1621-1630

Time Line 3: 1621-1630

1621 Plimoth colonists (about 50 men/women/children) incl. Wm. Bradford, Edw. Winslow and Myles Standish survive winter and, in March, meet Samoset and Tisquantum/ Squanto, sent by Wampanoag Sachem Ousamequin (Massasoit). Through autumn they explore from Mass. Bay to Cape Cod. In June at Nauset they meet a mother demanding return of kidnapped children: Plimoth aapromises better.

Sept.: With their own needs, the Wampanoags bring many New England sachems to mark a goodwill-treaty with Plimoth. Nemasket Wampanoag Sachem Corbitant, "too conversant" with Narragansetts, threatens Squanto and Massasoit: Standish intervenes and wounds "several." The first and only a is held.

Before long, resentments, misunderstandings and Squanto's affairs bring a "bundle of arrows" to Plimoth. They are a warning for Squanto, but Plimoth sees a general threat. Though the wife of Native Hobbamock finds "no such" intent in villages, Plimothers begin a stockade (Nov.-Feb.). Nov.: the ship Fortune arrives with 35 inexperienced men to attempt another colony nearby for Thomas Weston. They bring no supplies: only a letter demanding profits from Plimoth backers.

1622 Spring: Squanto and Hobbamock maneuver against each other, disrupt relations. Massasoit demands Squanto's head, is refused by Plimoth. Native peoples withhold trade, "frown" as Plimoth completes stockade. BAy May leaders resolve to add a fort with cannon, to the neglect of food- crops though rations are short. First "Training Day" makes all males men at arms. The Fortune, laden with hard-earned commodities, is hijacked by the French enroute home.

June-July: ships Charity and Swan arrive with 50-60 more men, who choose Wessagusset/ Weymouth for their colony. It is "not long" before Native peoples report food-thefts and "abuse." August: Plimoth learns that Powhatan attacks on "Virginia" have killed over 300 colonists.

Autumn: poor harvest at Plimoth. On short rations, Weymouth men grow disorderly and increase grievances among Native New Englanders. Near the end of sailing-season, one "Capt. Jones" robs and tries to kidnap Nauset Natives, but they escape the run-aground ship and make "great exclamation" via Council for New England agent Leo Peddock (on Mass. Bay). Though the Council demands Jones' punishment, nothing is done by them or Plimoth, would-be center of last year's treaty.

Fall and Winter: starvation at Plimoth, Weymouth force voyages in search of food-trade with Native peoples. At Monomoy, Bradford finds them afraid but helpful. Squanto dies. Bradford continues on to Massachusetts, Nauset and Mattakiest.

At Nauset for food, Standish makes threats to force return of some beads. Bradford at Nemasket, Manomet. Native peoples, still losing kinsmen to diseases, trade as well as seek redress of grievances. There is no response. Standish threatens Mattakiest (more missing beads). When Native formal appeals cause English "open laughter," a frosty change comes over Native villages being asked for food.

1623 March: Standish at Manomet sees angry Native leader Wituwamat and reports a "conspiracy." Weymouth men (incl. Phinehas Pratt), desperate and dying, build a stockade, but lack of supply brings more theft of Native stores. A few manage other means such as working for food (one lives/has a child with a Massachusett woman).

Winslow seeks to "settle their affections" but is called to "dying" Massasoit, who recovers. Hobbamock tells of an attack-conspiracy among all the villages who marked the 1621 treaty.

1624 June: "the third plantation in the Bay": Capt. Wollaston, gentleman Thos. Morton, 30 servants pursue ongoing Council for New England trade, prepare to winter at Passonagessit/"Mt. Wollaston" (Quincy). Acc. To Pratt, they avoid Weymouth's site and methods, in time renew relations with Chikatawbak's Neponset Massachusetts and others.

1625 England's King James I dies: Charles I crowned.

1625-29 Mt. Wollaston fails: Morton and "consociates" reorganize/rename it Ma-Re Mount, begin brisk fur-trade via "transatlantic" methods (incl. trade of guns, now in demand by local Natives vs. northern tribes' raids). This and servants' desire for wives brings on Morton's May 1627 Maypole Revels. Plimothers, dubbed "Princes of Limbo," fear "all the scum of the country" will join Ma-Re Mount and dominate region's fur-trade. They issue "warnings" based on 1622 proclamation vs. gun-trade. Morton, a lawyer, knows it has no statutory force; that The Council for New England itself and Bristol-based traders reap regular profits from the practice.

