When Waban, ruler of the Natick people, complained that no matter what they did, they could never please the English nor be considered their equals, Daniel Gookin could only reply, “Waban, you know all Indians are not good; some carry it rudely, some are drunkards, others steal, others lie and break their promises, and otherwise wicked. So ‘t is with Englishmen; all are not good, but some are bad, and will carry it rudely; and this we must expect, while we are in this world; therefore, let us be patient and quiet, and leave this case to God, and wait upon him in a way of well-doing, patience, meekness, and humility; and God will bring a good issue in the end, as you have seen and experienced.”[1]
Gookin himself was pained by the mistreatment of Native Americans, particularly when thousands of them, even those who had converted to Christianity and adopted English customs, were killed or sold into slavery during and after King Phillip’s war. That’s when he wrote his Historical Account of the Doings and Sufferings of the Christian Indians in New England. He hoped to set the record straight in the face of the prevailing narrative of his day. But his book was published only in 1836, 149 years after his death.
An Officer and a Missionary
Gookin was born in Ireland in 1612 to a Puritan family. Little is known about his early years. He emigrated to Virginia where his father had lands but later moved to Boston with his second wife Mary (nothing is known about his first wife). From 1644 to 1648, they lived in Roxbury under the ministry of John Eliot, who is today known as “the apostle to the American Indians” and the editor of the first Bible published on American soil – a Bible in the Algonquin language.
Highly appreciated in the colonies, Gookin assumed positions of responsibility in the local government, which included diplomatic relations with England. He spent a brief period in England during the 1630’s where Oliver Cromwell commissioned him to recruit colonists for Jamaica.
After returning to Massachusetts. he became involved in Eliot’s mission to the local natives, whom Eliot had organized into “Praying Towns.” Like Eliot, Gookin learned the native language, although he believed – as did most missionaries at that time – that Christianity and Western language and culture had to be taught together.
In 1656, he was appointed as superintendent of these Praying Indians, which included maintaining law and order and facilitating relations with the European colonists. It was an unpaid task which included many travels.
During this time, he wrote his eight-book Historical Collections of the Indians of North America, divided into twelve chapters and addressed to the King of England, describing the known history and customs of the Native Americans together with their conversion and their valuable assistance to the colonists, and to raise awareness of their ongoing evangelization.
A Fervent Hope
Under Eliot’s preaching, many natives had already converted to Christianity. Baffled by the natives’ views of a sovereign deity and a life of eternal happiness or misery after death, together with their purification rites and food taboos, he wondered if they might be a remnant of the lost tribes of Israel.
Gookin was impressed by the progress these natives had made in their knowledge of the gospel. “There is none of the praying Indians, young or old, but can readily answer any question of the catechism,” he wrote. “Which, I believe, is more than can be said of many thousands of English people.”[2]
While his views of Native Americans were still informed by Western standards, he believed that the only difference was that Europeans were “born and bred among civilized and Christian nations.” Now, he said, the colonists had an opportunity to “behold the real fulfilling of those precious promises made to Jesus Christ, that God will give him the heathen for his inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for his possession.”[3]
Besides asking the English Crown for prayers and material support toward the evangelization of the natives, Gookin expressed his wish “that the English nation which dwell among them may live so holily and honestly that by their good conversation all stumbling block; may be removed out of the way of the Indians in their travel towards the heavenly Canaan, and such gracious examples set before them that they may more and more be induced to obedience to the yoke of our Lord Jesus Christ.”[4]
Facing Opposition
But Gookin’s words fell mostly on deaf ears as the majority of Europeans preferred to adhere to a narrative of violent and treacherous natives who should be viewed with suspicion, disarmed, and confined to reservations.
Also, as historian Matthew J. Tuininga noted, Gookin’s warning “came too late. Although many Algonquians had accepted Christianity, there were already many stumbling blocks in their way of seeking a heavenly Canaan. Within a year, Gookin’s hope of an integrated society would be shattered amid the fulcrum of war. Many colonists would abandon all thought of a heavenly Canaan that included Indians, instead envisioning an earthly Canaan whose first people needed to be destroyed.”[5]
In spite of Eliot’s and Gookin’s pleading with the authorities to avoid fighting, the conflict was inevitable and the infamous King Philip’s War marked the end of many Praying Towns.
