Colonial America: The Age of Sodomitical Sin, 1607-1783, by Jonathan Ned Katz

The years from 1607 to 1783 constitute the founding era of what became the United States. In the early years of this era, in these American colonies, the penalty for sodomy was death, and a number of executions are documented. Sodomy was usually conceived of then as anal intercourse between men. But why was sodomy thought of as treason against the state and punished so harshly? And what do we know of sexual and intimate relationships between women in these years, and the laws and responses to such intimacies? This feature presents or references the original documents that Jonathan Ned Katz collected in his books Gay American History (1976) and Gay/Lesbian Almanac (1983), along with evidence that others subsequently discovered. Published originally on OutHistory in 2012.

William Bradford: Merrymount, Massachusetts, 1626

William Bradford (1590-1657)

"worse practices"

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About 1626, according to William Bradford, Thomas Morton and the other male settlers at Merrymount (now Quincy), in the Massachusetts Colony, were guilty of "great licentiousness." The men's consorting with Indian women is mentioned, along with "worse practices" associated with ancient Roman feasts.

Bradford said that Morton and his men "set up a maypole,drinking and dancing about it many days together, inviting the Indian women for their consorts, dancing and frisking together like so many fairies, or furies, rather; and worse practices. As if they had anew revived and celebrated the feasts of the Roman goddess Flora, or the beastly practices of the mad Bacchanalians."(1)

It would be interesting to know just what "feasts of the Roman goddess Flora" and "beastly practices of the mad Bacchanalians" Bradford had in mind. With what ancient Roman sources would he have been familiar? (2)

References

Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, pp. 204-06.
This query is in the notes to Jonathan Ned Katz, Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A. (NY: Crowell, 1976) or Jonathan Ned Katz, Gay/Lesbian Almanac (NY: Harper & Row, 1983), which also cites Oaks, 'Things Fearful,' " p. 269.