Thoughts on Thanksgiving and the Maypole of Merrymount

Having grown up in colonial New England not far from Plymouth, in my late teen years I was deeply interested in researching the hidden history of the area. With the help of a book store called Newspeak in Providence, where I met authors like Ron Sakolsky who wrote Gone to Croatan , I began finding the lost stories of the early settlers. What I discovered was a history very different than what we learned about the Pilgrims in our school books, and also very different than the white guilt version of history now accepted by our modern liberal culture.

I found a tale rich in heretical characters, who were in deep opposition to the Puritans and the church. The further in depth I searched, I discovered characters like Thomas Morton, William Blackstone, Anne Hutchinson, Roger Williams and more, all who founded revolutionary movements in southern New England and who were enemies of the Puritans, and many of whom were allies of the Natives.

What is little reported in our history books is that not only were most of the people who came to this land fleeing persecution by the church in one form or another, a huge portion of them in the early 1600s went through a phenomena that was referred to at the time as “Going Savage.” More than 60% of the initial settlements were part of this movement. From in Virginia, home of Roanokes’ supposedly lost colony (who actually joined the local native Croatan tribe), to the freedom of religion colony in Rhode Island (where I grew up), where the heretical europeans and local Narraganasett tribe protected escaped slaves and formed into their own colony, our ancestors went “savage” en masse.

Probably the most interesting story I found was that of Thomas Morton and the settlement he founded in Massachusetts near Plymouth called Merrymount. Morton was from Devon, England, and he and his followers and their freedom loving ways were not well regarded by the nearby Puritans. Morton’s people intermarried with the local natives, shared in much drink and merriment, reveled in songs and poetry, and even celebrated some of the nature holidays of their ancestors. Whilst the Puritans struggled to survive the winters, Merrymount flourished with the help of their native allies and their strong trading connections throughout the region.

In 1627, Morton and the people of Merrymount erected a large Maypole and conducted a May Day Revel, inviting both colonists and natives. They sang songs and spoke poetry of Venus and Cupid, and the Puritan Separatists at Plymouth were infuriated. The Puritan governor wrote of the incident “They … set up a May-pole, drinking and dancing about it many days together, inviting the Indian women, for their consorts, dancing and frisking together (like so many fairies, or furies rather) and worse practices. As if they had anew revived & celebrated the feasts of ye Roman Goddess Flora, or ye beastly practices of ye mad Bacchanalians.” After the second year’s Maypole celebration, which was even larger with a massive pole adorned in stag antlers, the Puritans invaded Merrymount and burned the entire colony to the ground. Morton was captured and arrested and put in exile on a small island off New Hampshire. 

The Native people considered Morton a great friend and ally, and rescued him from the island and arranged for a ship to return him to the UK. When he returned to Devon, Morton studied law for years and to the surprise of the Protestant English supporters of the ‘Plymouth Separatists’, Morton won influential backing for his cause and was treated as a champion of liberty. He soon became the attorney of the Council of New England against the Massachusetts Bay Company (the Puritans). The real political force behind his good fortune, however, was the hostility of Charles I to the Puritan colonists. In 1635 Morton’s efforts against the Puritans were successful, and the Plymouth Company’s charter was revoked. Major political rearrangements occurred in New England after this and between the Puritans hostile relationship with the Natives, and their lack of support from England, Plymouth became a place of woe, and many left Massachusetts for the relative safety of Connecticut. The influence the of the Puritans who greatly disrespected the Natives and their European allies was greatly diminished for years to come thanks to Morton and his merry band.

So this Thanksgiving, remember that the story is more complicated than Puritans sitting down for dinner with Natives and then soon after wiping them out in an act of cruelty. In reality there was a battle for religious and political freedom happening within European culture, and an actual war between those who stayed close to nature and allied with the Indians and escaped slaves, and the patriarchal Puritan zealots who still run much of our world today. The real Thanksgiving was happening back then year round…but it wasn’t in Plymouth…it was at Merrymount!