“Hearing what gain the French and fishermen made by trading of pieces, powder and shot to the Indians, he, as the head of this consortship, began the practice of the same in these parts. And first he taught them how to use them, to charge and discharge, and what proportion of powder to give the piece, according to the size and bigness of the same; and what shot to use for fowl and what for deer. And having thus instructed them, he employed some of them to hunt and fowl for him, so as they became far more active in that employment than any of the English, by reason of their swiftness of foot and nimbleness of body; being also quick sighted, and by continual exercise well knowing the haunts of all sorts of game. So as when they saw the execution that a piece would do, and the benefit that might come by the same, they became mad, as it were, after them, and would not stick to give any price they could attain to for them; accounting their bows and arrows but bawbles in comparison of them.”[42]
This was Bradford’s story, nor does Morton deny it. That he would have denied it if he could is apparent. The practices complained of were forbidden by a royal proclamation, issued at the instance of Sir Ferdinando Gorges. In his speech in defence of the great patent, before the House of Commons in Committee of the Whole, in 1621, Gorges had emphatically dwelt on the sale of arms and ammunition to the savages as an abuse then practised, which threatened the extinction of the New England settlements.[43] Fifteen years later, when he wrote the _New Canaan_, Morton was a dependent of Gorges. The fact that he had dealt in fire-arms, in contemptuous defiance of the proclamation, was openly charged against him. He did deny that he had sold the savages spirits. These, he said, were the life of trade; the Indians would “pawn their wits” for them, but these he would never let them have. In the matter of fire-arms, however, he preserved a discreet and significant silence. He made no more allusion to them than he did to Wollaston or his partners at Merry-Mount.
In the whole record of the early Plymouth settlement, from the first skirmish with the Cape Cod savages, in December, 1620, to the Wessagusset killing, there is no mention of a gun being seen in an Indian’s hands. On the contrary, the savages stood in mortal terror of fire-arms. But now at last it seemed as if Morton was about not only to put guns in their hands, but to instruct them in their use.