1628 June: Plimoth arrests Morton, maroons him on Isles of Shoals (NH) till Sept. Ma-Re Mount continues: new Salem colonist John Endicott cuts down Maypole, demands "better walking." Morton "not so much as rebuked" in England---a scandalous surprise to Plimothers

1629 Morton returns (at Plimoth), resumes American ways. Plimothers after northern trade arrest/banish Edw. Ashley, another transatlantic trader at Penobscot. Winter famine at Salem: at Christmas Endicott seizes Ma-Re Mount corn. "Master Bubble's" misadventures (below).

1630 June: "The Great Migration" begins as about 900 Puritans arrive at "Boston" on Mass. Bay w/Gov. John Winthrop. Their hardships puzzle experienced "lone planters" and Morton offering seasoned advice. Sept.: Morton banished without legal process, Ma-Re Mount burned (Dec.). Servant Edw. Gibbons begins career as Puritan, W. Bagnall moves to Richmond Is. (Maine). Morton survives exile-voyage: in England 1631, he regains health and begins lawsuit vs. Mass. Bay charter (revoked 1637). His legal papers become drafts of New English Canaan.

A "plague" of diseases swept Native New England just before 1620, wiping out almost 9 of 10 people of the densely-settled and cultivated regions seen above on Champlain's map. With mass death went generations of cultural memory. Since then, history has shown us a fierce and patient Native American will to survive. It reminds us that without these crippling epidemics, the "first permanent colonies" would have had very different foundations. So would The United States, built upon New England's conveniently "disappearing Indian."

From Newfoundland to Connecticutt, the Native demand for guns came fast on the heels of epidemics. Guns inspired a fear in Native rivals and colonists that made up for sheer losses of people. A few fowling-pieces and rusty muskets could keep a decimated tribe a force to be reckoned with as would-be permanent planters moved in. Until now, American wealth born of gun-trade had poured into England, and greed made its high colonial councils turn blind eyes to the "illogic."

But there could be no "permanent colonies" (and so steady, increased profit) without stricter discipline of colonists. The "reform" of England according to the Protestant Bible would in turn reform Native America; by force as needed, and by encouraging Native desire for "harmless" commodities. Once Sir Ferdinando Gorges (above) made this clear to Parliament, England's Puritans lobbied to establish new colonial rules---as much as possible, their particular rules, as Christian evangelicals active already at "reforming" Old England and Ireland.

That's why this "Proclamation" above against trading arms to Native Americans first came from King James in 1622 (Charles renewed it 1630). Given the open secret of English intent (stated above by Hakluyt), by the 1620s it seemed no longer tolerable to let gun-trading greed continue to strengthen the American peoples to be conquered. "The end of the Transatlantic"---uncontrolled contact, children of cohabitations, gun-trade---was especially crucial to a mass of already strictly-disciplined (hence "puritan") Protestant Christian colonists, with every intention of expanding their "New Israel" into other peoples' country.

According to their beliefs (and little more---a myopia not shared by all of their time), The Bible itself sanctioned such intent against "Old Israel" outsiders. Conquest seemed "inevitable" because there was no intent to compromise with Native American "pagans" on their land. To these new colonists, compromise was sin against God.

This is what historian James Axtell calls "the tip of an iceberg." The ship of "America's inevitable moral mission to reform the world according to Christian Progress," born at Plimoth and Boston in the 1620s, sinks like the Titanic as soon as we conceive the 1620s as connected to the centuries before and the secular peoples all around---as those days were lived, and as factual history should. "New England" in all its forms did not suddenly in 1620 owe Christian Europe fulfillment of its private destiny, but most of this iceberg is held underwater.

It's time to reconnect all dimensions of a story shattered into illegible pieces by conquest and party screed. What we gain is not only exhilarating---it's our memory of what was, what changed, and so what can be changed. Your world is at stake. History that denies these things is a prison for the spirit.

The"bundle of new arrows lap'd in a rattlesnake skin" as conceived by artist and naturalist Michael F. McWade---a message badly misunderstood by Plimoth's Pilgrims with tragic result (below). The musket-balls and powder were not the response hoped for by New England's well-connected Native peoples..

