Mr. Danforth, and Mr. Walter as colleagues, and at long intervals being without clerical assistance. A time-worn manuscript volume, now in the keeping of the New England historic-genealogical society, Boston, contains the record of his church work, vast and interesting. It has been printed by the city of Boston as “A Report of the Record Commissioners, Document 114”(1880); and, with notes, in the New England “Historical and Genealogical Record” (vols. 33 and 34). His active and aggressive spirit twice brought him into unpleasant relations with the civil authorities in 1634, for criticising the method of making a treaty with the Pequods, and again in 1660, when one of his publications, written several years previously, “The Christian Commonwealth,” was “condemned, and by order of the general court suppressed.” Explanations and acknowledgments led to a speedy and satisfactory settlement. Several petitions in his handwriting, signed by himself and others, to the general court, attest the interest that he took in the secular affairs of the commonwealth. In 1637 he took part in the examination of Mrs. Ann Hutchinson for her religious opinions, which were repulsive to him, and for which she was banished. An account of her trial may be found in Thomas Hutchinson's “History of the Province of Massachusetts Bay from 1628 to 1749.” Eliot's fame depends mainly upon his labors in Christianizing the Indians. The translations of the Bible, and several other books into their language, are his imperishable monument. As far north as the Merrimac river, as far east as Cape Cod, to the towns in the southern part of Massachusetts, to Brookfield, sixty miles west of Roxbury, to northeastern Connecticut, and to the vicinity of Hartford and to Martha's Vineyard, he travelled, proclaiming the gospel to the red man with an enthusiasm that brought thousands under its influence. A pamphlet of twenty-five pages, entitled “The Day-breaking, if not the Sun-rising, of the Gospel with the Indians in New England” (London, 1647), gives “a true relation of our beginnings with the Indians.” At Nonantum, in the northeast corner of Newton, on the south side of Charles river, about five miles from Roxbury, on 28 Oct., 1646, “four of us” went to the wigwam of Waaubon, and there met a company of Indians, men, women, and children, “gathered together from all quarters round about.” After a prayer in English, Mr. Eliot preached to them in their own tongue for an hour and a quarter. When asked if they understood all that he had said, many voices replied in the affirmative. Questions followed, curious, wonderful, and interesting. The meeting lasted three hours, and the Indians said they were not weary; but their instructors resolved to leave them “with an appetite.” An appointment for another meeting was made, and apples were given to the children, and tobacco to the men. The Indians desired more ground to build a town, and it was promised that the government should be petitioned in their behalf for this purpose. The second meeting differed from the first in this: it was closed with a prayer “in their own language for above a quarter of an hour.” The pamphlet describes also a third and a fourth meeting. The Indians showed great willingness to receive the gospel, requesting that their children might find homes with their white friends in order that they might be trained in the right way, and some adults sought employment with the settlers, that they might receive instruction in the truths of Christianity. It was then believed by many that these Indians were the descendants of the lost tribes of Israel, and this opinion was an additional incentive for efforts to convert them. Mr. Eliot was convinced that the Indians must give up their roving habits and become members of settled communities before they could make much progress in the Christian life. Natick, seventeen miles southwest of Boston, a place “somewhat remote from the English,” was selected as a very advantageous place for a town, and thither the Indians at Nonantum, and other “praying Indians,” as the converts were called, removed in 1651. A civil government was established, and, after many delays and much hesitation, a church was formed in 1660, an ecclesiastical organization that continued until the death of their last pastor, Daniel Takawombpait, an Indian, in 1716. The work, although it sometimes encountered fierce opposition on the part of the Indians and ungenerous depreciation on the whites, prospered until King Philip's war in 1675. Town after town was organized, and worshipping assemblies gathered, in several instances presided over by Indian preachers, until within the jurisdiction of Massachusetts there were seven old and seven new “praying towns,” embracing not fewer than eleven hundred “souls yielding obedience to the gospel.” Those in Plymouth colony and in the isles of the ocean much exceeded this number. In the war the praying Indians suffered dreadfully, both from their own countrymen, by whom they were hated, and by a great majority of the English, who suspected them of the most atrocious intentions. It is now generally believed that the latter were saved from extinction by the aid received from the friendly Indians. But to them the war was ruin. The number of Indian towns and their inhabitants were greatly diminished, and after the death of Mr. Eliot, a few years later, their extinction was rapid and irresistible. When the infirmities of age made him too feeble for the exertions of an active life, he proposed that negro servants should be sent to him for religious instruction; and a boy, made blind by falling into the fire, was taught by him to repeat many chapters of the Bible. One of his last recorded acts was to give by deed, in 1689, about seventy-five acres of land for “the maintenance, support, and encouragement of a school and schoolmaster at
that part of Roxbury commonly called Jamaica, or the Pond Plain, for the teaching and instructing the children of that end of the town (together with such Indians and negroes as shall or may come to the said school),” etc. His remains were placed in the parish tomb in the old burying-ground at Roxbury. No authentic likeness of him exists. The accompanying picture is known as
