Page:The Cambridge History of American Literature, v1.djvu/51

Rh compassion, and we shiver today at the vengeance of the whites; but it raised no quahns in the men of the seventeenth century, who were brought up on sterner ideas. In the same year was published the Rev. William Hubbard's Narrative of the Troubles with the Indians of New England. Like the author's History of New England, it abounds in errors, but it was widely read. It appeared as Philip's War was drawing to a close, at a time when the people were especially excited against the savages. It had a worthy companion in Benjamin Church's Entertaining Passages Relating to Philip's War, published in 1716, a powerful book by one who took a leading part in the struggle he describes. Another work that was widely read was Samuel Penhallow's Wars of New England with the Eastern Indians, 1726. The author was chief justice of New Hampshire.

With 1690, when the French and Indian wars began, a new kind of warfare fell on the colonies. Bands of Indians, sometimes accompanied by Frenchmen, came out of Canada, destroyed isolated settlements, and escaped to the north with large trains of captives. The victims suffered much from the strenuous marches of their captors, and from actual cruelty. Most of them were redeemed after years of exile, and they returned with thrilling stories in their mouths. Here was a new field for the historian, and it was well worked.

A distinct place must be reserved for Daniel Gookin, a Virginia Puritan who moved to Massachusetts to escape the persecutions of Governor Berkeley. He was made superintendent of Indians in his new home and showed a humane and intelligent interest in the natives that entitles him to rank with John Eliot. The retaliation of the whites in Philip's War grieved him sorely, but the tide of wrath was so strong that his protests only made him unpopular. He wrote two books on the Indians, Historical Collections of the Indians in New England, written in 1674 (published 1792), and The Doings and Sufferings of the Christian Indians, completed in 1677 (published 1836). Gookin also wrote a History of New England which remained in manuscript and was unhappily destroyed without having been published. The author was a man of great breadth of mind and not deeply touched by the