The New English Canaan of Thomas Morton with Introductory Matter and Notes. Thomas MortonЧитать онлайн книгу.
fact that he never mentions his having himself had anything to do with it. Yet it may be surmised that he returned to England possessed with the idea of connecting himself with some enterprise, either Weston’s or another, organized to make a settlement on the shores of Boston Bay and there to open a trade in furs. He had then had no experience of a New England winter; though, for that matter, when he afterwards had repeated experiences of it, they in no way changed his views of the country. To the last, apparently, he thought of it as he first saw it during the summer and early autumn of 1622, when it was a green fresh wilderness, nearly devoid of inhabitants and literally alive with game.
News of the utter failure of Weston’s enterprise must have reached London in the early summer of 1623. Whether Morton was in any way personally affected thereby does not appear, though from his allusions to Weston’s treatment by Robert Gorges at Plymouth, during the winter of 1623–4, it is not at all improbable that he was.[16] During the following year (1624) he is not heard of; but early in 1625 he had evidently succeeded in effecting some sort of a combination which resulted in the Wollaston expedition.
The partners in this enterprise would seem to have been the merest adventurers. So far as can be ascertained, they did not even trouble themselves to take out a patent for the land on which they proposed to settle,[17] in this respect showing themselves even more careless than Weston.[18] With the exception of Morton, they apparently had no practical knowledge of the country, and their design clearly was to establish themselves wherever they might think good, and to trade in such way as they saw fit.
When the party reached its destination in Massachusetts Bay, they found Wessagusset still occupied by such as were left of Robert Gorges’s company, who had then been there nearly two years. They had necessarily, therefore, to establish themselves elsewhere. A couple of miles or so north of Wessagusset, on the other side of the Monatoquit, and within the limits of what is now the town of Quincy, was a place called by the Indians Passonagessit. The two localities were separated from each other not only by the river, which here widens out into a tidal estuary, but by a broad basin which filled and emptied with every tide, while around it were extensive salt marshes intersected by many creeks. The upland, too, was interspersed with tangled swamps lying between gravel ridges. At Passonagessit the new-comers established themselves, and the place is still known as Mount Wollaston.
In almost all respects Passonagessit was for their purpose a better locality than Wessagusset. They had come there to trade. However it may have been with the others, in Morton’s calculations at least the plantation must have been a mere incident to the more profitable dealing in peltry. A prominent position on the shore, in plain view of the entrance to the bay, would be with him an important consideration. This was found at Passonagessit. It was a spacious upland rising gently from the beach and, a quarter of a mile or so from it, swelling into a low hill.[19] It was not connected with the interior by any navigable stream, but Indians coming from thence would easily find their way to it; and, while a portion of the company could always be there ready to trade, others of them might make excursions to all points on the neighboring coast where furs were to be had. Looking seaward, on the left of the hill was a considerable tidal creek; in front of it, across a clear expanse of water a couple of miles or so in width, lay the islands of the harbor in apparently connected succession. Though the anchoring grounds among these islands afforded perfect places of refuge for vessels, Passonagessit itself, as the settlers there must soon have realized, labored, as a trading-point, under one serious disadvantage. There was no deep water near it. Except when the tide was at least half full, the shore could be approached only in boats. On the other hand, so far as planting was concerned, the conditions were favorable. The soil, though light, was very good; and the spot, lying as it did close to “the Massachusetts fields,” had some years before been cleared of trees by the Sachem Chickatawbut, who had made his home there.[20] He had, however, abandoned it at the time when the great pestilence swept away his tribe, and tradition still points out a small savin-covered hummock, near Squantum, on the south side of the Neponset, as his subsequent dwelling-place. Morton says that Chickatawbut’s mother was buried at Passonagessit, and that the Plymouth people, on one of their visits, incurred his enmity by despoiling her grave of its bear skins.[21] So far as the natives were concerned, however, any settlers on the shores of Boston Bay, after the year 1623, had little cause for disquietude. They were a thoroughly crushed and broken-spirited race. The pestilence had left only a few hundred of the whole Massachusetts tribe, and in 1631 Chickatawbut had but some fifty or sixty followers.[22] It was a dying race; and what little courage the pestilence had left them was effectually and forever crushed out by Miles Standish, when at Wessagusset, in April, 1623, he put to death seven of the strongest and boldest of their few remaining men.
Having selected a site, Wollaston and his party built their house nearly in the centre of the summit of the hill, on a gentle westerly slope. It commanded towards the north and east an unbroken view of the bay and all the entrances to it; while on the opposite or landward side, some four or five miles away, rose the heavily-wooded Blue Hills. Across the bay to the north lay Shawmut, beyond the intervening peninsulas of Squantum and Mattapan. Wessagusset was to the south, across the marshes and creeks, and hidden from view by forest and uplands.
Mount Wollaston.[23]
During their first season, the summer of 1625, Wollaston’s party must have been fully occupied in the work of building their houses and laying out their plantation. The winter followed. A single experience of a winter on that shore seems to have sufficed for Captain Wollaston, as it had before sufficed for Captain Gorges. He apparently came to the conclusion that there was little profit and no satisfaction for him in that region. Accordingly, during the early months of 1626, he determined to go elsewhere. The only account of what now ensued is that contained in Bradford; for Morton nowhere makes a single allusion to Wollaston or any of his associates, nor does he give any account of the origin, composition or purposes of the Wollaston enterprise. His silence on all these points is, indeed, one of the singular features in the New Canaan. Such references as he does make are always to Weston and Weston’s attempt;[24] and he seems to take pains to confound that attempt with Wollaston’s. Once only he mentions the number of the party with which he landed,[25] and the fact that it was subsequently dissolved;[26] but how it came to be dissolved he does not explain. The inference from this is unavoidable. Morton was free enough in talking of what he did and saw at Passonagessit, of his revels there, of how he was arrested, and persecuted out of the country. That he says not a word of Wollaston or his other partners must be due to the fact that the subject was one about which he did not care to commit himself. Nevertheless Bradford could not but have known the facts, for not only at a later day was Morton himself for long periods of time at Plymouth, but when the events of which he speaks occurred Bradford must have been informed of them by the Wessagusset people, as well as by Fitcher. As we only know what Bradford tells us, it can best be given in his own words:—
“Having continued there some time, and not finding things to answer their expectations, nor profit to arise as they looked for, Captain Wollaston takes a great part of the servants and transports them to Virginia, where he puts them off at good rates, selling their time to other men; and writes back to one Mr. Rasdall, one of his chief partners and accounted their merchant, to bring another part of them to Virginia likewise; intending to put them off there, as he had done the rest. And he, with the consent of the said Rasdall, appointed one Fitcher to be his Lieutenant, and govern the remains of the plantation till he, or Rasdall, returned to take further order thereabout. But this Morton, abovesaid, having more craft than honesty, in the others’ absence watches an opportunity, (commons being but hard amongst them,) and got some strong drink and other junkets, 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 till this Rasdall returns, you will also be carried away and sold for slaves with the rest. Therefore, I would advise you to thrust out this Lieutenant Fitcher; and I, having a part in the plantation, will receive you as my partners and consociates. So may you be free from service; and we will converse, trade, plant and live together as equals, and support and protect one another:’ or to like effect. This counsel was easily