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hundreds, of fifties, and of tens.1 ‘Moreover the General Court appointed and empowered one of the English magistrates, to join with the chief of their rulers,2 and keep a higher court among them; extending the power of this court to the latitude of a county court among the English; from the jurisdiction whereof nothing for good order and government, civil or criminal, is expected [excepted?] but appeals, life, limb, banishment, and cases of divorce.
The first English magistrate, chosen to be ruler over the praying Indians in the colony of Massachusetts, was first Mr. D. G.3 the auther of these Collections; and this was in A. D. 1656.
But not long after his occasions called him for England for two or three years, one Major Humphrey Atherton was appointed to conduct this affair, which he did about three years. But then the Lord taking him to himself by death, and the author being returned back, in the year 1660, a year or more before Major Atherton's death, was again called and reinstated in that employ, A. D. 1661, and hath continued in that work hitherto.’4 In this position Gookin continued until the Charter government was abrogated in 1686: and most faithfully did he perform his duty.
He tells us that besides causing the orders of the General Court to be observed, sundry other things were to be ‘done by him in order to their good; as the making of orders, and giving instructions and directions, backed with penalties, for promoting and practising morality, civility, industry, and diligence in their particular callings:’ he was also ‘to make and execute good orders for keeping holy the sabbath day; and that the people do attend the public worship of God; and that schools for the education of youth be settled and continued among them.’5 His own record of a court held at Wabquissit, in 1674, illustrates the manner of proceeding: After Mr. Eliot had preached, ‘then I began a court among the Indians.
And first I approved their teacher Sampson, and their Constable Black James; giving ’
1 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., XXIV. 171.
2 Gookin bears honorable testimony to the character of one of these rulers. In describing Natick he says: ‘In this town they have residing some of their principal rulers, the chief whereof is named Waban, who is now above seventy years of age. He is a person of great prudence and piety; I do not know any Indian that excels him.’-Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., i. 183, 184. This Waban was the same who made arrangements for the first missionary visit of Eliot to Nonanturn, as heretofore related. His sign manual, or mark, is preserved in the Cambridge Records, affixed to an agreement ‘to keep about six-score head of dry cattle on the south side of Charles River,’ in 1647. He was living in 1681, then ‘aged about eighty) years.’
4 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., i. 177.
5 Ibid., i. 178.
Boston. Houghton and Mifflin. 1877.
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