Thomas Morton

“ They live in a country where we now have all the conveniences of human life: but as for them, their housing is nothing but a few mats tyed about poles fastened in the earth, where a good fire is their bed-clothes in the coldest seasons; their clothing is but a skin of a beast, covering their hind-parts, their fore-parts having but a little apron, where nature calls for secrecy; their diet has not a greater dainty than their Nokehick, that is a spoonful of their parched meal, with a spoonful of water, which will strengthen them to travel a day to-gether ”

“ I cannot deny but a civilized Nation hath the preheminence of an uncivilized, by meanes of those instruments that are found to be common amongst civile people, and the uncivile want the use of, to make themselves masters of those ornaments that make such a glorious shew, that will give a man occasion to cry, sic transit gloria Mundi.
Now since it is but foode and rayment that men that live needeth, (though not all alike,) why should not the Natives [Pg 177] of New England be sayd to live richly, having no want of either? ”

“ 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, [Pg 20] 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. ”

“ They find, and will yet more to their shame, that they abuse the word and are to blame to presume so much,—that they are but a word and a blow to them that are without. Of these particulars I thought good, by so convenient a messenger, to give you notice, lest you should think I had died in obscurity, as the brethren vainly intended I should, and basely practised, abusing justice by their sinister practices, as by the whole body of the committee, una voce, it was concluded to be done, to the dishonor of his majesty. ”

“ Josselyn’s description is especially good: “The Humming Bird, the least of all Birds, little bigger than a Dor, of variable glittering Colours, they feed upon Honey, which they suck out of Blossoms and Flowers with their long Needle-like Bills; they sleep all Winter, and are not to be seen till the Spring, at which time they breed in little Nests, made up like a bottom of soft, Silk-like matter, their Eggs no bigger than a white Pease, they hatch three or four at a time, and are proper to this Country.” (New England’s Rarities, p. 6.) ”

“ Of the Virginia species, Clayton says: “Wolves there are great store; you may hear a Company Hunting in an Evening, and yelping like a pack of Beagles; but they are very cowardly, and dare scarce venture on anything that faces them; yet if hungry will pull down a good large Sheep that flies from them. ”

“ Gookin says: “This beastly sin of drunkenness could not be charged upon the Indians before the English and other Christian nations, as Dutch, French, and Spaniards, came to dwell in America: which nations, especially the English in New-England, have cause to be greatly humbled before God, that they have been, and are, instrumental to cause these Indians to commit this great evil and beastly sin of drunkenness.” ”

“ The fathers and mothers indulge them too much, and never punish them. Accordingly they are so bad and of so vicious a nature, that they often strike their mothers and others. The most vicious, when they have acquired the strength and power, strike their fathers. They do this whenever the father or mother does anything that does not please them. This is a sort of curse that God inflicts upon them.” Winslow, on the other hand, in his Good News, lends some support to Morton’s statement in the text. ”

“ In this chapter it is set down as the first and fundamental tenet of the New England church “that it is the magistrate’s office absolutely, and not the minister’s, to join the people in lawful matrimony;” next, that to make use of a ring in marriage is a relic of popery; and then again “that the Book of Common Prayer is an idol; and all that use it idolaters.” It now remains to show how cunningly, when it came to questions of state, Laud was worked upon by these statements, and what a puppet he became in the hands of Gorges and Morton. ”

“ At first the secret connection of Gorges and Morton with the events which now ensued is matter of pure surmise. There is no direct evidence of it in the records or narratives. At a later period it becomes more apparent. As a matter of surmise, however, based on the subsequent development of events, it seems probable that in February, 1634, the attention of the Archbishop, and through him that of the Privy Council, was called to the large emigration then going on to New England of “persons known to be ill-affected and discontented, as well with the civil as ecclesiastical government.” ”

“ Wood’s description of the Indian apparel is very like Morton’s. He says, however: “The chiefe reasons they render why they will not conforme to our English apparell are because their women cannot wash them when they be soyled, and their meanes will not reach to buy new when they have done with their old; and they confidently beleeve, the English will not be so liberall as to furnish them upon gifture: therefore they had rather goe naked than be lousie, and bring their bodies out of their old tune, making them more tender by a new acquired habit, which poverty would constrain them to leave.” ”

