John Eliot was born in 1604, Hertfordshire, England, and baptized into the Church of England. That same year, King James I refused requests for Puritan reforms in the church. As a result, young Eliot’s formative years were shaped by social unrest and political instability. Many Puritans began relocating in search of friendlier horizons, including Eliot’s parents, who moved the family to Essex while he was a toddler.
Here Eliot lived with his family until entering Jesus College, Cambridge University, in 1618. As a student, he had the opportunity to study under Roger Andrews, one of the translators of the 1611 King James Bible. After graduating, Eliot met Hanna Mumford in England, and the two became engaged sometime around 1630.
Meanwhile, the Puritans were avoiding an all-out schism from the Church of England. Separation was seen as a last resort, but tensions continued to arise over the following decade. Soon, Puritan families chose to self-exile, escaping growing persecution and settling in Massachusetts. As they established a community, many settlers hoped to one day share the Gospel with local Indian tribes, although few sought out opportunities to do so.
In 1631, Eliot made the journey over to the colony as well, gaining passage as a ship’s Chaplain. Upon arrival, he became a clergyman in the nearby Puritan settlement of Roxbury. Hanna arrived soon after, along with friends and family members, and the two were married in 1632. This was the first marriage ever recorded in Roxbury, illustrating the adolescence of this new community.
Over the next few years, Eliot helped to establish the Roxbury Latin School alongside his brother, Philip. This was the beginning of his efforts to educate the masses, in which he had a growing interest. However, the struggles of a growing and isolated church provided many distractions. One such trial came with the infamous Anne Hutchinson, a proponent of Antinomianism (a heresy that teaches the moral law as something obsolete and useless to the Christian. Hutchinson claimed that, since salvation came from God’s grace rather than works, believers were not obligated to behave with morality). After she gathered followers and refused to submit to scriptural teachings, Eliot assisted in her excommunication.
As the Puritans struggled to maintain unity amongst themselves, the relationship between Puritans and Indians remained fragile. Intertribal and colonial warfare killed many, along with diseases unintentionally introduced by settlers, making the natives skeptical of the Puritan show of friendship. Some even reacted with violence, and Anne Hutchinson herself was murdered in an Indian-led massacre while in exile in 1643. Yet, Eliot held out hope that the two races could live in peace if both were to submit to the gospel, and he soon endeavored to learn the local Algonquian language.
Cockenoe, a bilingual native, became his tutor. Cockenoe had been a victim of the Pequot War, and became the servant of Sergeant Richard Callacot, from whom he learned English. As Eliot taught Cockenoe to read and write, he himself began learning Algonquian. The two of them worked together to translate the Ten Commandments and the Lord’s Prayer. In his journal, Eliot described his assistant as “pregnant-witted” and “ingenious.” Cockenoe earned the name “he interprets,” which he proudly bore for the rest of his life, even after returning to his tribe.
In 1646, Eliot preached to the Indians for the first time, although according to him, it was a failure. He heard about similar efforts among other missionaries that proved ineffective, and realized that they had yet to translate any of the Scriptures into local languages. This is the work he then threw himself into. By 1653, he’d translated the Psalms into Algonquin and began working on the gospels. Finally, in 1663, the first complete Bible in the Massachusett language was published.
There was still one problem. The Indians were illiterate. So, Eliot created and published a curriculum to teach Algonquins how to read. The natives slowly began to trust his efforts, and as they learned to read, they also desired to organize their living situation. They saw the structured layouts of Puritan towns and how they made the existence of things like schools possible. So, Eliot began facilitating what came to be known as “Praying Indian” towns.
These towns were populated exclusively by natives, many of whom became Christians, earning the aforementioned nickname. They governed themselves and maintained an orderly and civil community. When other native Americans witnessed this flourishing, they attribute it to the Christian faith. As more people converted, more of these “Praying Indian” towns sprung up.
Eliot remained an ally and was able to communicate with and advocate for the local tribes. During a boundary dispute, he stated publicly that the whole purpose of the colony was for the service of the Algonquin people. As word of the successful ministry traveled, other ministries adopted this model of education, translation, and self-governed native villages.
While the praying Indians were disrupted and dispersed during King Philip’s War of 1675, losing their unique Indian-governed community, the legacy persisted. Eliot and the Christian God came to be known as a friend of the Algonquins.
Eliot went on to write the first political book by an American, naming Christ as King and Heir to the throne of England. The Christian Commonwealth: or, The Civil Policy Of The Rising Kingdom of Jesus Christ was also the first book to be banned by the loyalist government. Above all, he sought to bring the gospel to all peoples, treating everyone as an equal image bearer. It was this testimony that God used to soften hearts and open eyes. He had no fear of the violence of man, and he had no fear of death. Before passing away in 1690 at the age of 85, Eliot spoke his last words: “Welcome joy!”