 John Eliot was known as "The Apostle to the Indians." He graduated from
Cambridge in 1622 and was ordained in the Church of England. For a time
he taught in an Essex school run by the famous Thomas Hooker. Eliot
came to share Hooker’s “non-conformist” views, and left for New England in
1631. In 1632 he became teacher to the church at Roxbury MA, a
connection he kept until his death.
Eliot taught himself the language of the Indians, and began his work
among them in 1646. In 1689, John Eliot gave 75 acres of land in Roxbury
for the education of Indians and Blacks, perhaps the first to champion
the cause of the latter. He translated many works into the
Massachusetts dialect of the Algonkian language, his crowning achievement being the
Bible, but he also translated his translation of the Larger Catechism. |
|
|
