IN the spring of 1627, the Pilgrim settlement at Plymouth was scandalized when a rather different American named Thomas Morton decided to show the New World how to celebrate. At Merry Mount, which may have been America's first counterculture community, Morton erected a Maypole80 feet of priapic pineand by his own account "brewed a barrel! of excellent beare" to be distributed with "other good cheare, for all commers of that day." Other good cheare included Indian girls, according to "a song fitting to the time and present occasion" written by the host himself:...
To continue reading:
or
Log-In
