On the Day August 29 1686

Remembering the Apostle of the Indians

Khen Lim




John Eliot ministering to the Algonquian Indians (Image source: bostonpilgrim.org)

On this day in 1686, an eighty-two-year-old John Eliot wrote of his usual concerns to his English sponsor, Robert Boyle about fundraising and their continued quest to educate the Algonquian Indians, saying, “I have nothing new to write but lamentations and I am loathe to grieve your loving and noble foul. Our Indian work yet lives, praise be God; the Bible is come forth, many hundreds bound up, and dispersed to the Indians, whose thankfulness I intimate and testify to your honour. 

“‘The Practice of Piety’ is also finished and begins to be bound up. And my humble request to your honour is that we may again reimpose the primer and catechism; for though the last impression be not quite spent, yet quickly they will; and I am old, ready to be gone, and desire to leave as many books as I can. I know not what to add to this distressing day of our overthrow; for I commit your honour to the Lord and rest.”

By this time, Eliot had already served the native Indians of Massachusetts as a first-generation minister and chief missionary for southern New England. It was Eliot who not only preached to them but laboured in his petition to establish the ‘Indian Library’ filled with devotional titles translated into their indigenous dialect including the most spectacular, the ‘Indian Bible,’ which was his version of the Hebrew and Christian testaments.

Along the way, Eliot had successfully transliterated the dialect into a readable alphabetical code as well thus offering the natives a powerful gift of literacy through the Word of God. After learning to speak their dialect, he got the native Indians to agree to learn our phonetic alphabets so that he could use them to phonetically translate the Bible into their native tongue. By doing so, the natives could have their Bibles and read them even if they did not know how to use the same alphabets to speak English.

But now he was old and ‘ready to be gone.’ The Bibles given to the native Indians were coming to bits as they loved it so much they had worn out their copies. Eliot cared deeply enough for them that at Roxbury, he had learned Algonquian so that by 1647, he could begin preaching in their native tongue and sixteen years later, he started translation and soon published the new Algonquian Bible, becoming the first Bible to ever be printed in America. In fact this very part of American history overlapped with that of Pocahontas, the Algonquian Princess of the Powhatan Indians in coastal Virginia.

Feeling the needs of the native Indians, Eliot sought to edit and reprint but the ‘Society for the Propagation of the Gospel,’ incorporated by the parliament of Massachusetts declined consent. Instead the order was to reprint the New Testament and the Book of Psalms. Anything beyond that was too costly and furthermore, the society felt strongly that the natives should learn English. Just as his pleas fell on deaf ears, the frugal Puritan received an unexpected gift from an unknown English supporter, which gave him the impetus to disobey the society and order the printer to begin work.

Image source: en.wikipedia.org

Surprisingly then, his conscience worked against him, making him doubt his right to defy an organisation that had lent their support to him all this while. So he sought the counsel of the Boston commissioners who then astonished him, intimating that they would back him financially all the way in deference to the society. The commissioners then obtained consensus from England to proceed with the funding of the work to which a stunned Eliot was very grateful. To that, he laboured passionately for the next nine years on a new edition in light of his other tasks at hand, which included the printing of his ‘Practice of Piety’ and also the reworking of the catechism and primer in the Algonquian dialect. He knew he was running against time for his health was beginning to fail him.

Eliot had led a very fulsome life since his arrival in the colony of Massachusetts in 1631. He had married Hanna Mumford and raised five sons – John Jr, Joseph, Samuel, Aaron and one other – and a daughter, Hannah. Other than pastoring and teaching, he wrote many books and engaged himself in different public events including the notable Antinomian Controversy trial of Anne Hutchinson in 1637. If it weren’t for Eliot, much of the talk about evangelising the native Indians would have amounted to nothing and for his outstanding efforts, he was given the affection title of ‘Apostle of the Indians.’

John Eliot, 1622-1690 (Image source: johneliot.net)

However, despite having translated the Bible, a large degree of the Algonquian natives remained unconverted. While the few converts went on to form Christian villages, the rest didn’t because he confused Christianity with English cultural norms. His hesitation in baptising the Indians was so they could learn first to live like typical Englishmen. Otherwise, “they were not so capable to be trusted with that treasure of Christ.” These cultural norms were forced upon the natives including haircuts for men and English clothes for all before they were ushered into villages that were modelled after English towns.

Of the few formed Christian villages, the first was in Natick in 1651 where, under Eliot’s orders, residences and a meetinghouse were built, the latter of which doubled up as a church, warehouse and a school. Eliot’s idea was to place the native converts away from white towns so that they could maintain their own language and preserve their culture and then live by their own laws. Three years later, in 1654, a second town was founded in Ponkapog (Stoughton today) and then Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket. By 1674, an informal census put the population of ‘praying Indians’ at 4,000 in fourteen such towns.

Eliot did prepare some of the natives to be missionaries to their own Algonquian population. One of them was Rev Daniel Takawambpait who became the first of all natives. Ordained at Natick, Massachusetts by Eliot in 1681, he served the Lord until his death in 1716. Two other natives had also preached until they were replaced by Rev Oliver Peabody and later Stephen Badger to occupy the Indian church pulpit. By then, all but four Indian Christian villages were wiped out because of the King Philip’s War (1675-76) between the Wampanoags and the English.

Natick, Massachusetts (Image source: olsonsumner.wordpress.com)

Eliot’s Indian Christian village idea was essential in giving the natives the rudiments of the Christian faith and with that also, some training to equip them for ministry. Yet it also served to invariably alienate the ‘praying Indians’ not only from their own people whose animistic culture they were compelled reject but also their English sponsors who did not accept them into their own Puritan churches. 

In that sense, the Christian Indians found themselves wedged in between and hated by both sides. In the War, their own people considered them traitors and slaughtered them accordingly while the whites who rejected them as brothers in Christ despite their loyalty, rounded them up before putting them in concentration camps.

The War pretty much destroyed the trust of the natives along with almost all the copies of Eliot’s Algonquian Bible. Still, Eliot, though broken-hearted at the turn of events, remained undeterred as he continued to minister to the fragmented bits of Indians until he drew his last breath on May 21 1690.