The new English Canaan of Thomas Morton

Historic Populations of the Double-crested Cormorant (Phalacrocorax auritus): Implications for Conservation and Management in the 21st Century

“…Although we found no early estimates or archaeological evidence to which historic and current abundance can quantitatively be compared, early comments and records suggest cormorants were very abundant in this breeding zone prior to European settlement (Williams 1643;Audubon 1843;Reeks 1869;Champlain 1922;Goss 1889;Townsend 1917). Mendall (1936) cites Morton (1637), who wrote of cormorants in New England, "There are greate store of Pilchers: at Michelmas, in many places, I have seene the Cormorants in length 3.0 Miles feedinge upon the Sent." Lewis (1929) reported that several 17 th century references mention the abundance of cormorants in Virginia, and that in 1610, one anonymous author reported cormorants among the birds in Virginia rivers "in such abundance as are not in all the world to be equaled.…”

American Indian Languages and the Law of Property in Colonial America

“…Describing the linguistic mix that existed among Indian dialects as well as between the English and the Indians, Thomas Morton, an English trader and author of New English Canaan (1634), wrote: "I know not but that this is commonly seen where two nations traffic together, the one endeavoring to understand the other's meaning, makes the both, many times, speak a mixed language." 38 Spoken communication was a conduit not only for learning foreign words, but also for understanding the foreign culture, including the different cultural approaches to the land that were refracted through them. For this reason, more and more Puritans voiced their puzzlement not only about Indian customs and manners per se, as anthropologists and ethnologists have demonstrated, but about the Indians' use of language.…”

Did Native Americans influence the northward migration of plants during the Holocene?

“…The transport of indigenous species is described occasionally. In the 1620s, Morton (1883) reports of an exchange of Castanea dentata (R.S. Marsh) Borkh.…”

“…bottomland hardwood forest), then the rate of successful establishment would be much higher than dispersal by random long‐distant events such as wind storms or zoochory. The few references that specifically describe Native American plant dispersal (Morton, 1883; Lawson, 1967; Catesby, 1974) suggest that dissemination was usually limited to a few hundred kilometres within the confines of a particular region (e.g. southern New England, south‐eastern United States).…”