John Eliot
Puritan missionary to Native Americans
Born	1604 Widford, Hertfordshire, England
Died	May 21, 1690

John Eliot (circa. 1604 - 21 May 1690) was a Puritan missionary born in Widford, Hertfordshire, England.

He attended Jesus College, Cambridge. Eliot arrived in Boston on November 3, 1631, on the ship Lyon, and became minister and "teaching elder" at the First Church in Roxbury, also studying under the charge of Thomas Hooker. 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. ^[1]

He, along with ministers Thomas Weld (also of Roxbury) and Richard Mather of Dorchester, are credited as editors of the first book published in the British North American colonies, i.e. the Bay Psalm Book. He participated in the examination, excommunication and exile of Anne Hutchinson, whose opinions he deplored. He was instrumental in the conversion of Massachusett Indians and translated the Bible into their language, for which he devised an alphabet; in 1663, it became the first Bible printed in North America. 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 attempting to preserve the culture of the Native Americans by putting them in planned towns where they could continue by their own rule as 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 were mostly destroyed by furious English colonists during King Philip's War (1675). Although restoration was attempted, it ultimately failed.

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. It's most objectionable part was its "Preface," where 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. The full text of the work can be seen online here.

John Eliot's wife was the former, Ann Mumford. Their son, John Eliot, Jr., was the first pastor of First Church in Newton^[2], while their son. Joseph, was a pastor in Guilford, Connecticut, and the father of Jared Eliot, also a noted pastor as well as a noted agriculture writer.

In 1689 John Eliot donated 75 acres of land in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts to support the Eliot School, founded in 1676. The school survives near its original location to this day as The Eliot School of Fine and Applied Arts.

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

• 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)

• Brief Narrative of the Progress of the Gospel amongst the Indians in New England, in the Year 1670.
• Color oil portrait of Rev. John Eliot, by unidentified artist, 1659, from the Natick Historical Society site