This volume is a copy of Gookin's 1677 manuscript, "An Historical Account ... of the Christian Indians in New England," made by Jared Sparks (1789-1866) in 1830. (The original manuscript essay cannot be located.) Gookin writes extensively of the movements and sufferings of the Christian Indians during the King Philip's War, 1675 to 1676. He describes, in great detail, Indian tribes and individuals, the captivity of both Indians and colonists, the savage attacks, verbal and physical, against the Christian Indians, and the efforts made by John Eliot (1604-1690) and Gookin to defend them. He also includes copies of orders of various councils in regard to the fate of the Christian Indians, who were finally exiled to Deer Island. Gookin also includes a copy of a 1677 letter from John Eliot, praising this account, and copies of three 1677 certificates, signed by an army officer and two government officials, praising the loyal efforts of the Christian Indians during the war.

In the fall of 1677 Daniel Gookin wrote his Historical account ... as a vindication of the Praying or Christian Indians role during King Philip's War (1675-1676). In this detailed account, Gookin describes the hostilities between the Indian tribes and English settlements in New England and their terrible effect upon the Praying Indians, many of whom were mercilessly attacked by their unconverted tribesmen. Further, he defends the actions of the Praying Indians and relates their general condition and sufferings.

This volume presents a valuable collection of annotated primary documents published during King Philip’s War (1675–76), a conflict that pitted English colonists against many native peoples of southern New England, to reveal the real-life experiences of early Americans. Louise Breen’s detailed introduction to Daniel Gookin and the War, combined with interpretations of the accompanying ancillary documents, offers a set of inaccessible or unpublished archival documents that illustrate the distrust and mistreatment heaped upon praying (Christian) Indians. The book begins with an informative annotation of Historical Account of the Doings and Sufferings of the Christian Indians in New England, in the Years 1675, 1675, and 1677, written by Gookin, a magistrate and military leader who defended Massachusetts’ praying Indians, to expose atrocities committed against natives and the experiences of specific individuals and towns during the war. Developments in societal, and particularly religious, inclusivity in Puritan New England during this period of colonial conflict are thoroughly explored through Breen’s analysis. The book offers students primary sources that are pertinent to survey history courses on Early Americans and Colonial History, as well as providing instructors with documents that serve as concrete examples to illustrate broad societal changes that occurred during the seventeenth century.

The North American Indian group known as the Nipmucks was situated in south-central New England and, during the early years of Puritan colonization, remained on the fringes of the expanding white settlements. It was not until their involvement in King Philip's War (1675-1676) that the Nipmucks were forced to flee their homes, their lands to be redistributed among the settlers. This group, which actually includes four tribes or bands--the Nipmucks, Nashaways, Quabaugs, and Wabaquassets--has been enmeshed in myth and mystery for hundreds of years. This is the first comprehensive history of their way of life and its transformation with the advent of white settlement in New England. Spanning the years between the Nipmucks' first encounters with whites until the final disposal of their lands, this history focuses on Indian-white relations, the position or status of the Nipmucks relative to the other major New England tribes, and their social and political alliances. Settlement patterns, population densities, tribal limits, and land transactions are also analyzed as part of the tribe's historical geography. A bibliography allows for further research on this mysterious and often misunderstood people group.

In colonial North and South America, print was only one way of communicating. Information in various forms flowed across the boundaries between indigenous groups and early imperial settlements. Natives and newcomers made speeches, exchanged gifts, invented gestures, and inscribed their intentions on paper, bark, skins, and many other kinds of surfaces. No one method of conveying meaning was privileged, and written texts often relied on nonwritten modes of communication. Colonial Mediascapes examines how textual and nontextual literatures interacted in colonial North and South America. Extending the textual foundations of early American literary history, the editors bring a wide range of media to the attention of scholars and show how struggles over modes of communication intersected with conflicts over religion, politics, race, and gender. This collection of essays by major historians, anthropologists, and literary scholars demonstrates that the European settlement of the Americas and European interaction with Native peoples were shaped just as much by communication challenges as by traditional concerns such as religion, economics, and resources.

Years before Jamestown was settled, European adventurers and explorers landed on the shores of Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts in search of fame, fortune, and souls to convert to Christianity. Unbeknownst to them all, the "New World" they had found was actually a very old one, as the history of the native people spanned 10,000 years or more. This work is a compilation of old and new essays written by present-day archeologists, by explorers and missionaries who were in direct contact with the Indians, and by scholars over the last three centuries. The essays are in three sections: Prehistory, which concentrates on the Paleo-Indian, Archaic, and Woodland phases of the native heritage, the Contact Era, which deals with the explorers and their experiences in the New World, and Collections, Sites, Trails, and Names, which focuses on various dedications to the native population and significant names (such as the Massabesic Trail and the Cohas Brook site).

George Washington insisted that his portrait be painted with one. Daniel Boone created a legend with one. Abraham Lincoln shot them on the White House lawn. And Teddy Roosevelt had his specially customized. In this first-of-its-kind book, historian Alexander Rose delivers a colorful, engrossing biography of an American icon: the rifle. Drawing on the words of foot soldiers, inventors, and presidents, based on extensive new research, and spanning from the Revolution to the present day, American Rifle is a balanced, wonderfully entertaining history of the rifle and its place in American culture.

Between 1675 and 1676, King Philip's War shattered native tribes and devastated the new English colonies in one of the most significant American wars of the 17th century. The conflict that triggered this terrible war developed over 50 years, as Indians found their lands shrinking and their resources threatened by the colonists. The powerful Pequot and Narragansett tribes were subjugated, and Wampanoag leader King Philip (Metacom) saw his lands taken and his counselors executed. In July 1675, his warriors started an uprising that gained the support of other tribes and sent refugees streaming into Boston. King Philip's War is a penetrating account of this decisive confrontation, which ultimately led to the end of native independence in the area.

This book traces the development of John Eliot’s mission to the Algonquian-speaking people of Massachusetts Bay, from his arrival in 1631 until his death in 1690. It explores John Eliot’s determination to use the Massachusett dialect of Algonquian, both in speech and in print, as a language of conversion and Christianity. The book analyzes the spoken words of religious conversion and the written transcription of those narratives; it also considers the Algonquian language texts and English language texts which Eliot published to support the mission. Central to this study is an insistence that John Eliot consciously situated his mission within a tapestry of contesting transatlantic and political forces, and that this framework had a direct impact on the ways in which Native American penitents shaped and contested their Christian identities. To that end, the study begins by examining John Eliot’s transatlantic network of correspondents and missionary-supporters in England, it then considers the impact of conversion narratives in spoken and written forms, and ends by evaluating the impact of literacy on praying Indian communities. The study maps the coalescence of different communities that shaped, or were shaped by, Eliot’s seventeenth-century mission.