The "Pilgrim" and Puritan "Separatists" departed from transatlantic ways, and their intrusions into old New England relations fetched home warnings like this. Instead of sending diplomats and presents, Plimoth made itself a fortress. Not all their people thought this wise, Winslow's Good News says. "Diverse" persons amongst them.

...seeing the work [of building a palisade and fort] prove tedious, would have dissuaded [other colonists] from proceeding; flattering themselves with peace and security, and accounting it rather a work of superfluity and vain glory than of simple necessity. But God...having determined to preserve us from these intended [Native] treacheries, undoubtedly ordained this as a special means to advantage us, and discourage our enemies; and therefore so stirred up the hearts of the Governor and other forward instruments, as the work was just madrviceable...e se

"Satan," Winslow explained, was "blinding the judgment" and "causing reasonable men to reason against their own safety." We can imagine what Plimoth's "forward instruments" did to put all doubters back to work. We don't need to imagine the consequences. Read Time Line 3 for yourself. Look further. Native leaders such as Wituwamat, Pecksuot, Chikatawbak, "their women" and Sachems of the region try hard to get all grievances discussed. Notice that their "body signals" and actions still accord with old protocols, as change takes hold at Wessagusset/ Weymouth:

...Some time after this their Sachem came suddenly upon us with a great number of armed men; but their spies seeing us in a readiness, he and some of his chief men turned into one of their houses a quarter of an hour. Then we met with them outside the [palisade] of our plantation and brought them in. Then said I [Phinehas Pratt] to a young man that could best speak their language, "Ask Pecksuot why they come thus armed." He answered, "Our Sachem is angry with you." I said, "Tell him if he be angry with us, we be angry with him."

Not the correct response.

Then said their Sachem, "Englishmen, when you came into the country we gave you gifts and you gave us gifts. We bought and sold with you, and we were friends. And now, tell me if I or any of my men have done you wrong." We answered, "First tell us if we have done you any wrong." He answered, "Some of you steal our corn, and I have sent you word times without number. And yet our corn is stolen. I come to see what you will do." We answered, "It is one man who hath done it. Your men have seen us whip him diverse times, besides other manner of punishments. And now, here he is, bound. We give him unto you to do with him what you please." [The Sachem] answered, "It is not just dealing. If my men wrong my neighbor Sachem, or his men, he sends me word, and I beat or kill my men according to the offense. If his men wrong me or my men, I send him word, and he beats or kills his men according to the offense. All Sachems do justice by their own men. If not, we say They are all agreed [in a plot together], and then we fight. And now I say, You all steal my corn."

At this time some of them, seeing some of our men upon our fort, began to start, saying "Matchit Pesconk," that is "Naughty [evil] guns." Then, looking round about them, [they] went away in a great rage. At this time we strengthened our watch until we had no food left.

The would-be planters of Weymouth---intending only profitable trade---were men poorly selected, wholly inexperienced, and desperate through lack of supply (this perhaps deliberately thanks to investor Thomas Weston's possible motive to bring down Plimoth itself). The "Pilgrims" and Mass. Bay Puritans faced this and more

They were badly informed, by The Bible (which knows nothing about America) and by their weak attempts to "read up on" Native New Englanders. The many captains in Sir Ferdinando Gorges' pay had found them "tractable so long as discreet courses be kept with them." Plimoth's and Mass. Bay's Puritan families expected to be tortured, murdered and eaten the first time they let their guard down. They did not understand the usually bloodless use of brinksmanship (the threat of violence) in New England affairs. Of course this deformed every opportunity for the lasting goodwill they truly craved. Their "discipline" made everything worse.

At left is the original Massachusetts Bay Company seal: "Come Over and Help Us." At right is the modern version with its sword above the "Indian," though Native New Englanders including Slow Turtle worked for its removal. The state motto reads: "By the sword we seek peace; but peace only under liberty." It makes more sense if you substitute "capitalism" for "peace."

Other aggravations increased Puritan impatience. Plimoth and Mass. Bay were born evangelical colonies. Conversion of Natives and their unruly trade-partners was fundamental to "reform." But both colonies were quickly disappointed. Nemasket Sachem Corbitant told Winslow early that Native Americans felt they already "believed almost the same things" about The Great Spirit and the "brotherhood of man."

