John Eliot

John Eliot, called Apostle to the Indians (1604-1690), American clergyman, born in Widford, Hertfordshire, England, and educated at the University of Cambridge. Influenced by the American Congregationalist clergyman Thomas Hooker, Eliot became a nonconformist, and in 1631 went to the New World, where for a time he assisted at the First Church in Boston. In 1632 he became “teacher” of the church in Roxbury, Massachusetts. After learning the Native American dialect, he first preached without an interpreter before the Native Americans at Nonantum (now Newton, Massachusetts) in 1646. Thereafter he devoted most of his time to instructing the Native Americans. He gathered them into 16 different settlements, of which Natick, Massachusetts, was the first to be established (1651). The communities were supported by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel Among the Indians, created in 1649 by Parliament, and flourished until they were broken up in 1675 by King Philip's War. Eliot's works include Primer of Catechism, in the Massachusetts Indian Language (1654), the first book printed in the Native American language; Christian Commonwealth, or the Civil Polity of the Rising Kingdom of Jesus Christ (1659); a Native American translation of the Bible (1661-1663; and an Indian Primer (1669).