ABSTRACT
Richard Scott’s violent rage against Daniel Gookin, erupting at the height of King Philip’s War, stemmed from his resentment of the captain’s dogged insistence that the Christianized, or “praying”, Indians be accepted as spies, guides, and soldiers, rather than eyed warily as potential turncoats richly deserving of internment, or even annihilation. Gookin, like Saltonstall, was a political enemy of First Church, and an advocate of the “halfway” covenant. But Gookin could never agree with Saltonstall’s claims about the danger of intercultural contact; nor could he acquiesce in Saltonstall's efforts to manipulate popular opinion by presenting the “halfway” covenant as an engine of exclusion. To the people of Boston, Gookin seemed to have vastly underestimated the Indians’ fundamental dedication to their own culture and people. At the conclusion of King Philip’s War, Gookin produced a war narrative, An historical account of the doings and sufferings of the Christian Indians in New England, that was different from all others produced in Massachusetts.
