ELIOT, JOHN
(August 1604, Widford, England-21 May 1690, Roxbury, MA). Education: B.A., Jesus College, Cambridge University, 1622. Career:
Grammar school teacher, Little Baddow, Essex; minister, Boston, MA, 1631- 32; minister, Roxbury, MA, 1632-90; translator and preacher to the Indians in eastern Massachusetts, beginning 1646.
The foremost of New England's early apostles to the Indians, John Eliot served for sixty years as minister at Roxbury, Massachusetts. From there he sometimes looked eastward to Boston and London to take part in the political and doctrinal conflicts then fretting the Christian world. He published, for example, The Christian Commonwealth, a work favoring democratic government Unfortunately he published the book in London in 1659, just before the restoration of the monarchy. Eliot also was involved in the controversies about Anne Hutchinson*, the Baptists, tobacco, and wigs.
But Eliot is best remembered for the times that he looked westward to the Indians of New England and sought to evangelize them. The Puritans had often talked about converting the natives, but until Eliot preached at Nonatum, later Newtown, on October 28, 1846, no one had entered such mission work. Beginning that day, Eliot engaged in a remarkable ministry among the Indians. With the help of native speakers he learned to speak the Massachusetts tongue and created a written language, dictionary, and grammar. He went among the Indians, often by foot, sometimes through storms, and preached to them in their own language. Eager to "civilize" as well as evangelize the Indians, he encouraged them to form "praying towns," adopt English laws, and till the soil. The first of these towns was Natick, founded in 1651. By 1674 there were 14 praying towns, scattered across eastern Massachusetts, with between one and three thousand inhabitants.
Eliot wanted the Indians to be able to imbibe Christian values on their own, and so he translated many religious works into the native tongues. In 1661 he published the New Testament in Algonkin, in 1663 the Old Testament Puritan pride in that achievement is reflected in Cotton Mather's praise: "Behold, ye Americans, the greatest honor that ever ye were partakers of-the Bible printed here at our Cambridge; and it is the only Bible that ever was printed in all America, from the very foundation of the world." Eliot also trained native ministers, and as many as two dozen were preaching by 1675.
Eliot's work was disrupted, though not destroyed, by King Philip's War. Suspicious of the loyalty of the praying Indians, colonists killed some outright and relocated others to detention camps that were so unhealthy that hundreds of the natives died. At the war's end some of the towns had been obliterated, others went into decline because natives now distrusted the whites, and a few struggled on into the eighteenth century. During the war Eliot fought against the mistreatment of the Indians, losing popularity, and according to some accounts, endangering his own life.
In retrospect some historians have condemned Eliot as the agent of rapacious, land-hungry Puritans. While it is true that he was ethnocentric in assuming that his religion and culture were superior to that of the Indians, his attention to the native language and his encouragement of native preachers suggests another feature of his personality, a certain regard for his fellow human beings. Why does a clergyman, comfortably situated in his own parish, undertake endless hours of study as well as endure fickle weather and rough trails to preach the Gospel to the Indians? A Puritan anecdote gives us another glimpse of Eliot.
Eliot was said to be so generous that the parishioner who paid him his salary would tie it in a handkerchief with many knots to discourage him from giving it away before he reached home. As the story goes, Eliot was on his way home one day when he encountered someone needing his help. He struggled unsuccessfully with the knots, then handed over the whole "purse," saying, "I believe the Lord designs it all for you."
The story may be apocryphal, but the characterization rings true. With Eliot, as with many other early Congregationalists, one is left feeling that not the least of their qualities was a fundamental sense of decency.
Bibliography
A: A Late and Further Manifestation of the Progress of the Gospel amongst the Indians in New-England (London, 1655); The Christian Commonwealth (London, 1659); A Further Account of the Progresse of the Gospel (London, 1660); Mamusee Wunneetapanatamwe Up-Biblum God, or TM Indian Bible (Cambridge, MA, 1663); TM Indian Grammar Begun (Cambridge, MA, 1666); The Harmony of the Gospels (Boston, 1678).
B: AAP I, 18-23; DAB 6, 79-80; DARB, 147-48; NCAB 2,419-23; SH 4, 108-09; Cotton Mather, TM Triumphs of Reformed Religion in America: TM Life of the Renowned John Eliot (Boston, 1691); Nehemiah Adams, TM Life of John Eliot (Boston, 1847); Convers Francis, Life of John Eliot (Boston, 1896); David Chamberlain, Eliot of Massachusetts (London, 1928); Ola E. Winslow, John Eliot: Apostle to the Indians (Boston, 1968); E. H. Byington, "John Eliot, the Puritan Missionary to the Indians," Papers of the American Society of Church History, 8 (1897), 109-45.
