History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts - citizen hylbom blog

The church fairly planted, Natick became a
missionary centre. Till the formation of other
churches, those living at Hassanemesit, Magunkook,
and ilarlborough held membership here. Teachers
and preachers were trained for the growing work.
Already our untiring apostle, notwithstanding pas-
toral labor at Roxbury (lie had three colleagues
during his fifty-eight years' ministry) and days of
toilsome travel, — for he had explored the country
from Martha's Vineyard to the ilerrimack, from
Cape Cod to Brookfield,—had devoted pains by day
and night to a greater task of Christian scholar-
ship. Having learned the language from an Indian
servant, he could, in 164G, preach to Waban in his
mother tongue. But Eliot longed that the natives
should have the Bible at their wigwams. In 1649
he wished to translate the Scriptures; in 1651 he
wrote "that he had no expectation to see the Word
of God translated, much less printed in his day.
The attempt was so heroic, we do not wonder at
his fears. But he did see both. In 165S Genesis
and Matthew were in use at Natick. This transla-
tion of the Bible must have been studied out partly
in Roxbury, partly in his little chamber here;
thoughts, words, plans, came to him doubtless in
his journeyings.
In 1661 the New Testament issued from the
Cambridge Press, followed in 1663 by the Old
Testament. Two hundred copies of the first,
strongly bound in leather, had at once been cir-
culated among the Indians. The whole Bible
makes a stout quarto of over one thousand pages,
and with it are bound the Psalter versified from
the Bay Psalm-Book, and a short catechism. All
were published at the expense of the English society,
who sent over the press and materials. The
building erected for Indian students became the
printing-house for the second edition. A diffuse
laudatory dedication to Charles II. prefaced the
cojoies of the first edition sent to England, and Sir
the honor to be about him. Yet the unexpected
coming in of an Envoye from the Emperor hindered
me from receiving that fuller expression of his
grace toward the translators and dedicators, that
might otherwise have been expected."
We appreciate the difliculties and grandeur of
Eliot's work, with no grammatical helps to acquire
a dialect utterly unlike the Old-Woiid languages,
when we remember the college of scholars that.
NATWK. 187
gave England King James' version, and the select
company of English and American divines whose
headquarters in preparing the latest revision are
the Jerusalem Chamber, in Westminster Abbey.
Eliot made an Indian grammar, and describes
his method of study. " I would pursue a word,
noun or verb, through all the variations I could
think of." As the savages had no written language,
our author represented their sounds by the Roman
letters. All the qualifying terms relating to the
principal idea were joined by prefix or suffix to
the leading word. For genders, nouns were divided
as representing animate beings or inanimate things,
and formed their plurals accordingly in orj or ash.
" They had no complete or distinct word for the verb
substantive, but it is under a regular composition,
whereby many words are made verb substantive."
Tiie personal pronouns had a separable and inseparable
form, mtj being expressed by the letter N,
prefixed to the word."
Our Apostle of New England assisted in organ-
izing an Indian church on Martha's Yineyard, Au-
gust 22, 1670, and in 1671 his own second church
arose at Hassanemesit. But the Natick church,
the first-born in the wilderness, was the largest, and
enjoyed more of the missionary's presence. In
1670, ten years old, it had fifty communicants.
That it was active in all good endeavors, is shown
by the instructions of the Natick church to its
chosen members, William and Anthony, also John
Sausamon, whom it sent as ambassadors to the
Missonkoiiog savages, to avert if possible their
going to war with the English.
More Indians were educated for preachers by
Natick schooling and exercising their gifts ui
church-meetings, than availed themselves of the
Indian Hall at Cambridge, though a number stud-
ied there. One aboriginal name graces the Har-
vard Triennial, an islander from the Yineyard, a
graduate in 1665. But the close confinement to
Robert Boyle tells how the merry monarch received books was more than the native temperament could
the strange gift. " He looked a pretty while upon bear. Mr. Eliot left at Quinbisset, now Thomp-
it, and showed some things in it to those that had son, Connecticut, in 1674, Daniel, a Natick Indian,
as their teacher, — probably Takawampbait, of
whom more presently.
Next year came that fearful conflict of the abo-
riginal and European races, called, from its instiga-
tor, Philip's War. Waban and Sausamon warned the
whites of Philip's designs, and Sau.samon lost his
life thereby. Eliot, in the Roxbury records, thus
characterizes him : " A man of eminent parts and
wit, he was of late years oonv'ted, joyiied to the