“ After the manner of small, obstinate men, he believed intensely in a few things. One was his own royal supremacy and his responsibility, not to his people but to his kingship. He was nothing of a statesman, and as a politician he was his own worst enemy. ”

“ The mysterious pestilence, which in the years 1616 and 1617 swept away the New England Indians from the Penobscot to Narragansett Bay, is mentioned by all the earlier writers, and its character has recently been somewhat discussed. There can be no doubt that it practically destroyed the tribes, especially the Massachusetts and the Pokanokets, among which it raged. The former were reduced from a powerful people, able, it is said, to muster three thousand warriors, to a mere remnant a few hundred strong. ”

“ The Flesh is eaten by the Salvages: but how good it is I cannot shew, because it is not eaten by our Nation. Yet is this a beast that ought to be placed in the number amongst the Commodities of the Country.
The Luseran as bigg as a hound.
The Luseran, or Luseret, [358] is a beast like a Catt, but so bigg as a great hound: with a tayle shorter then a Catt. His clawes are like a Catts. Hee will make a pray of the Deare. His Flesh is dainty meat, like a lambe: his hide is a choise furre, and accompted a good commodity. ”

“ There are many descriptions of this bird in the earlier writers, though none that I have found so early as Downing’s letter. Wood says: “The Humbird is one of the wonders of the Countrey, being no bigger than a Hornet, yet hath all the dimensions of a Bird, as bill and wings, with quils, Spider-like legges, small clawes: For colour, shee is glorious as the Raine-bow; as shee flies, shee makes a little humming noise like a humble bee: wherefore she is called the Humbird.” (New England’s Prospect, p. 24.) ”

“ A strong spirit of emulation existed in the early years of the seventeenth century, between the advocates of New England and those of Virginia, as sites for colonization. Morton was always a stanch New Englander, and in this chapter, as well as in those which immediately precede and follow it, he loses no opportunity to assert the superiority of the Massachusetts climate and products over those of the country further south. ”

“ 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 [Pg 4] 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. ”

“ An English Mare being strayed from her owner, and growne wild by her long sojourning in the woods ranging up and down with the wild crew, stumbled into one of these traps which stopt her speed, hanging her like Mahomet’s tombe, betwixt earth and heaven; the morning being come the Indians went to looke what good successe their Venison trapps had brought them, but seeing such a long scutted Deere, praunce in their Meritotter, they bade her good morrow, crying out, what cheere what cheere, Englishmans squaw horse ”

“ 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. ”

“ Maverick and Walford were Episcopalians; they lived and died such. The settlers at Wessagusset were Episcopalians. In the dwellings of all these the religious services of the times, customary among Episcopalians, were doubtless observed, for they were all religious men. Yet not one of them was ever in any way molested by the Plymouth people; but, on the contrary, they one and all received aid and encouragement from Plymouth. Episcopalians as they were, they all joined in dealing with Morton as a common enemy and a public danger ”

“ His case is not singular in Massachusetts annals; it is merely the first of its kind. It established a precedent much too often followed thereafter. Morton was one of those who, as it was expressed in a tract of the time printed in London, “must have elbow-roome, and cannot abide to be so pinioned with the strict government in the Commonwealth, or discipline in the church. Now why should such live there? As Ireland will not brooke venomous beasts, so will not that land [New England] vile persons and loose livers.” ”

“ Smith, describing the Virginia Indians, says (True Travels, vol. i. p. 130) : “Their houses are built like our arbors, of small young springs bowed and tyed, and so close covered with mats, or the barkes of trees very handsomely, that nothwithstanding either winde, raine, or weather, they are as warm as stoves, but very smoaky, yet at the toppe of the house there is a hole made for the smoake to go into right over the fire.
“Against the fire they lie on little hurdles of Reeds covered with a mat, borne from the ground a foote and more by a hurdle of wood. ”

