Thomas Morton (colonist)

Thomas Morton (* probably 1580-1595 in England, more precisely of birth unknown; † 1646 or 1647 Acomenticus, now York, Maine ) was an English adventurer and pioneer settlers in New England.

Life

About Morton's origin nothing is known secure. What is certain is that he studied at Clifford 's Inn, one of London's schools of law, jurisprudence. 1622 he was a member of the short-lived expedition Thomas Weston in the almost unexplored regions of the later New England, where only two years earlier had founded the Plymouth Colony, the first permanent English settlement in the region of the " Pilgrim Fathers ". After his return to England he already went two years later in the entourage of a Captain Wollaston back to Plymouth.

Since Wollaston, Morton and some other newcomers did not get on with the pious pilgrim fathers, they went north and established on the site of the present town of Quincy, Massachusetts, a trading post. In the coming years, Morton explored the area and established trade contacts with the local Indian tribes. As Wollaston in 1626 left the post, Morton took over the management of the small settlement that probably mattered little more than six or seven white traders.

In May of 1627 Morton erected in the settlement of a Maypole, and baptized in the name of the settlement Ma -Re Mount. At the exuberant celebrations, dances and drinking bouts that he could prevail in the coming months under the Maypole, also took part in many Indians. The bustle was observed with suspicion by the pious and punish Pilgrims of Plymouth until they intervened in September 1628. Governor William Bradford sent an armed team led by John Endicott to Mar -Re Mount, had cut down the maypole and Morton under the accusation that he had the Indians sold weapons arrest. On the one hand it may ideological contrast between the lively Morton and the ascetic pilgrim fathers have been that led to this escalation, on the other hand, the competition, which represented Morton with the Indians for the Pilgrims.

Morton was deported to England, because there but contrary to expectations, no charges were brought against him, he was at liberty again, and returned much to the displeasure of the Pilgrims to Plymouth back in 1629 already. In order to force him to conformity, Bradford and Endicott sat then a code of conduct, which therefore also Morton should be signed by each settler colony, - Morton refused to sign, if the document is not a clause would be added that none in the colony acts would be tolerated, violating the laws of the Kingdom of England. Finally, Morton was placed at the direction of Bradford in chains and in turn charged to England.

In England, Morton was set free. Well 1633/34 he wrote a book about New England, New English Canaan about his experiences in New England. It appeared in 1637 in Amsterdam and is an important source to the beginnings of the New England colonies, particularly in his equally detailed as benevolent descriptions of the Indians. Exceptionally, it is especially because it represents one of the few not written from a puritanical perspective documents on the colonial New England. It is true that Morton uses the title of his work often sought by the Puritans of New England as a trope praised country or new Canaan, but there is the description of the area in Morton dar. far less theologically embellished

After the outbreak of the English Civil War, Morton returned, now quite depleted, turn to Plymouth back and broke after the first winter explorations northward on. In 1644 it was fixed by the magistrates of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and accused of treason. In the absence of evidence, he was released after a year in prison and ordered to pay a fine of 100 pounds, but he could not muster. The governor of the colony, John Winthrop, wrote that they had apart in his case of a corporal punishment, as Morton " old and crazy " is, but it weakened the prison time apparently very. Morton was given the opportunity to absentieren from the colony, and he went to the settlement Acomenticus in today's Maine, where he died in 1646 or 1647.

Reception

Morton is often the extent as unscrupulous adventurer ostracized in American historiography over the centuries in just how the Pilgrims and Puritans were transfigured into protagonists and heroic founders of a company design, from whose mind the American nation was born.

This allegorical interpretation of the events around the maypole of Ma -Re Mount imprinted in all its moral ambiguity also famous Nathaniel Hawthorne 's short story The Maypole of Merry Mount (1835 ). Morton's fate has not been processed in many artistic only since Hawthorne; the historian John Lothrop Motley published about two novels about Morton ( Morton 's Hope, or the Memoirs of a Provincial (1839 ) and Merry Mount, a Romance of the Massachusetts Colony (1849 ) ).

Only in recent years is Morton and his New England Canaan in a positive reinterpretation of a kind of symbolic figure of an " other America " has become, especially in connection with his benevolent treatment of the Native American culture. Among his most important supporters counts William Carlos Williams, Morton in his book In The American Grain (1925 ) one of the founders of a quintessential American way of thinking and literature declared, and Richard Slotkin, whose Regeneration through Violence Morton downright describes as a prototypical representative of a counter-cultural non-conformity.

Editions of the New English Canaan

• New English Canaan. Jacob Stam, Amsterdam 1637th Facsimile: Da Capo, New York 1969.