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Updated: June 13, 2025
The Natick Indians, "those poor despised sheep of Christ," as Gookin affectionately calls them, were hurried off to Deer Island, in Boston harbor, where they suffered excessively from a severe winter. A part of the praying Indians of Plymouth colony were confined, in like manner, on the islands in Plymouth harbor.
He cursed in his secret soul the insinuating elegance of Feathertop's manners as this brilliant personage bowed, smiled, put his hand on his heart, inhaled a long whiff from his pipe, and enriched the atmosphere with the smoky vapor of a fragrant and visible sigh. Gladly would poor Master Gookin have thrust his dangerous guest into the street, but there was a restraint and terror within him.
In the mean time, the absence of all the able- bodied men and hunters reduced their families to such distress that serious illness broke out among them, and Major Gookin caused them to be brought to the neighbourhood of Cambridge, where there was good fishing, and where he could attend to them, and provide them with food, clothing, and medicine.
The token was neither more nor less than a single word, which Mother Rigby whispered to the scarecrow, and which the scarecrow was to whisper to the merchant. "Gouty as the old fellow is, he'll run thy errands for thee, when once thou hast given him that word in his ear," said the old witch. "Mother Rigby knows the worshipful Justice Gookin, and the worshipful Justice knows Mother Rigby!"
"It is, indeed," said his companion; "and it will go near to dazzle pretty Polly Gookin, whom I see peeping at it out of the chamber window." The door being now opened, Feathertop turned to the crowd, made a stately bend of his body like a great man acknowledging the reverence of the meaner sort, and vanished into the house.
A second reference, one in January, 1620 lists "Newports Newes." The name seems established before Gookin and his friends, the Newces, entered the scene; hence it is improbable that Newce or Newcetown, Ireland, is responsible for the name. The name "Newportes Poynte" is shown on Robert Tindall's map of 1608 but it refers to a point on the York River rather than to the Newport News site.
Here the witch thrust her wrinkled face close to the puppet's, chuckling irrepressibly, and fidgeting all through her system with delight at the idea which she meant to communicate. "The worshipful Master Gookin," whispered she, "hath a comely maiden to his daughter. And hark ye, my pet. Thou hast a fair outside and a pretty wit enough of thine own. Yea, a pretty wit enough!
Daniel Gookin, superintendent of the "praying Indians," a gentleman of the highest character, was told that it would not be safe to show himself in the streets of Boston. Mrs. Mary Pray, of Providence, wrote a letter recommending the total extermination of the red men. The measures adopted by the Commissioners certainly went far toward carrying out Mrs. Pray's suggestion.
Gookin, who was superintendent of the Indians subject to the Massachusetts Colony, writing in 1674, says, "The best of their houses are covered very neatly, tight and warm, with barks of trees, slipped from their bodies at those seasons when the sap is up, and made into great flakes, with pressure of weighty timber, when they are green.... The meaner sort are covered with mats which they make of a kind of bulrush, and are also indifferently tight and warm, but not so good as the former.... Some I have seen, sixty or a hundred feet long and thirty feet broad.... I have often lodged in their wigwams, and found them as warm as the best English houses."
No other mention of him is made by name, in the affairs of ship or shore, though it is known inferentially that he survived the general illness which attacked and carried off half of the ship's company. Gookin, on a voyage to Virginia where he arrived April 10, 1623, but died in that colony soon after his arrival.
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