Gookin was often threatened for his continued support of those whom the colonists saw as enemies and his exposé of the injustice of magistrates and the violence of mobs. Once, when he narrowly survived drowning in the bay, some expressed their regret that he had not died. Many called him an “Irish dog” and several other epithets that cannot be repeated on this website. “God rot his soul,” some people said. “If I could meet him alone, I would pistol him. I wish my knife and sizers were in his heart. He is the devil’s interpreter.”[6]
But Gookin was not done speaking and writing.
By the time he finished writing his Historical Account of the Doings and Sufferings of the Christian Indians, other accounts of King Philip’s War had been published in England, authored by respected writers such as Increase Mather, Thomas Wheeler, William Hubbard, some of whom Gookin mentions in his book. But while these authors emphasized the battles and victories of the Europeans, Gookin emphasized the faith and faithfulness of the Christian Indians.
Gookin ended his account with the hope that his words may do some good. “There are many other things, that I might have recorded, concerning these poor, despised sheep of Christ,” he wrote. “But I fear that which I have already written will be thought (by some) impertinent and tedious. But when I call to mind, that great and worthy men have taken much pains to record, and others to read, the seeming small and little concerns of the children of God; as well in the historical books of Scripture, as other histories of the primitive times of Christianity, and of the doings and sufferings of the poor saints of God; I do encourage my heart in God, that He will accept, in Christ, this mean labor of mine, touching these poor despised men; yet such as are, through the grace of Christ, the first professors, confessors, if I may not say martyrs, of the Christian religion among the poor Indians in America.”[7]
Legacy
Gookin continued his duties until his death on 19 March 1687. Eliot commented that “he died poor, but full of good works, and greatly beneficent to the Indians, and bewailed by them to this day.”[8]
Eliot commented that Gookin’s account was just “enough to give wise men a taste of what hath passed. Leave the rest unto the day of judgment, when all the contrivances and actings of men shall be opened before the all-seeing eye of our glorious judge.” Regretting his failure to keep a similar account, he prayed, “Lord pardon all my many omissions.”[9]
Gookin’s Historical Account sat in England for over 150 until it was recovered by the American Antiquarian Society and appreciated as the only account of the plight of Native Americans until and through King Phillip’s War.
If Gookin’s contemporaries were not prepared to reflect on his account, we are. And while these stories grieve us as much as they grieved him, we have the advantage of seeing how God has preserved his church despite Christians’ failings and misapplications. As W. Robert Godfrey once said in one of his lectures, unlike worldly movements such as Nazism or Stalinism, which acted in conformity to their manifestos, the errors in Church history, as heinous as they have been, have always stemmed from a misunderstanding of Scriptures and a corruption of true Christianity.
And, as Matthew Tuininga points out in his book, “Many Indians rejected Christianity and still do. But for others, Christianity became the key ingredient that held their communities together and enabled them to preserve their culture. They lamented, and still lament, the injustices and tragedies that devastated their people and the way Christianity was used to justify it. Yet, thet were thankful for the gospel and the hope it provided, not to mention the material goods Europeans brought. Many practiced Christianity in ways that preserved their communities and culture, embracing the core tenets of the faith Puritans proclaimed while rejecting assumptions of English cultural superiority or white supremacy. The resilience of these communities, despite everything that has happened to them, is nothing short of remarkable”[10]
[1] Daniel Gookin, An Historical Account of the Doings and Sufferings of the Christian Indians in New England in the Years 1675, 1676, 1677, Wikisource, https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Doings_and_Sufferings_of_the_Christian_Indians. 523.
[2] Daniel Gookin, Historical collections of the Indians in New England, Boston: Apollo Press, 1792, 28.
[3] Daniel Gookin, Historical collections, 82.
[4] Daniel Gookin, Historical collections, 84.
[5] Matthew J. Tuininga, The Wars of the Lord: The Puritan Conquest of America’s First People, Oxford University Press, 2025, 194.
[6] Frederick William Gookin, Daniel Gookin, 1612-1687: Assistant and Major General of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Chicago, Privately printed, 1912, 153.
[7] Daniel Gookin, An Historical Account, 523.
[8] Frederick W. Gookin, Daniel Gookin, 186.
[9] Quoted in Matthew J. Tuininga, The Wars of the Lord, 371.
[10] Tuininga, The Wars of the Lord, 374.