A European Encounters the Algonquin Indians

THOMAS MORTON, Manners and Customs of the Indians (of New England) (1637)

While many colonists disparaged Native Americans, Thomas Morton stands out for the esteem with which he held the Algonquin people. Morton migrated to New England in 1622 and established trade with local native populations, a move that angered Puritans who assumed his relationships were tinged with immorality and godlessness. In New English Canaan (1637), Morton describes the exchange of native and European commodities and speculates on the advantages this trade might bring.

Of Their Traffic and Trade With One Another: Although these people have not the use of navigation, whereby they may traffic as other nations, that are civilized, use to do, yet do they barter for such commodities as they have, and have a kind of beads instead of money, to buy withal such things as they want, which they call Wampampeak; and it is of two sorts, the one is white, the other is of a violet color. These are made of the shells of fish. The white with them is as silver with us; the other as our gold; and for these beads they buy and sell, not only amongst themselves, but even with us. We have used to sell any of our commodities for this Wampampeak, because we know we can have beaver again of them for it: and these beads are current in all the parts of New England, from one end of the coast to the other.

And although some have endeavored by example to have the like made of the same kind of shells, yet none have ever, as yet, attained to any perfection in the composure of them, but that the savages have found a great difference to be in the one and the other; and have known the counterfeit beads from those of their own making; and have, and do slight them. The skins of beasts are sold and bartered, to such people as have none of the same kind in the parts where they live. Likewise they have earthen pots of divers sizes, from a quart to a gallon, two or three to boil their victuals in; very strong, though they be thin like our iron pots. They have dainty wooden bowls of maple, of high price amongst them; and these are dispersed by bartering one with the other, and are but in certain parts of the country made, where the several trades are appropriated to the inhabitants of those parts only. So, likewise (at the season of the year), the savages that live by the seaside for trade with the inlanders for fresh water, reles curious silver reles which are bought up of such as have them not frequent in other places: chestnuts, and such like useful things as one place affords, are sold to the inhabitants of another, where they are a novelty accounted amongst the natives of the land. And there is no such thing to barter withal, as is their Wampampeak.

Of Their Magazines or Store Houses: These people are not without providence, though they be uncivilized, but are careful to preserve food in store against winter; which is the corn that they labor and dress in the summer. And, although they eat freely of it, while it is growing, yet have they a care to keep a convenient portion thereof to relieve them in the dead of winter (like to the ant and the bee), which they put under ground. Their barns are holes made in the earth, that will hold a hogshead of corn a piece in them. In these (when their corn is out of the husk and well dried) they lay their store in great baskets (which they make of bark) with mats under, about the sides, and on the top; and putting it into the place made for it, they cover it with earth; and in this manner it is preserved from destruction or putrefaction; to be used in case of necessity, and not else.

And I am persuaded, that if they knew the benefit of salt (as they may in time), and the means to make salt meat fresh again, they would endeavor to preserve fish for winter, as well as corn; and that if anything bring them to civility, it will be the use of salt, to have food in store, which is a chief benefit in a civilized commonwealth. These people have begun already to incline to the use of salt. Many of them would beg salt of me to carry home with them, that had frequented our homes and had been acquainted with our salt meats; and salt I willingly gave them, although I sold them all things else, only because they should be delighted with the use thereof, and think it a commodity of no value in itself, although the benefit was great that might be had by the use of it.…

Of a Great Mortality That Happened Amongst the Natives of New England About the Time That the English Came There to Plant: It fortuned some few years before the English came to inhabit at New Plymouth, in New England, that upon some distaste given in the Massachusetts bay by the Frenchmen, then trading there with the natives for beaver, they set upon the men at such advantage that they killed many of them, burned their ship, then riding at anchor by an island there, now called Peddocks island, in memory of Leonard Peddock that landed there (where many wild anckies1 haunted that time, which he thought had been tame), distributing them unto five sachems, which were lords of the several territories adjoining: they did keep them so long as they lived, only to sport themselves at them, and made these five Frenchmen fetch them wood and water, which is the general work that they require of a servant. One of these five men, outliving the rest, had learned so much of their language as to rebuke them for their bloody deed, saying that God would be angry with them for it, and that he would in his displeasure destroy them; but the savages (it seems boasting of their strength), replied and said, that they were so many that God could not kill them.

But contrary-wise, in short time after the hand of God fell heavily upon them, with such a mortal stroke that they died on heaps as they lay in their houses; and the living, that were able to shift for themselves, would run away and let them die, and let their carcasses lie above the ground without burial. For in a place where many inhabited, there had been but one left to live to tell what became of the rest; the living being (as it seems) not able to bury the dead, they were left for crows, kites and vermin to prey upon. And the bones and skulls upon the several places of their habitations made such a spectacle after my coming into those parts, that, as I travelled in that forest near the Massachusetts, it seemed to me a new found Golgatha.…

Of their Acknowledgement of the Creation, and Immortality of the Soul: Although these savages are to be found without religion, law and king (as Sir William Alexander has well observed), yet are they not altogether without the knowledge of God (historically); for they have it amongst them by tradition that God made one man and one woman, bade them live together and get children, kill deer, beasts, birds, fish and fowl, and what they would at their pleasure; and that their posterity was full of evil, and made God so angry that he let in the sea upon them, and drowned the greatest part of them, that were naughty men (the Lord destroyed so); and they went to Sanaconquam, who feeds upon them (pointing to the center of the earth, where they imagine is the habitation of the devil); the other (which were not destroyed) increased the world, and when they died (because they were good) went to the house of Kytan, pointing to the setting of the sun; where they eat all manner of dainties, and never take pains (as now) to provide it. Kytan makes provision (they say) and saves them labor; and there they shall live with him forever, void of care. And they are persuaded that Kytan is he that makes corn grow, trees grow, and all manner of fruits.

And that we that use the book of common prayer do it to declare to them, that cannot read, what Kytan has commanded us, and that we do pray to him with the help of that book; and do make so much account of it, that a savage (who had lived in my house before he had taken a wife, by whom he had children) made this request to me (knowing that I always used him with much more respect than others), that I would let his son be brought up in my house, that he might be taught to read in that book; which request of his I granted; and he was a very joyful man to think that his son should thereby (as he said) become an Englishman; and then he would be a good man. I asked him who was a good man; his answer was, he that would not lie, nor steal.

The Library of Original Sources, vol. 5, ed. Oliver J. Thatcher (Milwaukee: University Research Extension Co., 1907), 360–377.

READING AND DISCUSSION QUESTIONS