Native New England neither needed nor much wanted religious and other change. Both colonies put that aim aside, and pursued what even England's conquistador John Smith called willful defiance of common sense. With a "New Israel" agenda, neither commerce nor conversion could get them there. Fundamentalist goals demanded what was left: "preemptive strikes" and outright conquest. Economics and evangelism became ways to mop up resistance beyond and within the forts.

You can walk through this tradition today at Plimoth Plantation's "living history museum." Despite recent magnificent cooperative scholarship, its layout still mirrors our libraries. "The settlement" commands the landscape and "Hobbamock's" small village (vastly improved in recent years) is found down a side path by itself: a wholesale reversal of the facts. Though "It's always 1627" at Plimoth, no Native heads or blood-soaked flag adorn the A There's no mention of contemporary fishermen or other Europeans, of Weymouth or "Merrymount" (below)---truly as if Plimoth was alone in a country then with regular mail by fishing-shipZA.

Will it be so in 2020, as America celebrates 400 years of Plimoth?

In 1923, 300 years after "The Weymouth Massacre," a bolt of lightning blasted the head off the huge statue of Myles Standish that watches, restored of course, over Plymouth coasts and foreign oil. An informed New England underground multiculture had to smile from that exile "the mainstream" creates by careful negligence. Some believe that a history-marketplace mired in formula will change; for in 2001, C-Span Network's American Writers Series registered over 78 million American households tuned in for readings of Plimoth histories. Are they ready for more than mouldering Manifest American Destiny? These texts and traditions hard-wire The United States---and are themselves the "revisionism" from which we try to recover liveable spiritual bearings.

What a surprise: "even back then" lived brave people who knew first-hand that Puritan methods were impractical and unnecessary. Enjoy this tale of "Master Bubble," a man "approved of the Brethren both for his zeal and gifts to be The Master of the Ceremonies between the Natives and the Planters."


	(Bubble is a bore and fails as a preacher. He fails too as a translator---for he and "the Brethren" just aren't interested in "copious and difficult" Algonquian languages. Bubble is about to find out what a little knowledge is worth.)

This worthy member Master Bubble, having a conceit in his head that he had hatched a new scheme for the purchase of beaver, beyond Imagination, packs up a sack full of odd implements. And, without any company but a couple of Indians for guides---and therefore you may, if you please, believe they are so dangerous as the Brethren of Plimoth give it out---he betakes him to his progress into the inland for beaver, with his carriage on his shoulders like Milo.

His guides and he, in process of time, come to the place appointed, which was about Neepenett [today's Worcester area]; thereabouts being more beaver to be had than this Milo could carry. And, both his journeymen glad that he was "good man," his guides willing to pleasure him, there he and the Salvages stay.

Night came on. But, before they were inclined to sleep, this good man Master Bubble had a fantasy creep into his head---by misunderstanding the Salvages' actions. He must needs be gone in all haste, yea and without his errand. He purposed to do it so cunningly that his flight should not be suspected: he leaves his shoes in the house with all his other implements, and flies.

As he was on his way, he increased his fear, suggesting to himself that he was pursued by a company of Indians, and that their arrows were let fly as thick as hail at him. He puts off his breeches, and puts them on his head, for to save him from the shafts that flew after him so thick that no man could perceive them. And crying out, "Away, Satan! What have ye to do with me?" and thus running on his way without his breeches, he was pitifully scratched with the brush of the underwoods as he wandered up and down in unknown ways.

The Salvages, in the meantime, put up all his implements in the sack he left behind, and brought them to Wessaguscus [Weymouth], where they thought to have found him. But understanding he was not returned, they were fearful what to do; and of what would be conceived by the English to have become of this mazed man; and were in consultation of the matter.

One of the Salvages was of opinion that the English would suppose him to be murdered: fearful he was to come in sight. The other, better acquainted with the English having lived some time in England, was more confident. And he persuaded his fellow that the English would be satisfied with the relation of the truth, having had testimony of his fidelity. So, they boldly adventured what they had brought, and how the matter stood.

The English, when the sack was opened, did take a note in writing of all the particulars in the sack; and heard what was related by the Salvages of the accidents. But when Master Bubble's shoes were shown, it was thought he would not have departed without his shoes. And therefore they did conceive that Master Bubble was murdered by some sinister practice of the Salvages', who unadvisedly had become guilty of a crime which they now sought to excuse. And the English straightly charged the Salvages to find him out again, and bring him dead or alive; else, their wives and children would be destroyed.

