'ELIOT, John, American colonial mission ary, "the Indian Apostles : b. probably at Wid f ord, Hertfordshire, 1604; d. Roxbury, Mass., 20 May 1690. He was graduated at Cambridge in 1622, and, after taking orders in the Church of England, quitted his native country for con science's sake and landed at Boston, New Eng land, in 1631. In 1646, after two years study of the Indian language, be delivered a long ser mon in the native dialect at Nonantum, and other meetings soon followed. He shortly after began to establish his converts in regular set tlements, his work meeting with approval both in the colony and at home; in England a cor poration was founded in 1649 °for the promo tion and propagating the Gospel among the In dians of New which defrayed the expenses of the preachers and the cost of print ing translations. At one time there were over a dozen townships of "praying within the bounds of Massachusetts, and many more outside these limits, with numbers estimated in 1674 at 3,600; but, although the organization survived until the death of the last native pastor in 1716, the decay of the "praying towns" was rapid after the war with King Philip (1675), in which the converts suffered equal cruelties at the hands of their countrymen and of the English. There are monuments to Eliot's memory in the Indian burying-ground at South Natick, and at Newton, near the scene of his first Indian sermon. A man of earnest piety and devotion, warm-hearted and of a singularly attractive manner, he has left a memory that is honored among the first in the history of New England. With Thomas Weld and Richard Mather, Eliot prepared an English metrical ver sion of the Psalms, the 'Bay Psalm-book' (Cambridge 1640), as the first book printed in New England. He was also the author, among other works, of 'The Christian (London 1659), suppressed by the court and now extremely rare; 'The Communion of (1665), the first book privately printed in America; and of translations into the Indian tongue of Baxter's 'Call); Bayly's 'Practice of Piety) (abridged) ; and Shepard's 'Sincere Convert.) But the great work of his
life was the translation of the Bible into the tongue of the Indians of Massachusetts (Algonquin), of which the New Testament ap peared in 1661, and the whole work, with a ver sion of the Psalms in metre and a page of in 1663. The longest single word in it is "Wutappesittukqussunnoohwehtunkquoh,° signifying °kneeling down to in Mark 40; which illustrates the jest of Cotton Mather, who said he thought the words of the lan guage must have been growing ever since the dispersion at Babel. Only 14 complete copies of the first and second editions are known to be in existence. A scientific study of Eliot's Indian Bible was made by J. H. Trumbull (q.v.), and his manuscript published 1903 as 'Bulletin 25> by the Bureau of American Ethnology, Washington. Its title is the 'Natick Dic and it is divided into two parts, the first giving the Natick words with Eng lish definitions and the second the English words with Natick definitions. While it is devoted to the Natick lan guage it is practically a dictionary of all the Algonquin languages of Massachusetts, for the tribes of that part of the country spoke prac tically the same language, though each had its dialectic variations. Eliot's 'Indian Grammar was printed in 1666; his 'Indian Primer) in 1669. The finest collection of unique and scarce copies of Eliot's works is in the Lenox Library, New York; many of them have been reprinted. The best 'Life of is that by Francis (Vol. V) ; • Sparks' 'American Biography) 1st series (1836) ; the earliest that by Cotton Mather (1691). Consult also articles in the (Cyclopmdia of American (Vol. II 1887) ; and the 'Dictionary of National (Vol. XVII, 1889).