The American Cyclopædia (1879)/Gookin, Daniel

GOOKIN, Daniel, an American author and soldier, born in Kent, England, about 1612, died in Cambridge, Mass., March 19, 1687. He came with his father to Virginia in 1621, held with 35 men his plantation, now Newport News, against the savages during the Indian massacres of March, 1622, and removed in 1644 to Massachusetts, in consequence of his sympathy with the doctrines of the Puritans. He settled in Cambridge, and in 1656 became superintendent of all the Indians who had submitted to the government of Massachusetts, an office which he held till his death. He protected the fugitive regicides in 1661, was appointed one of the two licensers of the Cambridge printing press in the following year, became unpopular during King Philip's war by the protection which he extended to the Indians, and in 1681 was made major general of the colony. He died so poor that John Eliot solicited from Robert Boyle a gift of £10 for his widow. His “Historical Collections of the Indians of Massachusetts” bears the date of 1674, and was first published in 1792. He is said to have written a history of New England, which is lost.