Page:Archæologia Americana—volume 2, 1836.djvu/462

 42(5 PRELIMINARY NOTICE. mained there until his removal to New England, as is supposed, he could not well have borne arms in Kent. The Non-coufbrmists were banished from Virginia in 1643; and in the following year, an " Indian Massacre " occurred in the same col- ony. " Upon these troubles," says Governor Winthrop, writing at that period, " divers godly disposed persons came from thence to New England." A ship containing a party of these exiles arrived at Bos- ton, May 20th, 1644 ; and, as Gookin was admitted a freeman of the Colony on the 29th of the same month, he is supposed to have arrived in that ship. # He resided at first in Boston, and subsequently in Cambridge, where he was placed in command of the military force of the town. It seems probable from this circumstance that he brought with him some reputation for skill in the art of war, especially since he is described by a contemporary historian as " a very forward man to advance martial discipline." At a subsequent date, he was elected to the office of Major-General, or Commander-in-chief of the Colony; the governor at that period exercising no military command. Soon after his settlement in Cambridge, Gookin was elected by the freemen of that town to represent them in the General Court, and, in 1651, he was chosen Speaker of the House of Deputies. The suc- ceeding year, he became an assistant, or one of the general magistrates of the Colony. But the office to which he devoted the energies of the residue of a long life, was that of Superintendent of the Indians within the jurisdiction of Massachusetts. With the exception of two or three years passed in England, during the ascendency of Oliver Cromwell, he sustained this relation towards the Indians of the colony from the date of his first appointment in 1656, to his death, a period of more than thirty years. In conjunction with the excellent Eliot, he watched over their interests with the most unwearied care and anxiety, and sought every means to spread among them the blessings of civilization and Christianity. The Commissioners of the United Colonies of New England, who were the agents of an English Corporation for Propagating the Gospel among the Indians, recommended, in one of their despatches to the gov- ernment of the corporation, that a pecuniary allowance should be made to Gookin for his useful labors. " We have spoken," they write, " with Mr. Eliot and others, concerning Captain Gookin's employment among the Indians, in governing of them in several plantations, ordering their town affairs (which they are not able to do themselves), taking account of their labor and expense of their time, and how their children profit
 * 2 Winthrop's Hist. JV*. England, p. 165. Note by Mr. Savage.