Gookin's Letter Regarding James Printer's Nephew
Honred sr 224a
I have according to the Councell’s [Council’s] order clothed
fitted & furnished with apparel 2 indian boys
for yor messenger; And have sent them down
by my sonne Samuel Gookin who hath dispersed
the mony for their clothing [which] coming to –
fifty three shillings four pence [which] please to
order the treasurer to satisfy him: I have
no more to ad at present. But my due report
presented remaining-
My sonne will present a pticular acct of the disbursement-
please to order some pson
to receive them [torn] [and] keep
them safe [lest?] [torn: they?] [may]
Slipp away being possibly afraid
to go for England – But I pray
[God] [they] not bee put in prison for
now [they] are cleane [and] free from
vermin.
Transcribed by Maggie King
From Massachusetts Archives, volume 30, manuscript # 224a, October 18, 1676
Contextual information:
This letter deals with the preparations involving the transport of Annaweekin’s son and another boy to England by Daniel Gookin and his son, Samuel. After King Philip’s War, Native children whose parents were killed or taken captive were frequently bound to labor as indentured servants in English homes. The letter above references two “indian boys.” At least one of the boys was a son of Annaweekin, brother of James Printer (Nipmuc). Both of Annaweekin’s sons are mentioned in a document located in Neil Salisbury’s edited version of the Mary Rowlandson captivity narrative. A Memorandum of Indian Children Put Forth into Service to the English dated August 10, 1676, names two sons of “Annaweeken.” Only one of the boys is named and aged specifically, “Joseph…aged about 11 yeares,” who was “taken from Capt [Thomas] Prentice & sent up Mr Stoughton.” The other boy (age unknown) was sent to “old Goodman Myles of Dedham.”[1] Daniel Gookin was interested in sending the boys to England as proof that the English were taking good care of Native children to justify colonial enterprise through warfare. It is mentioned that the boys were to be sent with Stoughton to England.[2] Parts of the document are also referenced in Jenny Hale Pulsipher’s book, Subjects unto the Same King: Indians, English, and the Contest for Authority in Colonial New England.[3]
[1] “A Memorandum of Indian Children Put Forth into Service to the English, August 10, 1676,” in The Sovereignty and Goodness of God by Mary Rowlandson with Related Documents, ed. Neal Salisbury (Boston: Beford/St. Martin’s, 1997), 144.
[2] “Indian Children,” 144.
[3] Jenny Hale Pulsipher, Subjects unto the Same King: Indians, English, and the Contest for Authority in Colonial New England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), 97, 198-9, 317.
Indentured Servitude
Material from Lisa's presentation:
JP's Post-War Presence
Boston as a place, both before and after KP’s war, that was still, in part, Native space: Printer was not alone in Cambridge
- The marketplace: place of exchange
- Those who were bound out, including his own nephews
- Travelers, like Printer, between Indian towns such as Natick and Hassanamisco, “deep in Nipmuc territory,” “where English rarely ventured,” continuing subsistence lifestyle, w/ women in charge of fields (Mandell 47, 37) and Boston
- Location provided economic and social dependence (47)
- Day labor, demanded good financial terms (Mandell 37)
- Indian women and children clamming in Back Bay (40)
- Indians incarcerated on Deer Island, not permitted at first to return to their towns, but had to remain in Boston, under the watch of white guardians; others who attempted to return faced great hostility (Mandell 25)
- Nipmucs from Hassanamiset spent the summer in Cambridge, fishing and working for farmers (26)
- Mohawk attacks in the aftermath of KP’s war came all the way to Indian encampments in Cambridge (Mandell 27)
- “Gookin noted in 1677 that about six native families lived scattered around Watertown and Cambridge ‘under English inspection.’”
- Not easy, though – often faced violence and attempts to implement restrictive laws from colonists
- Part of a “growing web of Indian connections invisible to the colonists’ gaze”
