Daniel Gookin was a pioneering settler who resided in Virginia and Massachusetts, taking an interest in and writing about the Native Americans, toward whom he felt sympathy. Born in County Cork, Ireland, Gookin moved to his father's plantation in Virginia when he was aged only eighteen in 1630. Given a reference to his being a 'souldier', it is assumed that Gookin spent at least part of his youth in the military. Later in life he moved to the colonies of Massachusetts, becoming familiar with these and other lands. Gookin travelled to London on business multiple times, acting to relay information about newly discovered areas, their suitability for settlement, and challenges facing the colonists. Gookin gained distinction for his efforts to build rapport with the Native Americans. He promoted the conversion of natives to Christianity, with the eventual goal of permanent, peaceful coexistence. He also wrote two books about the native populations, and encouraged peace when violent conflicts such as King Philip's War broke out. He was also an early advocate for the lessening British influence upon the colonies. Frederick Gookin published this biography of his ancestor in 1912, piecing together many disparate sources in order to shed light on Daniel's life and deeds.

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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and the War, combined with interpretations of the accompanying ancillary documents, offers a set of inaccessible or unpublished archival documents that illustrate the distrust and mistreatment heaped upon praying (Christian) Indians.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.

Excerpt from Daniel Gookin: 1612-1687; Assistant and Major General of the Massachusetts Bay Colony; His Life and Letters and Some Account of His Ancestry Hat no extended biography of Daniel Gookin has heretofore been published is without doubt attributable to the paucity of the available mate rial. About 1840 Mr. John Wingate Thornton began to gather information about his distin guished ancestor, and in 1847 the facts he had been able to get together were embodied in an article upon The Gookin Family, printed that year in the first volume of The New England Historical and Genealogi cal Register. For more than thirty years Mr. Thornton was an eager gleaner of every item he could discover concerning the grand old American patriarch and sage. Though, to his deep regret, he was unable to carry out his design of writing a life of Daniel Gookin, by his early researches he laid a foun dation for which I am greatly indebted. It is now thirty-six years since Mr. Thornton resigned his cherished task to my hands and I began the collection of data for the present work. In the scant leisure of a busy life this has been necessarily a slow process; and it is only within recent years that a considerable part of the information I sought has come to light. The more important facts of Gen eral Gookin's career are well known, but it has proved a difficult matter to supplement them with the mass of lesser items without which a well-rounded portrait could not be presented. Such a portrait I have endeavoured to prepare, but I am deeply sensible of many deficiencies. I have used the utmost care to secure accuracy of detail, and I can only hope that mistakes are few. Such as it is, the book is offered as a tribute to the memory of Daniel Gookin on the three-hun dredth anniversary of his birth. It forms a part of an extended history of the Gookin family, other portions of which I hope to print at some future time. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Martyrs' Mirror examines the folklore of martyrdom among seventeenth-century New England Protestants, exploring how they imagined themselves within biblical and historical narratives of persecution. Memories of martyrdom, especially stories of the Protestants killed during the reign of Queen Mary in the mid-sixteenth century, were central to a model of holiness and political legitimacy. The colonists of early New England drew on this historical imagination in order to strengthen their authority in matters of religion during times of distress. By examining how the notions of persecution and martyrdom move in and out of the writing of the period, Adrian Chastain Weimer finds that the idea of the true church as a persecuted church infused colonial identity. Though contested, the martyrs formed a shared heritage, and fear of being labeled a persecutor, or even admiration for a cheerful sufferer, could serve to inspire religious tolerance. The sense of being persecuted also allowed colonists to avoid responsibility for aggression against Algonquian tribes. Surprisingly, those wishing to defend maltreated Christian Algonquians wrote their history as a continuation of the persecutions of the true church. This examination of the historical imagination of martyrdom contributes to our understanding of the meaning of suffering and holiness in English Protestant culture, of the significance of religious models to debates over political legitimacy, and of the cultural history of persecution and tolerance.

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