Begin at the Beginning: Daniel Gookin, Praying Indians, and America's Bloodiest War

Join independent historian Dwight Mackerron and those who love 17th-century history to talk about King Philip's War. It was per capita the bloodiest war in American history. The war created a climate of terror for Colonists and Native Americans and cost tens of thousands of lives, mainly Native American. How New England descended into this violence is the subject of our conversation. Daniel Gookin's The Doings and Sufferings of the Praying Indians, published after the war, defends Native Americans and is a primary source for some of the most violent years in early American history. Participants are invited to share their own knowledge of the war. Gookin was Massachusetts Bay Colony's commissioner for Indians, and his sympathy towards Christianized Indians gained him the opprobrium of many of his fellows as well as a death threat.

Co-hosted with the Partnership of Historic Bostons, www.historicbostons.org