Скачать или смотреть Thomas Morton & the Maypole of Merrymount

"Thomas Morton & the Maypole of Merrymount: Disorder in the American Wilderness 1622-1647," produced in 1992 by Jack (John) Dempsey. Biographical study of early English-American colonist Thomas Morton (c.1576-1647), author of "New English Canaan" (1637)---whose learning, humor and tolerance, frontier skills and many-sided creativity enhanced his relations with Native New Englanders, while they in turn made his Massachusetts Bay plantation "Ma-re Mount" or "Merrymount" the most successful of its time on their "paradise" landscape.

With English West Country (Devon) outdoorsman's skills and training in law at London's boisterous Inns of Court, Morton found himself building a New England fur-trade post as of summer 1624. On the land around him, a European "plague" (1618) had annihilated 90% of Massachusett and other peoples, and Plimoth "Pilgrims" had murdered outspoken Native men at nearby Wessagussett (Weymouth, 1623). Yet, perhaps with immediate gun-trade (which was against his king's edict but not statutory law), Morton secured permission to stay. He made egalitarian changes to the contracts of indentured youths, lived among the same injured Native peoples, studied ongoing transatlantic trade-ways, and held much of it together with Old English and Renaissance mainstream customs.

But soon, Morton's secular spirit---and his attitudes toward evangelical blunders and frauds---made him a foundational obstacle to the religious, racist and militarist control of America by Plimoth Pilgrims and Salem/Boston Puritans. They were the era's actual "counter-culturalists," whose first laws forbade almost all Morton's ways. Yet he prospered till they could remove him, given his affiliations with aristocrat-investors linked to The Council for New England. His function was the acquisition of high-profit furs, and the guns he traded can have come only through the will and the winks of the authorities behind him.

Hence, after Merrymount's 1627 Maypole Revels and Morton's first arrest/exile, he returned a year later "not so much as rebuked." In 1629 he anticipated Roger Williams by articulating the rejection of a Bible-centered colonial culture with laws sure to be "construed" by an inept and self-interested elite. Then, burned and hoisted out of the country as the first court order of Boston's Massachusetts Bay Colony (1630), Morton began "New English Canaan" as a legal brief. But the eventual judgment in his favor (also revoking New England's charter on multiple grounds of abuse) could not be enforced as England's civil war broke out. By then in his 70s, and arrested again on his 1645 American return, Morton was jailed through that winter "to the decaying of his limbs," then released for lack of charges. A problematic report said he passed away "soon after" in Agamenticus (York), Maine.

"Canaan," in three "books" of prose and poetry, details Morton's experiences of Native New England, catalogues American natural beauty and wealth (with his watchword "Respect"), and compares his and the "martialist" Puritans' practices and results. Today he ranks among America's first English ethnographers, naturalists, historians and humorists---America's "first rascal," first political exile, and first poet in English. Much more to explore at http://ancientlights.org.

A low-tech production on a shoestring budget via friends and local Public Access cable---damaged in a spot or two. But Native American and other scholars and performers made many strong contributions in appreciation of Morton's achievements and "solemn foolery." His vision of an America founded in respect, compassion and cooperation crowned our first grand frontier wedding party, staged "for all comers" living on the land.

Morton's full restored text of "New English Canaan" (1637) and his biography "Thomas Morton: The Life & Renaissance of an Early American Poet" (2000) are available at https://www.amazon.com/Jack-Dempsey/e... .

See also "NANI: A Native New England Story" (1998), 1-hour biography of the distinguished Native New England historian Nanepashemet.    • Nani:  A Native New England Story  

NEW! The Mazzini Society Report's March 2023 4-part podcast, "Thomas Morton & Merrymount: the Renaissance vs. the War State in Early America," at    • Thomas Morton & Merrymount: the Renaissanc...  

MAY DAY BONUS: Fresh Chuckles from Merrymount---https://jackdempseywriter.wordpress.c...

GREAT gratitude to Mr. Paul Eagle of Maine USA, a web-tech wunderkind who brought this film back to life!

Contact: Dr. Jack Dempsey, [email protected].