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was trouncing its competition up and down the New England shore. William Bradford, sounding the alarm, cited the spread of Morton’s technology throughout the local tribes: “Fouling peeces, muskets, pistols & c.” made the already “barbarous savages” even deadlier combatants, a point he sensationalized for European readers (though Indian archery was quicker and deadlier than heavy, clumsy early guns). But these skills also made them unbeatable hunters, for as Bradford complained, Indians were already nimbler than the English, ran faster, could see farther, and knew “the hants of all sorts of game.” Compound these threats and financial costs with Morton’s infectious example of democracy—“all the scume of the countrie, or any discontents, would flock to him from all places”—and one could see why, in Bradford’s opinion, Morton’s “nest” had to be “broken.” A conspiracy of families and smaller English colonies began holding meetings at Plymouth Plantation on how to destroy this strange new menace.
    IN THE SPRING OF 1627, Morton renamed Wollaston’s camp “Merry Mount”—cheekily spelling it “Ma-Re Mount” as a
digitus impudicus
aimed at the Separatists.Richard Slotkin liststhe name’s witty abominations: its innocent homonyms with “Merry” and “Marry” call forth visions of merriment and nuptials, but it also rhymes with “Mary,” a name that makes for “bawdy blasphemy” when coupled, as it is, with “mount.” Worse yet, when read for its brazen spelling, “Mare Mount” flaunts theLevitican crime for which Thomas Granger (plus menagerie) was executed. But even a bawdy name like Ma-Re Mount declared the colony’s permanence. Morton called it a “memorial to after ages.” Bradford scoffed, “they call it Merie-mounte, as if this joylity would have lasted forever.” Nathaniel Hawthorne, in his marvelous romance of theevents, depicted their dispute as a battle for staying power: “Jollity and gloom were contending for an empire.”
    Near the end of April, to commemorate their audacious new name, Morton’s wights made preparations for aMay Day festival. As blossoms opened and new leaves glittered, a gentleman and seven roughnecks brewed “a barrel of excellent beare” and filled a case of bottles “with other good cheare.” They fashioned green garlands to wear in their hair, disseminated word among the locals, and felled an eighty-foot-tall pine to which they would affix ribbons (after “the olde English custome”) and a set of buckhorns as a New World innovation. Morton wanted the Maypole big—phallus-big, America-big—as a “faire sea marke” that would welcome visitors from all directions. The more the merrier was his position. Unlike the Separatists, who warned off visitors with tales ofcannibalism, Morton advertised America’s riches, inviting strangers to impregnate the land’s “wombe” through “art & industry,” lest it wither in “darck obscurity.” He was laying plans for a thriving civilization, not an exclusive promised land.
    In preparation for the festival, Morton also wrote aribald twenty-three-line poem, overloaded with classical references. The Inns where he had studied had a thriving theater culture where bitingsatire had been the dominant tone, often at the expense of
pisse-froid
Puritans. Morton’s legendary friendship withBen Jonson, who was the Inns’ most famous working-class interloper, will probably never be confirmed, but it is likely he counted himself among the “Sons of Ben,” the cavalier writers in the younger generation who parroted Jonson’s wit. He declared himself “a Satyrist” with “smarting fanges.” Where Bradford preaches throughout his
Historie,
Morton cracks jokes—turning short-staturedMyles Standish into “Captain Shrimpe” and the righteousJohn Endicott into “Captain Littleworth.” And the revels themselves were soaked in satire. It has been speculated that they were inspired by a 1594Gesta