Anthropology

in his dealings with other people, including the Wampanoag. From everything that I've read about him (the Puritan view and more neutral biographical details), he did not actually respect the Wampanoag. He was a libertarian who idealized the freedoms of Native people, but also regarded them as "noble savages" who needed to be civilized.

He was high church Anglican and planned to make the Wampanoag dependent on trade with him in order to "civilize" them into European style farming and trading partners through conversion to Christianity.

Yet, he also traded alcohol with them, which being new to them, they could not handle well. He apparently saw nothing wrong with holding drunken celebrations with his indentured servants and the Native people to let the servants get some sex while drunk and maybe take a Native "wife."

Puritans naturally objected to what they called "orgies," given the Puritan prudishness and abhorrence of mingling with Natives as equals.

But, on the plus side, Morton did encourage his indentured servants to rebel when his partner started selling them into slavery in Virginia. He gave them their freedom. His colony prospered until the Puritans took it over with a militia and arrested him.

For all his claims of equality for the Native people and indentured servants, he was a firmly committed royalist.

Seems like he was a complex and contradictory character.