John Eliot (missionary)

John Eliot
Puritan missionary to Native Americans
Born	1604 Widford, Hertfordshire, England
Died	May 21, 1690
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John Eliot (c. 1604 – 21 May 1690) was a Puritan missionary to the American Indians. His efforts earned him the designation “the apostle to the indians.”

English education and Massachusetts ministry

Cuckoos Farm, Little Baddow, Eliot's home around 1629

John Eliot was born in Widford, Hertfordshire, England and lived at Nazeing as a boy. He attended Jesus College, Cambridge. After college, he became assistant to Thomas Hooker at a private school at Little Baddow, Essex. After Hooker was forced to flee to Holland, Eliot emigrated to Boston, Massachusetts, arriving on November 3, 1631, on the ship Lyon. There, he became minister and "teaching elder" at the First Church in Roxbury. In that town he founded the Roxbury Latin School in 1645. From 1649 to 1674, he was assisted in the Roxbury ministry by Samuel Danforth.

Highlights of his career

John Eliot and fellow ministers Thomas Weld (also of Roxbury) and Richard Mather of Dorchester, are credited with being the editors of the Bay Psalm Book, which was the first book published in the British North American colonies. He participated in the examination, excommunication and exile of Anne Hutchinson, whose opinions he deplored. He was instrumental in the conversion of Massachusett Indians. To help achieve this, Eliot translated the Bible into the Native language and published it in 1663. In 1666, his grammar of Massachusett, called "The Indian Grammar Begun", was published as well. As a cross-cultural missionary Eliot was best known for putting Native Americans in planned towns in hopes of encouraging them to recreate a Christian society. At one point in time, there were 14 of these towns of so-called "Praying Indians", the best documented being at Natick, Massachusetts. These towns suffered disruption during King Philip's War (1675) and for the most part lost their special status as Indian self-governing communities in the course of the 18th and 19th centuries. The praying Indian towns included: Littleton (Nashoba), Lowell (Wamesit, initially incorporated as part of Chelmsford), Grafton (Hassanamessit), Marlborough (Okommakamesit), a portion of Hopkinton that is now in the Town of Ashland (Makunkokoag), Canton (Punkapoag), Mendon-Uxbridge (Wacentug), and Natick. Eliot was a witness to the signing of the deed for Mendon with Nipmuck Indians for "Squinshepauk Plantation" in 1662.

Eliot was also the author of The Christian Commonwealth: or, The Civil Policy Of The Rising Kingdom of Jesus Christ, considered the first book on politics written by an American and also the first book to be banned by an American government. Written in the late 1640s, and published in England in 1659, it proposed a new model of civil government based on the system Eliot instituted among the converted Indians, which was based in turn on Exodus 18, the government instituted among the Israelites by Moses in the wilderness. Eliot asserted that "Christ is the only right Heir of the Crown of England," and called for the institution of an elected theocracy in England and throughout the world. The accession to the throne of Charles II of England made the book an embarrassment to the Massachusetts colony, and in 1661 the General Court banned the book and ordered all copies destroyed. Eliot was forced to issue a public retraction and apology.

Family

John Eliot's wife was the former Hanna Mumford. They had six children, five girls and one boy, but only one of the children lived, the boy. Their son, John Eliot, Jr., was the first pastor of the First Church of Christ in Newton, while his son, Joseph Eliot, was a pastor in Guilford, Connecticut, and was himself father of Jared Eliot, a noted agricultural writer and pastor.

Eliot School

In 1689 John Eliot donated 75 acres (300,000 m²) of land in Jamaica Plain to support the Eliot School, founded in 1676. Under the donation, the school was required to accept both Negros and Indians without prejudice, a great exception for the time. The school survives near its original location to this day as The Eliot School of Fine and Applied Arts.

Death

He died in 1690, aged 85, his last words being "welcome joy!" A monument to John Eliot is on the grounds of the Bacon Free Library in Natick.

Eliot is honored with a feast day on the liturgical calendar of the Episcopal Church (USA) on May 21.

Works

• The Christian Commonwealth: or, The Civil Policy Of The Rising Kingdom of Jesus Christ
• Brief Narrative of the Progress of the Gospel amongst the Indians in New England, in the Year 1670.

The Harmony of the Gospels in the holy History of the Humiliation and Sufferings of Jesus Christ, from his Incarnation to his Death and Burial.

See also

• John Eliot Square District
• Roxbury, Boston
• Roxbury Latin School
• Praying Indian

Bibliography

• Francis, John Eliot, the Apostle to the Indians, in "Library of American Biography," volume v (Boston, 1836)
• Winsor, Memorial History of Boston, volume i (Boston, 1880–81)
• Walker, Ten New England Leaders (New York, 1901)
• The Eliot Tracts: with letters from John Eliot to Thomas Thorowgood and Richard Baxter (London, 2003)

External links

• Color oil portrait of Rev. John Eliot, by unidentified artist, 1659, from the Natick Historical Society site
• Cambridge University - John Eliot Biography
• Cambridge University - John Eliot Exhibition
•  Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Eliot, John". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. 
•  Ellsworth Eliot (1900). "Eliot, John". Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography.