Page:Archæologia Americana—volume 2, 1836.djvu/498

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Gookin's History of

of those Indians unto all pious and impartial men, that shall peruse this script ; and so far as in me lies, to vindicate the hand of God and religion, that these Christians profess and practise ; and to declare I cannot join with the multitude, that would cast them all into the same lump with the profane and brutish heathen, who are as great enemies to our Christian Indians as they are to the English. For though some of them were captivated by the enemy, and escaped with their lives, (so, many of the English that were taken captive also did,) yet this I observed all along in this war, that the wicked Indians (our enemies) did very industriously endeavour to bring the Christian Indians into disaffection with the English, and to this end raised several false reports concerning them, as if they held a correspondency with them, and on the other side sent their secret messages to the Christian Indians that the English designed, in the conclusion, to destroy them all, or send them out of the country for bond slaves; and indeed, if the conscientious and pious rulers of the country had not acted contrary to the minds of sundry men, this last might have proved too true.

1675, Sept. 7th. The Council gave orders to Lieutenant Thomas Henchman, of Chelmsford, to send out an Indian messenger or two, with a safe conduct, to Wannalanset, Sachem of Naamhok, who with some few others (related to him) had withdrawn into the woods for fear, and quartered about Penagoog ; this Sachem being a wise man, and true to the English, and a great lover of our nation, presuming the