hope that next year they’d all be in Virginia. There was no roaring trade here (yet). Morton saw more. As connected with The Council as any man, he easily could have arranged to keep indentured youths here. Had he done less, supply would have ended. Still, William Bradford colorfully recounted Morton’s first set of crimes:
“This Morton…having more craft than honesty…in the others’ absence, watches an opportunity; and commons being but hard amongst them, got some strong drink and other junkats, 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 until this Rastall return, you will also be carried away and sold for slaves with the rest. Therefore, I would advise you to thrust out this Lt. Fitcher; and I, having a part in the plantation, will receive you as my partners and consociates. So you may be free from service, and we will converse, trade, plant, and live together as equals, and support and protect one another….” (History 2: 47-8)
Morton’s words may have reached Bradford through one of the young men, Edward Gibbon (a man with quite a colonial future between Merrymount, Plimoth and Boston). Lt. Fitcher found his way back to England. And so they were on their own.
Soon Morton had two first encounters --- one with Native America, and one with “Pilgrims” of Plimoth Plantation.
“Reading the Revels” provides the best clues we have about Morton’s first Massachusetts meeting. His “Poem” hints that somewhere along the “bold shore,” possibly near Squa Rock (above), he met a Massachusett woman sitting “solitary on the ground,” “in form of” both “Scilla” and Niobe” --- that is, a mother grieving her children, whom Morton came to identify with plague-stricken America itself. This was in fact a Native funerary custom at burial sites.
Wampanoag Sachem Massasoit orchestrated his 1621 meeting with Plimoth. Neponset Massachusett Sachem Chikatawbak must have been waiting for his “bold” Squa Sachem to bring Thomas Morton’s company to a council, trade, and terms.
They had to bring more than trade if they wanted to plant at Passonagessit, the site of Chikatawbak’s mother’s grave. By these times --- o