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Eliot (JOHN the Indian Apostle born)

JOHN, "the Indian Apostle"; born probably at Widford in Hertfordshire, in 1604. He graduated at Cambridge in 1622, and, after taking orders in the Church of England, emigrated to Boston, Mass., in 1631. In 1646, after two years' study of the language, he delivered a long sermon in the native dialect at Nonantum; other meetings soon followed. He shortly after began to establish his converts in regular settlements, his work meeting with approval both in the colony and at home; in Eng- ELIZABETH land a corporation was founded in 1649 "for the promoting and propagating the Gospel among the Indians of New England." In 1674 the number of "praying Indians" was estimated at 3,600; but the decay of the "praying towns" was rapid after the war with a native king, Philip (1675), in which the converts suffered equal cruelties at the hands of their countrymen and of the English. With Thomas Weld and Richard Mather, Eliot prepared the "Bay Psalm-book" (1640), the first book printed in New England.

His great work was the translation of the Bible into the tongue of the Indians of Massachusetts (Algonquin) (1661- 1663). He died in Roxbury, Mass., May 21, 1690. There are monuments to his memory in the Indian burying ground at South Natick and at Newton.