“Moreover, there be sundry prompt and pregnant witted youths — not viciously inclined, but well-disposed — which I desire may be wholly sequestered to learning, and put to schools for that purpose, had we means.”
In 1650 he writes, pleading earnestly for help to support
an Indian school: —
“I have compiled a short catechism, and wrote it in the master's [the native teacher's] book, which he can read and teach them; and also all the copies he setteth his scholars when he teacheth them to write are the questions and answers of the catechism, that so the children may be the more prompt and ready therein. We aspire to no higher learning yet but to spell, read, and write, that so they may be able to write for themselves such Scriptures as I have already or hereafter may (by the blessing of God) translate for them; for I have no hope to see the Bible translated, much less printed, in my days.”
There had been grammars and dictionaries of native
languages in Spanish America, published a century before
Eliot meditated a similar work. There are intimations in
the correspondence of the Commissioners, as agents of the
Society in London, that they feared he might be tempted to
print some of his translations before he was sufficiently
skilled in the native tongue, with its possible variations
of dialect even with New England tribes. In a letter to
him dated Sept. 18, 1654, they say: —
“We desired that Thomas Stanton's [the official interpreter in their affairs with the Indians] help might have been used in the catechism printed, and wish that no inconvenience be found through the want thereof. And shall now advise that before you proceed in translating the Scriptures or any part of them, you improve the best helps the country affords for the Indian language, that, if it may be, these Southwestern Indians may understand and have the benefit of what is printed.”
Eliot, in his sensitiveness, misapprehended the intent of
this advice, for at the meeting of the Commissioners in the
year following, in a reply to a letter from him, they say:
