John Eliot,John Veniaminov,and engagement with the indigenous peoples of North America: A comparative missiology,part I

John Eliot and the praying Indians of Massachusetts

Among the first generation of English men and women who left their homeland to start life again in the enclave of New England, John Eliot stood prominent, and remains so to this day. ² His reputation for piety and godliness had few peers in a culture that valued such things even if they weren’t universally practiced. His diligence and faithfulness as a pastor were lauded as exemplary. But it was his efforts to Christianize the local indigenous Americans that has secured the admiration of later generations and, more recently, has stirred up the greatest controversy.

Despite his prominence and reputation, John Eliot the missionary was in many ways an enigma to his fellow colonists. His labors among the Native Americans who lived nearby generated much more interest and excitement back in London. Among the settlers, however, who were faced with the day-to-day reality of “Indians” in the neighborhood, the response to Eliot’s missionary activity was more muted. Indeed, as the puritan zeal of the founding generation was eroded by the distracting realities of survival and by successive generations of more earthly minded Americans who shared less and less their parents’ perspectives and priorities, missionary labors such as Eliot’s met with decreasing sympathy and endured increasing indifference, skepticism, suspicion, and even outright hostility.

The times have hardly changed. While a few simplistically lionize Eliot as an early American Protestant saint, many recent historians, as we shall see, find the combination of both the Puritan and missionary aspects of Eliot’s life to be a toxic mix, a most unfortunate aberration that had profound implications for future colonial expansion in America and elsewhere. ³ But herein lies the problem. While the broad strokes of Eliot’s life and career are generally well known, scholarship’s professed familiarity with Eliot is deceiving. The facts of Eliot’s career are too often placed in the service of the commentator’s presuppositions rather than understood in their context and in light of Eliot’s own presuppositions and those of his day. ⁴ But then Eliot himself does not help matters. Unconcerned with what posterity might think of him and his efforts, he did not leave many self-conscious clues that might grant access to the well of motivation that lay behind his work among the native communities in Massachusetts. And recent scholarship has also been slow to explore the reasons behind his desire to reach out “to the “Indians,” a desire that was rare among his fellow clergy, and almost nonexistent among the general populace. This lack of curiosity among later historians has left many content merely to rehearse the facts of Eliot’s missionary endeavors, or to assume the worst about him and them.

In light of this void, my purpose in this part of the study is to understand John Eliot the missionary by seeking to explore and name the dynamics that fired his efforts over so many years to Christianize the “poor Indians” of Massachusetts. Following an overview of Eliot’s life and career, consideration will be given to the development of the various interpretations of Eliot’s motives. I will then make use of Eliot himself to define the source and nature of his motivation for Christian mission and conclude with an overview of his legacy in the subsequent Protestant missionary movement.

John Eliot as pastor and missionary

Although the exact date of Eliot’s birth is unknown, church records reveal that Bennett and Lettye Eliot’s third-born of seven, a son, was christened John in the Parish Church of St. John the Baptist in Widford, Hertfordshire, England on August 5, 1604. ⁵ Eliot reveals very little about his early years. Evidently, however, his parents, who owned land and were of some means, were Christians, quite possibly of the “godly” sort. Says Eliot of his upbringing, “I do see that it was a great Favor of God unto me to season my first Times with the Fear of God, the Word and Prayer.” ⁶

Eliot entered Jesus College, Cambridge, in 1619 when he was 15 years old. While a student, he was bereaved of both mother (1620) and father (1621). Bennett Eliot, however, had insured that his son John would be allowed to continue his education, bequeathing to him in his will the sum of £8 annually “for and toward his maintenance in the University of Cambridge where he is now a scholar.” ⁷ Eliot, who was particularly fascinated by languages and adept in philological studies, graduated as a Bachelor of Arts in 1622.

Any record of the following seven years of Eliot’s life has been lost. Although it is impossible to reconstruct the major events of his life during these hidden years, there are indications that Eliot was ordained a clergyman in the Church of England upon reaching the age of eligibility in 1628. This, however, is contested by some who point out that Eliot’s name does not appear in the Diocesan Archives in London. ⁸ Eliot’s later association with the outspoken and nonconforming Thomas Hooker would also seem to discredit any affiliation with the Anglicans. But to the contrary, Eliot was readily accepted as a minister when he arrived in Boston in 1631, and was immediately appointed to the pulpit ministry in the absence of Boston’s pastor John Wilson. It is doubtful that a mere novice would have been called to such a position. Thus it is apparent that Eliot left England as an ordained, albeit nonconforming clergyman in the Anglican Church, and that he came to Boston with previous ministerial and preaching experience, though there is at present no evidence either to substantiate or refute the claim. ⁹

Eliot appears in the record of history in 1629 when he became an usher at Thomas Hooker’s school at Little Baddow near Chelmsford, Essex. Hooker was shortly to depart for Holland (1630) under duress from Archbishop Laud because of his nonconformity. And though little remains of any discussion Eliot had concerning his relationship with Hooker or of his days at Little Baddow, Hooker was undoubtedly an influential figure in Eliot’s development and made a substantial impression on Eliot’s understanding of Christian life and polity. ¹⁰

The Little Baddow school closed upon Hooker’s departure, obviously necessitating significant decisions on Eliot’s part regarding his own future. Under Hooker’s influence, Eliot’s relationship with the Church of England most certainly deteriorated, and to such an extent that Eliot may have even come under the same kind of pressure that forced Hooker into exile. But whatever the reasons (and Eliot does not discuss them in any extant correspondence), he made the decision to emigrate to Massachusetts in New England and arrived in Boston in November of 1631.

Upon his arrival, as we have seen, the Boston church invited Eliot to serve as their pastor in an interim capacity until their incumbent pastor, John Wilson, returned from England where he had gone on personal business. Upon Wilson’s return the following year (1632) Eliot accepted a call from the newly forming church in Roxbury, a hamlet a mile or so south of Boston. Eliot evidently served the Boston church well, as church members made a concerted effort to convince him to stay and work with Wilson. But Eliot had already become acquainted with many of the Roxbury settlers, and he honored a previously negotiated understanding with them and became their pastor, a relationship and ministry that would last for 58 years until his death in 1690.

It is difficult for later generations to imagine the cultural and situational context that met Eliot and his fellow colonists each day as they rose to pursue their various vocations. Boston itself was hardly more than a village; Roxbury, a mere crossroads. To the north and to the south lay the tiny, scattered but growing communities of English men and women, struggling to make homes and establish lives, plying their trades and attempting to coax a livelihood out of the stony Massachusetts soil. But to the west of these tiny English enclaves lay a vast wilderness, immense, stretching out endlessly like a challenge, full of promise. And already peopled.

From the day an expedition from the Mayflower first set foot on Massachusetts soil, the English settlers found themselves interacting with the original inhabitants of the land, the “Indians” as they called them. And though the Indian population had been previously decimated by epidemics of European diseases, against which they had no immunity, there was still a large enough population to ensure that the English were living in a multiethnic and multicultural environment, regardless of whether or not they chose to recognize it as such. Assuming the superiority and inherent attractiveness of their religion, and indeed of every aspect of their way of life, the leaders of the founding generation were certain that the Indians would be drawn into Christianity and civility by the example of their superior English material, civil, and religious cultures. ¹¹ The seal of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, which was designed in 1629, actually projects this English perspective as coming from the Indians themselves, picturing an Indian calling out, presumably to the English, “Come over and help us!” ¹²

Eliot undoubtedly had regular exposure to and interaction with the local indigenous inhabitants from his earliest days in Boston, and in his early years, at least, he shared the majority perspective on the “Indians” and the common hope that they would be attracted to Christ and civility. In a letter to Sir Simonds D’Ewes, written during his first year in Roxbury, Eliot states that “We are at good peace with the natives, and they doe gladly intertaine us and give us possession, for we are walls to them, from theire bloody enemies, & they are sensible of it, and also they have many more comforts by us; & I trust, in God’s time they shall larne Christ.” ¹³

But two things occurred which dashed early hopes that the Indians would know a good thing when they saw it and respond accordingly. First, the native Americans demonstrated very early on that they were not at all interested in the English settlers’ religion or lifestyle (though exceptions could be made for certain English goods!). Second, many of the colonists became distracted by their own efforts to survive and prosper, and began to view the Indians as annoyances, or even worse, as threats. Reminiscing some years later by letter to his friend Richard Baxter, Eliot reveals with a touch of humor the reality of English–Indian relations during those early years as the naïveté of earlier hopes became more apparent. Evidently, the Indians, who frequented English homes, would not tolerate any talk from the English about their religion, so much so “That if any began to speak of God, and heaven and hell, and religion unto them, they would presently be gone. So it was a received and known thing to all English, that if they were burdensome and you would have them gone, speake of religion and you were presently rid of them.” ¹⁴

Eliot’s comments imply a frequent, if muddled interaction between English and Indian cultures. Just as the Indians could not simply ignore the intruding English settlements and hope they would go away, so the English were faced with the necessity of regular interactions with members of an alien culture. Though cultural insensitivity on the part of both sides later caused the interaction between the two to become strained and turn violent, during the 1630s and 1640s that interaction, however bewildering or difficult, and the concerns it raised, was part of the norm of early colonial life. Thus Eliot did not suddenly “turn his attention to the Indians” in 1643, as if he had a choice. ¹⁵ Rather, his later efforts among them grew out of years of experience and interaction with them, during which time those motivations that compelled him into action were slowly stewing.

In the meantime, not only did Eliot settle into his ministry in Roxbury, he became a husband and a father and was active in the wider affairs of the colony. Following his move to Roxbury, he was joined by his fiancé, Hanna Mumford, who arrived from England in 1632. They were wed in October of the same year, the first marriage recorded in the Roxbury town records. ¹⁶ Hanna Eliot bore her husband five sons and a daughter, four of whom preceded their father in death. John and Hanna Eliot shared their lives together until Hanna’s death in 1687 after some 55 years of marriage.

Eliot was highly regarded by his congregation and his peers as a pastor. He was an active participant in resolving many of the controversies that arose during those early years in the Bay Colony. He was involved in the Anne Hutchinson affair, and though he was party to her censure in 1637, he was not party to the acrimony expressed by some of his fellow ministers. Eliot was also instrumental, along with Richard Mather and Thomas Welde, in producing in 1640 what became known as The Bay Psalm Book, the first book published in British North America that was printed for use in the churches.

In contrast to the lack of detail concerning Eliot’s early years in England and his first decade in Roxbury, a wealth of information has been preserved concerning his work among the Indians and the progress that occurred as the years went by. A series of eleven tracts, at least three of which were authored or coauthored by Eliot himself, were published in London from 1643 to 1671 to inform the English public concerning the nature and progress of the Indian work. ¹⁷ Many of the ones not authored by Eliot contain letters from him or eyewitness accounts from his mission. Much of Eliot’s personal correspondence from these years also contains helpful information about what he was doing and what the issues and concerns were facing the mission. ¹⁸

While these letters and tracts provide a framework on which to understand the narrative of the missionary outreach to the Indians, they also reveal in personal terms how difficult this work was. Richard Cogley lists a number of obstacles complicating any godly wish for the successful evangelization of the local Indians from becoming a reality:

To begin with, the region’s regnant congregational polity could not ordain persons for full-time missionary service, but only for a resident ministry in an existing congregation. Clergymen could evangelize Indians only by stealing time away from their Puritan congregations. Another reason was the language barrier. The native peoples of New England spoke various Algonquian dialects . . . The English language was not widely used by Indians until the middle of the eighteenth century. A third challenge was the daunting nature of the missionary challenge, for Puritans assumed that Indians had to be “civilized” no less than Christianized. In other words, native proselytes not only had to relinquish their ancestral religious beliefs and practices in favor of Christian precepts, but also abandon their traditional work-habits, economic practices, gender roles, manner of dress, and political and legal institutions in favor of English counterparts. ¹⁹

The difficulty was compounded not only by Indian cultural and political resistance to the missionaries’ work, but also by resistance on the part of a portion of the English settler population, who seemed not to share the same degree of love and evangelistic zeal for their Indian neighbors as did Eliot and his colleagues. Given the obstacles, it is a testimony to the tenacity of these volunteer missionaries that anything was attempted, much less accomplished.

The outline of Eliot’s missionary endeavor is therefore easy to trace. But even though Eliot made his first attempts to preach to the Indians in September and October 1646, he had clearly been preparing for those occasions for a number of years. First, in addition to his pastoral duties, Eliot had undertaken the herculean task of learning the local Indian vernacular. To assist him in this project, Eliot enlisted the aid of a young Indian named Cockenoe, who had been captured as a boy in a skirmish on Long Island. Second, Eliot had obviously been pursuing friendships with the local Indians for some time. By 1646, enough trust was established between them that various Indian families were willing to give Eliot a hearing when Eliot felt secure enough in their language to attempt a sermon.

Though Eliot’s first attempt in September 1646 near Dorchester Mill fared poorly (he felt that he was having difficulty making himself understood, and what the Indians did understand, they found uninteresting), a second effort a month later in the village of Nonantum (now Newton) by the wigwam of an Indian official named Wauban, gave Eliot and the companions he brought along reason for hope. ²⁰ The Indians expressed a desire to hear more, and Eliot, understandably encouraged by the response, began a practice of regular visitation every other week to help the Indians as they began to understand the gospel and turn to Christ. It was a pattern that he would follow for decades—winning the trust and friendship of new circles of Indians, visiting their homes, preaching the gospel in their own language, and returning regularly to follow-up and continue with those who were eager to know more. ²¹

As Indians responded to his sermons, Eliot wrestled with what it would mean to truly convert to Christianity. Eliot, like all of his contemporaries, did not think in terms of “culture” when he considered the Indians’ way of life. In this respect, Eliot, like his contemporaries, was ethnocentric. Conventional wisdom held that the Indians had no worthwhile culture. Protracted rebellion against God and servitude to the devil (as the English considered Indian religion to be) had left them hopelessly degenerate. ²² Thus it only made sense that if rebellion against God and servitude to the devil led to degeneracy, conversion to Christianity would undoubtedly lead to a restoration of the morality and values (in a word, civility) of which England, or at least Puritan New England, was a shining example (the proverbial city on a hill). To assist in this process, Eliot gathered communities of converted or responsive Indians, separating them from their unresponsive neighbors (as well as from the bad examples of unregenerate Englishmen and women) to form villages where they could establish a more ordered, civilized, Christian (and English) way of life. ²³

The first such community resulted from Eliot’s ministry among Wauban’s family and friends and was called Natick. Organized in 1650, the entire community of several score Indians gathered in solemn assembly in September 1651 to covenant together that they would be God’s town and would order their affairs according to God’s law. ²⁴

Natick’s success made it a model for subsequent “Praying Towns,” and also provided a laboratory for Eliot to put into practice his ideas about structuring the civil government according to an Old Testament theocratic model. ²⁵ The fact that heretofore heathen Indians were submitting to what he considered to be a biblical and therefore God-ordained form of government gave him great hope that he was witnessing the beginnings of the long-awaited expansion of Christ’s kingdom from sea to sea. ²⁶ But not only was Natick an example the other Praying Towns were to follow, Eliot sensed that the disruptions occurring back in England due to the Civil War, the regicide, and Cromwell’s rise to power were giving the English an opportunity to join in this amazing unfolding providence of God by submitting to a God-ordained (namely Eliot’s) form of government:

These things considered, touching the excellency of this form of Government [Eliot’s theocracy], and especially the Divinity of it, and now also by a wonderful work of God, England being in a capacity to chuse unto themselves a new Government, and in such deep perplexity about that great question . . . seeing no human forme, quiet and safe . . .. By this means, all hearts are prepared to embrace any help or counsel from the Lord; and when they have wearied themselves with differences, they will gladly all concur together, to set open the door, to let in the Lord Jesus . . . who hath all this while been knocking at the door, by these perplexing troubles; that his Government might be on all hands gladly embraced, and himself finde a free and peaceable entrance to begin his blessed and waited-for reign over the Nations of the earth. ²⁷

Eliot’s treatise of God-ordained government, The Christian Commonwealth, was written during the initial heady days of the Natick experiment and during the heat of speculation concerning the meaning of the revolutionary tumult in England. Unfortunately for Eliot, his treatise was not published in 1650 when it was written (and when it would have simply been another of many voices in the current debate). But it was published in London in 1659, appearing at a time when the situation in England was again drastically changing. Needless to say, Eliot’s book was viewed as a threat by the Restoration government. Called to account on May 30, 1661 before the General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in Boston, Eliot was censured and his book publicly burned. ²⁸

Though Eliot’s views on biblical government became inexpedient in light of the new realities of Restoration England, he continued to order the expanding work among the Indians according to the Natick model. In all, shortly before King Philip’s War in 1675, there were 14 such towns scattered throughout eastern and central Massachusetts, the whole work having a combined population of perhaps 1100 people in all. And despite the increased tensions between the Indians and English that characterized these later years, Eliot’s friend Daniel Gookin, who accompanied Eliot on visits to each of the towns in 1674, could remark that “The harvest is ripe for many more [towns], if God please to thrust forth labourers.” ²⁹

Ever the pastor, Eliot recognized early on that if Christianity was to last among the Indians, they would need to have access to the Bible. In perhaps his most stunning work, Eliot not only learned the language of the local Indians, but he reduced it to writing, learned and systematized its grammar, and taught Indians how to read. Eliot’s work would have been monumental had he merely translated the Bible into Algonquin. But not only did he translate the entire Old and New Testaments, he provided Christian Indians with a small library of grammatical, devotional, doctrinal, and apologetic helps as well. ³⁰

John Eliot was an old man, 71 years of age, when he witnessed the ruin of his thirty years of labor among the Indians as a result of King Philip’s War (1675–76). Eliot saw his praying Indian friends shamefully treated at the hands of enraged colonists who refused to believe there was such a thing as a good, much less Christian, Indian. Many of the praying Indians deserted. Many others were killed. The rest were subjected to humiliation, exile, and deprivation. Eliot attempted to be their advocate, but his pleas fell on deaf ears. Of the 14 Praying Towns established prior to the war, only four were rebuilt. The restoration of the Indian work essentially meant beginning anew. Not only did the towns themselves require reconstruction, but schools needed to be reestablished, churches regathered, and a sense of hope and purpose reinstilled in the remnant. Perhaps most disheartening for Eliot was the loss of nearly every copy of the Algonquin Bible. For years, Eliot pleaded with anyone who would listen to help provide the funds to reprint the Indian Bible. To Robert Boyle on June 21, 1683, Eliot wrote,

. . . it is the greatest charity in the world to provide for their souls. . . My age makes me importunate. I shall depart joyfully, may I but leave the Bible among them, for it is the word of life; and there be some godly souls among them that live thereby. The work is under great incumberments and discouragements. My heart hath much ado to hold up my head, but doth daily drive me to Christ; and I tell the Lord, that it is his word, and your hearts are in his hand. ³¹

After nine years of concern and entreaty, Eliot saw the completion of the second edition of the Algonquin Bible in 1685, though not without further struggle and hardship. ³² Enfeebled even before the war, Eliot was physically spent, unable to make the journey by horseback to visit the remaining Indian towns and sometimes unable even to climb the hill to the Roxbury Meeting House. He continued to preach as he could, and the church added another clergyman to assist him. And he continued to make translations into Algonquin—a third edition of his Indian Primer and a second edition of Baylie’s Practice of Piety in 1685, a second edition of Baxter’s Call to the Unconverted in 1687, and Shepherd’s Sincere Convert and Sound Believer in 1684. But he was also deeply saddened by loss. His wife Hanna died in 1687, followed shortly thereafter by his son Benjamin.

To the end, Eliot’s heart and concern lay with his “poor Indians.” From his deathbed, Eliot lamented,

There is a Cloud . . . a dark Cloud upon the Work of the Gospel among the poor Indians. The Lord revive and prosper that Work, and grant it may live when I am dead. It is a Work, which I have been doing such and long about.

But what was the Word I spoke last? I recal that Word. My Doings! Alas They have been poor and small, and lean Doings, and I’ll be the Man that Shall throw the first Stone at them all. ³³

On May 20, 1690, nearly 86 years of age, John Eliot died. His last words were, “Welcome Joy.” ³⁴