The poor Salvages, being in a pitiful perplexity, caused their countrymen to seek out for this mazed man; who, being in short time found, was brought to Wessaguscus, where he made a discourse of his travels and of the perilous passages, whiAch did seem to be no less dangerous than those of that worthy Knight-Errant, Don Quixote; and how miraculously he had been preserved. And in conclusion he lamented the great loss of his goods, whereby he thought himself undone. The particular whereof being demanded, it appeared that the Salvages had not diminished any part of them: no, not so much as one bit of bread. Whereby Master Bubble was overjoyed, and the whole company made themselves merry at his discourse of all his perilous adventures. And by this you may observe whether the Salvage people are not full of humanity; or whether they are a dangerous people, as Master Bubble and the rest of his tribe would persuade you.


	A fantasist disregards the ways of a country not his, "misapplies" what he does see, and bolts in needless terror without his "errand," pants on head. Comical---except to Native people who nearly pay the price. Soon they will not be this lucky.

Get to know the real person who sent you that tale. He wants you as a potential American to know what Bubble won't. All it takes is "moderation, and discretion." For living and writing the like, Thomas Morton paid with his life and after-life. His career was the last flower of transatlantic ways: it made him America's first poet in English, its first criminal exile, and first of many demonized open minds. Why so much unique hatred for the man? 375 years of filiopiety deemed Morton so "immoral" that it was "a proof of loyalty to treat his memory with scorn" (DeCosta). "Proper" education sends less-amusing Bubbles around the world.

Plymouth Harbor in England, with its fort under governorship of Sir Ferdinando Gorges---Morton's backer and boss. The West Country ports from which Morton sailed looked much like this at the time..

Thomas Morton (born c. 1576) grew up in England's wild West Country, most likely in Devonshire during Elizabeth I's long reign. Devon denotes "people of the land" quite different from those of the urbanized East. Thomas grew up a lover of nature, animals and the field sports (fishing, hunting, falconry) enjoyed by middle-class "gentle" families there. Sometimes they mixed these with raucous "roving feasts" across a landscape rich with old non-English ruins, from barrow-tombs to Roman stones; sometimes with Anglican rites and Maypole revels that hallowed and celebrated relations with nature and each other. "Brawling Bristol" had its markets and street-fairs, and ship-quays busy with the first English sailors of the Newfoundland.

With bodily vigor and good schooling via The Bible, folk-tales and Classical works, Thomas was raised to be confident and ready for service of king and country in a complicated world. Devonshire men and women had independent ways (including "The Western Rebellion"); a "neighborly" rule that shared hospitality across social lines; and for a code of "quietness," by which you might skip going to church (and not be penalized) if you thought a fist-fight likely with a neighbor this week. As time passed, frustrated Protestant 'reformers" called this region a "dark corner of the land," but Thomas his life-long was for "Old England."

By the 1590s Thomas took up training in law at London's Inns of Court, where the milieu of men in search of careers included Thomas Lodge, John Donne (then erotically blending mistresses with America), young Shakespeare and Ben Jonson. The crackling atmosphere expanded his being. Students bantered mountains of law-books and literature in legal "moots" and on flimsy stages: you learned to write and speak persuasively, wherever you were going. As a group, "common lawyers' stood against new would-be powers of The Crown, such as The Star Chamber and enforcement of royal proclamation as statutory law. Their students absorbed the true relevance of learning and created vibrant, liberating 3-D entertainments full of "solemn foolery" that camouflaged much mockery of Power. "Pastoral Realism" was for Thomas, its feeling for nature and merciless humor. And he was there when the country Maypole and "Indians" shared the masquing-stage with "Proteus" in the greatest of shows for Elizabeth in 1594---Gesta Grayorum.

Without land of his own, Thomas took up horseback-lawyering between West Country circuit-courts and London. He was angered by the sufferings of displaced countrymen whose economic straits filled new tent-cities, "furnished" prisons and gallows, and pushed Devon men to the Bristol sea-trades. Merchants of these ports ran a "permissive frontier" (Canny), and kept shipping transatlantic guns into Puritan times. Gosnold (another Inns man) marked a year in New England by 1603. Gorges, governor of nearby Plymouth, was learning to seek out "landsmen" now to take his business into America.