“ Upon him Gorges depended to work all his results; which included not only his own appointment as governor-general, with full power and authority as such, but also the necessary supply of men and money to enable him to establish his supremacy. To secure these ends it was necessary to play continually on the Primate’s dislike of the Puritans, and his intense zeal in behalf of all Church forms and ceremonies, including the use of the Book of Common Prayer. The whole political and historical significance of the New Canaan lies in this fact. ”

“ The Common Cormorant (P. carbo) also occurs in New England, but it is rare to the southward of Maine. Both species breed abundantly on rocky shores about the Gulf of St. Lawrence and northward, visiting New England waters during the autumn and winter. While with us they are exclusively maritime, frequenting by choice the vicinity of outlying ledges and small, rocky islands. When passing from place to place, they often fly in large flocks, which are usually arranged in long lines or single files. They live on fish, which they capture by diving. ”

“ Again, in the pamphlet entitled New England’s First Fruits, printed in London in 1643, it was stated, in reply to the objection of extreme winter cold, that “the cold there is no impediment to health, but very wholsome for our bodies, insomuch that all sorts generally, weake and strong, had scarce ever such measure of health in all their lives as there.... Men are seldome troubled in winter with coughes and Rheumes.” ”

“ There probably never was any regularly chosen deaconess in New England. The office was recognized as having come down from the primitive churches (Dexter’s Congregationalism, p. 69) ; and Robert Browne in his definitions, in the Life and Manners of all true Christians, says: “The widow is a person having office of God to pray for the church, and to visit and minister to those which are afflicted and distressed in the church; for the which she is tried and received as meet.” (Bacon’s Genesis of the New England Churches, p. 84.) ”

“ There is one creeping beast or longe creeple, (as the name is in Devonshire,) that hath a rattle at his tayle that does discover his age; for so many yeares as hee hath lived, so many joynts are in that rattle, which soundeth (when it is in motion,) like pease in a bladder; and this beast is called a rattle Snake; but the Salvages give him the name of Sesick, [377] which some take to be the Adder; and it may well be so, for the Salvages are significiant in their denomination of any thing, and [it] is no lesse hurtfull than the Adder of England, nor no more. ”

“ And further, if any factious spirit developed itself he was enjoined “to suppress a mischief before it take too great a head ... which, if it may be done by a temperate course, we much desire it, though with some inconvenience, so as our government and privileges be not brought in contempt.... But if necessity require a more severe course, when fair means will not prevail, we pray you to deal as in your discretions you shall think fittest.” Such instructions as these, in Endicott’s hands to execute, boded ill for Morton. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The year 1637 was the turning-period in the fortunes of King Charles and of Archbishop Laud, and consequently of Gorges and Morton. Up to that time everything had gone sufficiently well, if not in Massachusetts, at least in England, Ireland, and even Scotland. Now, however, the system began to break down; giving way first, as would naturally enough be the case, at its weakest point. ”

“ It is impossible to venture a surmise even as to their meaning. It would seem clear that they have no historical value, but relate rather to some humorous incident—having the full seventeenth-century flavor of coarseness—which occurred in the settlement of Boston Bay. Apparently, judging by the expressions, “this goodly creature of incontinency” (Infra, *129) , “that had tried a camp royal in other parts” (*121) , some English prostitute found her way out to Mount Wollaston, in company with one of the adventurers there, and subsequently went on to Virginia. ”

“ Among those that have setled themselvs in new England, some have gone for their conscience sake, (as they professe,) and I wish that they may plant the Gospel of Iesus Christ, as becommeth them, sincerely and without satisme or faction, whatsoever their former or present practises are, which I intend not to justifie: howsoever, they have deserved (in mine opinion) some commendationes, in that they have furnished the Country so commodiously in so short a time; although it hath bin but for their owne profit, yet posterity will taste the sweetnes of it, and that very sodainly. ”

“ A good well growne deere skin is of great account with them, and it must have the tale on, or else they account it defaced; the tale being three times as long as the tales of our English Deere, yea foure times so longe, this when they travell is raped round about their body, and, Indians travaile with materials to strike fire at all times. ”