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Student’s Encyclopedia of Great American Writers
Dutch pose by encroaching on the Hudson River and gaining control of the beaver trade over both the French and the English (99). Morton offers up the possibility that one of the great rivers mentioned by the natives might well prove itself to be a passage to East India (100). For all of the reasons laid out in detail in book 2, Morton concludes that “it would be adjudged an irreparable oversight to protract time, and suffer the Dutch (who are but intruders upon his majesties most hopefull country of New England) to possesse themselves of that plesant and commodious country of Erocoise before us” (100). Book 3 “contain[s] a description of the people that are planted there, what remarkable accidents have happened there, since they were settled, what tenets they hould, together with the practise of their church” (103). Morton opens the fi rst few chapters of book 3 on the fate of Thomas Weston’s enterprise to colonize Massachusetts. He tells of how the English colonizers were known by the name Wotanquenange, which translates as “stabbers or cutthroats” (112). The savages at Wessaguscus were enjoying a feast set for them by the English planters who were their guests when the Plymouth planters murdered them with their own knives (111). Another act of cruelty and injustice against the natives occurred when one of the “planters of New England” stole a cache of corn. Although the Parliament desired to punish this man by executing him, they could not bring themselves to follow through with this plan. Instead, they dressed an old and sickly man in the clothes of the young man and prepared to execute him instead. A third action that results in a battle between these two groups is caused by desecrating the grave of the sachem’s mother (107). Morton provides another anecdote “so that by this [the reader] may easily perceive the uncivilized people are more just than the civilized” (125). He tells a tale of theft when white settlers take the 10 skins meant as payment for corn taken from the house of Passonagessit. The white settlers take the skins for themselves rather than pass them on to the owner; the owner then asks the sachem for payment of 10 skins for the corn. This time, a man approaches the
sachem the day before their arranged meeting and demands the skins of the sachem (125). When Weston fi nally arrives at his plantation, he learns of the number of planters dead from sickness or else killed in battle against the native population. The surviving planters who have scattered in Plymouth begin to spin tales of the dangerous, subtle, secret, and mischievous nature of the savages (113). Morton seems to catalog this series of calamities for two purposes: to exonerate Thomas Weston of the crimes carried out by those he fitted out to create a plantation and to demonstrate how treacherous and deceitful the Plymouth planters are predisposed to be. As a corrective to these unfounded portrayals of the native population, Morton assures readers, “I have found the Massachusetts Indian more full of humanity then the Christians, and have had much better quarter with them” (114). Morton concedes that it is inevitable when two nations meet that “one must rule and the other be ruled” (114). The planters do not limit their treachery to the natives of Massachusetts but mistreat the “good merchant,” Thomas Weston himself. They confiscate his ship, rob it of its contents, and hold Weston hostage while they do so. Just as they glossed their own misdeeds with Weston, so they spread false tales of Weston’s madness to cover their actions against him. They then conspire to abandon Morton on Cape Ann, under the pretense that the weather requires them to take shelter. Morton chronicles how the planters’ plans were foiled by the wise Weston, who insisted that the oars and sails be taken ashore (thus dashing their plans to maroon him on Cape Ann and sail away in the night). Morton opens a bottle of “lusty liquor,” a sparkling Claret that the conspirators begin to drink in great quantities. Morton has quite fun declaring the religious implications of this act by the very people who had earlier been lamenting the lack of “the meanes” to worship: “knowinge the wine would make them Protestants” (118). In response to the Plymouth planters’ request for a minister, Master Layford is sent as their preacher. When they ask him to renounce