The rising middle-class foreign investor brought Thomas to the connections. By his midforties he had one eye on an interest recorded, with his name, in a history of patent-affairs that also lists Gorges' and Plimoth's (Gardener 1660). After 1618, when Thomas' chances for a family life (by marriage to a widow) were ruined by her Puritan stepson, he turned to America.

What I had resolved on, I have really performed; and I have endeavored...to be the means to communicate the knowledge which I have gathered...unto my Countrymen; to the end that they may the better perceive their error who cannot imagine that there is any country in the universal world that may be compared unto our native soil....

This 1840s sketch (rpt. in Frost's Voyage) shows the hilltop site of Morton's plantation Ma-Re Mount by the sea in Quincy, Massachusetts---and below is how "Merrymount" looks today...

As Morton "rambled" into the country around his settlement, he visited the Neponset Massachusett people of Sachem Chikatawbak who lived not far up the shore at Moswetusett Hummock (left). They may well have taken him to sacred sites like Squa Rock (right) out on the tip of Squantum's land---where this "woman's profile" also called Weeping Rock reminded Morton of figures from Greek myth. Niobe and Scilla, to be precise---women weeping for their lost children. What was the connection to Native New England? Find out in the essay "Reading the Revels: The Riddle of May Day" through the link below!

In the month of June Anno Salutis 16[24] it was my chance to arrive in the parts of New England with thirty servants, and provisions of all sorts fit for a plantation. And, whiles our houses were building, I did endeavor to take a survey of the country. The more I looked, the more I liked it. And when I had more seriously considered of the beauty of the place, with all her fair endowments, I did not think that in all the known world it could be paralleled. For so many goodly groves of trees, delicate fair large plains, dainty fine round rising hillucks, sweet crystal fountains and clear-running streams that twine in fine meanders through the meads, making so sweet a murmuring noise to hear as would even lull the senses with delight asleep, so pleasantly do they glide upoon the pebblestones, jetting most jocundly where they do meet; and hand in hand, run down to Neptune's court to pay the yearly tribute which they owe to him as sovereign lord of all the springs. Contained within the volume of the land, fowls in abundance, fish in multitudes; and discovered besides, millions of turtledoves upon the green boughs, which sit pecking of the full, ripe, pleasant grapes that are supported by the lusty trees; whose fruitful loads do cause their arms to bend. Where, here and there dispersed, you might see lilies, and of the Daphnean tree; which made the land to me seem paradise. For in mine eye, 'twas Nature's Masterpiece, her chiefest magazine of all where lives her store. If this land be not rich, then is the whole world poor.

Does this look familiar? How old are the bells ringing in your ears?

Morton's ship Unity arrived in June 1624. Within three years his trade was outstripping Plimoth's. The infamous Revels at Ma-Re Mount ("Merrymount") in May 1627 that celebrated this prosperity came about for good reasons not Thomas Morton's alone. "I will go the surest way to work first, and see how others are answered in the like kind," he says. As Morton read up on New England, listened to merchants and fishermen and explored with his favorite dogs, he discovered not an empty promised land for "New Israel," but a well-inhabited "Canaan."

Click here to listen to artist Jessica Lupien (of The Village Circle Band and Urban Myth) sing a multi-track version of an old-English favorite: "Now Is The Month Of Maying"; and see her and them below at Revels 375!

From the "First Poets" survey here, you know the first poets and poetry in English to "sing" America---Now click here to find out why the colonies' first political exile, Thomas Morton, deserves that title of America's First English Poet more than any other contender; and not least, why he owes it all to Native Americans!

He listened for methods that worked. He learned Native words, listened to Native histories such that he wove them into the most important message of his May Day Poem and Song, by way of his Classics. And when Captain Wollaston gave up on quick profit and turned most of the servant-men into cash, Morton listened to them; to the facts of "Virginia" as a young man's death-trap built upon war and tobacco. He listened to the laws of England and organized a new American life.

We recognize every element of this multicultural event. Its success is the transatlantic before Puritan "reform." Consider what's before us: If we have all this before Plimoth's 1620; and then a "reform" period (1620-23) that brings disaster; and then, among the same Native American peoples injured just before, more transatlantic-style success from Maine to Narragansett, which methods would you think best for the future of a continent?

Morton's May Day "Poem" is a seance to the past and a hope for the future---Now click here to listen to his Revels' second encouragement to the crowd, the second half of our first American poetry: Morton's "Song," set to music and performed by Mark Waterhouse and Jack Dempsey...

