Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/479

Rh paupers, to prove more of a nuisance in their simulated state of civilization than in their wild condition. Candor also requires the acknowledgment that the considerable cost and charges of the work among the Massachusetts Indians were not borne by the colony treasury, nor relieved to any extent by contributions of the colonists themselves, who might have reasonably excused themselves by their own necessities. The experiment was in the main supported by the charitable and pious sympathy and gifts of the contributors to the funds of the Society in England.

But a copy of the manuscript of Gookin's hopeful narrative could not have been long in England before he was compelled, under date, at his residence in Cambridge, of December, 1677, to employ his pen in finishing a most sad narrative. This second narrative, after an obscured existence in England, was found there long after in private hands, and was put into print merely as an antiquarian document, by the American Antiquarian Society, only in 1836. Even at this late day, and while the pangs which it cost the writer, and of which as borne by others it was the faithful record, have long been stilled in peace, it cannot be read without a profound sympathy of sorrow. It is entitled, “An Historical Account of the Doings and Sufferings of the Christian Indians in New England, in the years 1675, 1676, and 1677, impartially drawn, by one well acquainted with that Affair,” for the Corporation in England. The gentle, earnest truthfulness, the sweet forbearance, the passionless tone, and the full, minute, and well-authenticated matter of this record, draw to the writer our warmest respect and confidence. The substance of it is a matter-of-fact, detailed rehearsal of the jealousies, apprehensions, and severe measures on the part of the people and Government of Massachusetts, in their dealing with the “Praying Indians,” during the horrors and massacres of that exterminating war which is accredited, somewhat doubtfully, in its plan and conduct to the astute and able Metacomet, or