Grammar school teacher, Little Baddow, Essex; minister, Boston, MA, 1631- 32; minister, Roxbury, MA, 1632-90; translator and preacher to the Indians in eastern Massachusetts, beginning 1646.
The foremost of New England's early apostles to the Indians, John Eliot served for sixty years as minister at Roxbury, Massachusetts. From there he sometimes looked eastward to Boston and London to take part in the political and doctrinal conflicts then fretting the Christian world. He published, for example, The Christian Commonwealth, a work favoring democratic government Unfortunately he published the book in London in 1659, just before the restoration of the monarchy. Eliot also was involved in the controversies about Anne Hutchinson*, the Baptists, tobacco, and wigs.
But Eliot is best remembered for the times that he looked westward to the Indians of New England and sought to evangelize them. The Puritans had often talked about converting the natives, but until Eliot preached at Nonatum, later Newtown, on October 28, 1846, no one had entered such mission work. Beginning that day, Eliot engaged in a remarkable ministry among the Indians. With the help of native speakers he learned to speak the Massachusetts tongue and created a written language, dictionary, and grammar. He went among the Indians, often by foot, sometimes through storms, and preached to them in their own language. Eager to "civilize" as well as evangelize the Indians, he encouraged them to form "praying towns," adopt English laws, and till the soil. The first of these towns was Natick, founded in 1651. By 1674 there were 14 praying towns, scattered across eastern Massachusetts, with between one and three thousand inhabitants.
Eliot wanted the Indians to be able to imbibe Christian values on their own, and so he translated many religious works into the native tongues. In 1661 he published the New Testament in Algonkin, in 1663 the Old Testament Puritan pride in that achievement is reflected in Cotton Mather's praise: "Behold, ye Americans, the greatest honor that ever ye were partakers of-the Bible printed here at our Cambridge; and it is the only Bible that ever was printed in all America, from the very foundation of the world." Eliot also trained native ministers, and as many as two dozen were preaching by 1675.
Eliot's work was disrupted, though not destroyed, by King Philip's War. Suspicious of the loyalty of the praying Indians, colonists killed some outright and relocated others to detention camps that were so unhealthy that hundreds of the natives died. At the war's end some of the towns had been obliterated, others went into decline because natives now distrusted the whites, and a few struggled on into the eighteenth century. During the war Eliot fought against the mistreatment of the Indians, losing popularity, and according to some accounts, endangering his own life.
In retrospect some historians have condemned Eliot as the agent of rapacious, land-hungry Puritans. While it is true that he was ethnocentric in assuming that his religion and culture were superior to that of the Indians, his attention to the native language and his encouragement of native preachers suggests another feature of his personality, a certain regard for his fellow human beings. Why does a clergyman, comfortably situated in his own parish, undertake endless hours of study as well as endure fickle weather and rough trails to preach the Gospel to the Indians? A Puritan anecdote gives us another glimpse of Eliot.
Eliot was said to be so generous that the parishioner who paid him his salary would tie it in a handkerchief with many knots to discourage him from giving it away before he reached home. As the story goes, Eliot was on his way home one day when he encountered someone needing his help. He struggled unsuccessfully with the knots, then handed over the whole "purse," saying, "I believe the Lord designs it all for you."
The story may be apocryphal, but the characterization rings true. With Eliot, as with many other early Congregationalists, one is left feeling that not the least of their qualities was a fundamental sense of decency.
Bibliography
A: A Late and Further Manifestation of the Progress of the Gospel amongst the Indians in New-England (London, 1655); The Christian Commonwealth (London, 1659); A Further Account of the Progresse of the Gospel (London, 1660); Mamusee Wunneetapanatamwe Up-Biblum God, or TM Indian Bible (Cambridge, MA, 1663); TM Indian Grammar Begun (Cambridge, MA, 1666); The Harmony of the Gospels (Boston, 1678).
B: AAP I, 18-23; DAB 6, 79-80; DARB, 147-48; NCAB 2,419-23; SH 4, 108-09; Cotton Mather, TM Triumphs of Reformed Religion in America: TM Life of the Renowned John Eliot (Boston, 1691); Nehemiah Adams, TM Life of John Eliot (Boston, 1847); Convers Francis, Life of John Eliot (Boston, 1896); David Chamberlain, Eliot of Massachusetts (London, 1928); Ola E. Winslow, John Eliot: Apostle to the Indians (Boston, 1968); E. H. Byington, "John Eliot, the Puritan Missionary to the Indians," Papers of the American Society of Church History, 8 (1897), 109-45.