We need Morton's multicultural, manifold achievements---not his Keystone-Kops hounding to the grave and beyond for the good of all imperial children. Indeed he was here "like the others," to colonize. But his "moderate" means meant a world of difference. He gave Native people one free item, salt, to encourage food-preserving and "settling down." He let readers think he celebrated "the Lord's Angel" in New England's Native epidemics, but laced this with irony and equated them with Christ. He said Native peoples had "no religion," but proved that theirs was never separate from living values. He said one race "must rule," but which never was certain. And Morton laid out America in terms of commodities---Book 2 of Canaan. This he also packed with unmatched feeling for nature, and a demand for "respect": he flanked it first with Native America's laudable substance (Book 1), and then with a How Not To Colonize manual (Book 3, on many a Bubble from Plimoth, Salem and Boston)

Panicked by the potentials of this Native-allied success, not least its bad example in front of servants, Plimoth arrested and exiled Morton. But the "reformers" had no idea of transatlantic realities or English law, and "Mine Host" was back by 1629. "Brethren" of Salem had chopped down the Maypole, but Morton's indentured men (and Native peoples who traded and socialized there) were still in action---for awhile..

The Massachusetts Bay Company's "advance-men," under the stern bungler John Endecott, prepared the way for 1630's mass-migration of 900 Puritans under Governor John Winthrop. They landed on Boston Bay (below) that June---watched from the hills by Morton and his company...

"When they find any man like to prove an enemy to their Church and State, then straight the means must be used for defense. The first precept in their Politics is to defame the man at whom they aim. And then he is an holy Israelite in their opinion who can spread that fame broadest. Like butter upon a loaf, no matter how thin, it will serve for a veil. And then this man whom they have thus depraved is a spotted unclean leper: He must out, lest he pollute the land, and them that are clean....These are the men who come to rid the land of all pollution...." Morton's Canaan Book 3

"They" were Massachusetts Bay Governor John Winthrop and "900 souls" of "The Great Migration" of 1630; chartered by Charles I, the third and most pious monarch of Morton's life. These were people less "Separatist" than Plimoth's but they too "put a difference" between themselves and all others outside their creed. Vast weaponry and constant dogma policed the bounds, and Morton's defense of a non-racist, non-"Martialist" America became their first banned book. Males became soldiers: "lone planter" outsiders called them prisoners. The right to land Winthrop defined in terms of "enclosure and improvement," ideas then destroying England's social fabric and vaguely based in pasturing cattle---which of course, Native people "lacked."

Shawmut to the Massachusetts, "Trimountain" to the first "lone planters, "Boston" was named by East-England's Puritans in 1630. Later, landfill projects revealed acres of Native fishing-weirs...

Thomas Morton was the first defendant dragged to the court of Massachusetts Bay (Sept. 1630). There was no hearing, no trial. Only an "order" putting him out, and "the transatlantic" with him. Winthrop's "reformers" followed quickly with wage and price controls to force planters to labor more of the week to earn a living. (Plimothers too had quickly given up their dream of sharing all in common, finding that nobody wanted to lose status or would work "for" his neighbor even to plant food: they never had challenged the roots of their "radical" beliefs.) As important to this Christian "city on a hill" were laws against unsupervised trade (let alone guns); and against "irregular living" together with Native Americans. Books of "our forefathers" leave out these first acts you can read for yourself in Shurtleff and Pulsifer.

New England had never known such needless programmatic divides. Weapons, churches, and history books hard-wired The United States with "fear of God," hard labor as the one true virtue, and fearful violence for every stripe of Difference. The only "necessity" was a clear conscience after each "defensive invasion." "Reform" was the means, and the flight from it into "wilderness." Both generated delusions of empty land, disposable NonWhiteMales, and signs of "destiny." What is "American Exceptionalism" if history begins before 1620? These legacies remain as destructive as intended for one minority's "free market" advantage. Yet, this "American Dream" is a bubble. Only ignorance makes it work, and knowledge (our nightmares know) will not go away.

Now it's up to you.

This early Dutch map of New Amsterdam (later New York City) shows the "wall" erected to keep "Indians" out of the colony: today's Wall Street. Why are Native Americans today the (economically) poorest peoples on this land? It can only be a symbolic status---their punishment for a lack of interest in money.