Today John Eliot is a mostly forgotten figure in early American history, unnoticed even when (and if) American Christians consider their spiritual heritage. Since the 1970s in the academic world, however, Eliot has been pulled out of obscurity by historians who seem to have an ideology to prove, as an example of everything wrong about Christians, Puritans, and missionary enterprise. And yet these revisionist historians have either not understood Eliot’s understanding of Christianity, or the early colonial context, or assigned motives that Eliot himself would not have recognized. ³⁵ But the interpretive fads that sought to critique early Americans through anti-Christian and Marxist lenses seemed to fail with the fall of the old Soviet Union. Current identity ideologies are built on short-term and flawed foundations, as was so-called postmodernism, and their tired and shallow critiques of the “bigotry” of Christian missionaries such as Eliot and will likely pass before the ones making them do. Much has also been made of Eliot’s eschatological motives, and while he did dabble in the current eschatological debates, seeking to put his own labors in the frame of contemporary discussion, his own motives were ultimately not tied to a particular interpretation of the end times, as seen when his book on eschatological issues A Christian Commonwealth was banned by Restoration authorities. However flawed they have been thus far, these lines of inquiry do provide potential for further fruitful exploration but are beyond the purpose of the present study.

Conclusion

In his Triumph of the Reformed Religion in America: The Life of the Renowned John Eliot, Cotton Mather writes, “I am well satisfied, that if men had the wisdom to discern the Signs of the Times, they would be all hands at work, to spread the name of our JESUS into All the Corners of the Earth.” ³⁶ Missionary callings require powerful motivations. John Eliot lived during a time when religious affairs were, from an eternal perspective, matters of life and death. Because he knew what it was to be a sinner under God’s wrath, and also what it was to received God’s mercy in Christ through the gospel, Eliot toiled to make sure that others had an opportunity to respond to God’s grace, especially those who were not yet even aware of their dire condition, much less God’s provision for escape. Eliot faced daily a world that was ruled by an evil usurper. In the midst of this ongoing threat, the Christian gospel set forth God’s act of reclamation through Christ. As Eliot saw it, God was at work restoring the world to its rightful order, restoring humanity to its rightful rule. Hence Eliot’s passion to see Christ reign. He was convinced that his “poor and small, and lean doings” were on the cutting edge of God’s agenda for the world. And though his attempts to impose English cultural norms on his converts and to distill a theocratic form of government for Christians display serious methodological and hermeneutical errors, Eliot’s example of “prayer and pains, through faith in Christ Jesus” is a powerful challenge to the shallowness and superficiality that often passes for Christian faith in any generation.

Though Eliot’s mission to the Indians predates by nearly two hundred years the great missionary expansion of the Protestant churches in the 19th century, the soteriological concerns he sought to address and the means he adopted in order to do so set the tone and provided an example that influenced subsequent generations of Protestant missionaries. From the likes of Eliot and the Mayhews, through Cotton Mather, Jonathan Edwards, David Brainard, George Whitefield, John Wesley, William Care, Adoniram Judson, and the rest, passed the vision of a world of people in desperate need of a savior, and a remedy of good news that God had provided a means of salvation and hope through Christ. ³⁷ And though Eliot could see nothing but a “dark Cloud” over the work has he lay near death, the work did not perish with him. Others came to pick up where he left off. The vision and the concern spread. The numbers of people engaged in cross-cultural Christian ministry increased, and then multiplied. And in the three hundred years since his death, the Protestant missionary effort has expanded from its foothold in northwestern Europe and the fringe of New England to see churches now established and thriving amongst people who formerly were not Christians on all the inhabited continents of the planet. There are now thousands, even today, who share Eliot’s motives, and share his same vision of the spread of Christianity, who have taken the Christian message to other “poore lost souls” and begun to witness the advance of Christ’s kingdom from sea to sea in earnest. John Eliot would undoubtedly be pleased.

But not only are Eliot’s motivations for missionary work echoed in subsequent generations of men and women who have labored to extend Christianity across cultural boundaries, Eliot’s means of engagement with the native Americans a horseback ride from his home—his methodology for missions—has been repeatedly adopted by later generations of Protestant missionaries who may have been aware of the descriptions of his work. But there are also those who would never have even known the name of John Eliot, men like the 19th-century Russian Orthodox priest-become-missionary Fr. John Veniaminov whose own methodology bears a striking resemblance to what Eliot attempted in 17th-century Massachusetts, as we shall see. Having considered a descriptive narrative of John Eliot’s missionary endeavors among the Algonquin Indians, it’s time to acquaint ourselves with the remarkable, and yet similar story of a Russian Orthodox missionary attempting to engage with Native Americans on North America’s far opposite coast.