from Jesus College, Cambridge


John Eliot 


John Eliot (1604-90), known as 'the apostle to the 
Indians' (1), was born in August 1604 at Widford in 
Hertfordshire, the son of Bennett Eliot, a yeoman of 
that county. He grew up at Nazeing, in Essex, and, in 
March 1618, he went up to Jesus College Cambridge, as a
 pensioner (that is, an ordinary student). He took his 
B.A. degree in 1622. He took orders in the Church of 
England in 1625, but his strong Nonconformist opinions 
led him to depart for New England in 1631. 

Eliot arrived in Boston on 4 November 1631, followed 
shortly afterwards by other members of his family and 
other neighbours from Essex, including Hanna Mumford, 
whom he married in October 1632. They had one daughter 
and five sons, only one of whom was to survive him. In 
November, he became the pastor of a church at Roxbury, 
near Boston, which he was to serve for the rest of his 
life. He founded a grammar school at Roxbury and helped 
prepare a metrical translation of the psalms, known as 
The Bay Psalm Book (2), for the use of his congregation.

It was as pastor at Roxbury that Eliot began to display 
the devotion to the spiritual and material welfare of 
the native ('Indian') population that distinguished him 
throughout his life. He set himself to learn Algonquin, 
the local native language, and after two years of study 
began to preach to the native inhabitants. Eliot was not 
the first English settler to preach to the natives in 
their own language. Roger Williams, a fellow linguist 
and author of a Key to the Indian Language (3), had 
already done so at Plymouth and Providence. But Eliot 
was the first to devote his life to this task. His first 
pastoral visit to the natives was in October 1646, at a 
place called Nonantum (now Newton), in Massachusetts. 

In 1649, a London-based Corporation for the Promoting 
and Propagating of the Gospel among the Indians of New 
England was set up by Parliament. In 1651, with 
financial help from the Corporation, Eliot established a 
native settlement at Natick, also in Massachusetts, 
which provided the natives with occupations, houses and 
clothes. Subsequently, thirteen more settlements were 
established. The first 'Indian' church was founded, at 
Natick, in 1660. The Corporation paid salaries to 
teachers and preachers, founded schools, and provided 
for the expense of printing translations.

Meanwhile, Eliot was working on his major achievement, 
the translation of the Bible into the Algonquin 
language. His first translations were of some short 
passages of Scripture, including the Ten Commandments, 
the Lord's Prayer and some of the psalms. Early in 1658, 
he wrote 'The whole book of God is translated into their 
own language; it wanteth but revising, transcribing, and 
printing. Oh, that the Lord would so move, that by some 
means or other it may be printed' (4). His prayer was 
answered by the Corporation for the Propagating of the 
Gospel, which financed the publication of his 
translations of the Book of Genesis and St Matthew's 
Gospel, in August 1658, and of some of the psalms in 
December 1658. No copies of these early editions have 
survived. 

In September 1661, his version of the New Testament was 
published and a copy was sent to the recently restored 
Charles II. The complete Bible appeared in 1663, the 
first edition of the Bible to be published on the 
American continent and, again, a copy was sent to the 
king. Other copies were sent to Jesus College, 
Cambridge, and to Sion College, London. Most of these 
Algonquin Bibles were destroyed, and the new settlements 
devastated, during the 'Indian wars' of the 1670s, and 
Eliot petitioned the Corporation to publish a new 
edition, a request that they eventually granted. Eliot 
undertook a thorough revision of his translation for the 
second edition, the revised version of the New Testament 
being published in 1681 and the Old Testament in 1685. 
Eliot died on 20 May 1690. Twenty years later, in 1710, 
there was some talk of a third edition of the Bible, but 
by that time most of the 'praying Indians', as they were 
called, had learned to read English, and nothing came of 
the idea. 

Eliot also wrote a number of other books, including The 
Christian Commonwealth, his most substantial work in 
English, which was published in 1659, and The Communion 
of Churches, published in 1665. His earliest volume in 
the Algonquin language was A Catechism in the Indian 
language, published in 1658, and he translated Richard 
Baxter's Call to the Unconverted and Practice of Piety 
into Algonquin, both translations being published in 
1665. He also wrote The Indian Grammar Begun, a grammar 
of the Algonquin language, which was published in 1666, 
followed by The Indian Primer in 1669, and The Logic 
Primer in 1672. In 1678, he wrote The Harmony of the 
Gospels, a life of Christ compiled from the four 
gospels. 


Although his publications were essentially adjuncts to 
his missionary work, they are regarded as being of 
considerable linguistic interest, even though the 
Algonquin language, like the people who spoke it, has 
long since become extinct. One linguist, Peter du 
Ponceau, wrote, in 1832, that Eliot 'did not foresee, 
when he wrote his Indian grammar, that it would be 
sought after and studied by the learned of all nations, 
as a powerful help towards the improvement of a science 
not then in existence; I mean the Comparative Science of 
Languages' (5).

(1) See O.E.Winslow: John Eliot: Apostle to the Indians. Boston, 1968.
(2) The Bay Psalm Book, a Facsimile Reprint of the First Edition of 1640.
Chicago, 1956. 
(3) Key to the Indian Language. Publications of the Narragansett Club. 1st
Series. 1866.
(4) Letter to Thomas Thorowgood. Cited in O.E.Winslow: John Eliot: Apostle
to the Indians, p.141.
(5) The Indian Grammar Begun. Massachusetts Historical Society Collections.
2nd Series. Cited in O.E Winslow: John Eliot: Apostle to the Indians, p.90.