The Indian Bible and Othering: John Eliot gets the Credit… But There’s More

The “Indian Bible”

See the descriptive listing from the Massachusetts Historical Society at this link.

John Eliot gets a lot of the credit for the “Indian Bible” (1663) in conventional histories, but it would never have happened without the cultural insight and able assistance of the Native people James Printer, Nipmuk, and Job Nesutan, Massachusett. Also, we must include John Sassamon, Massachusett, and Cockenoe, Montaukett in this citation correction. The title page names Eliot, and English colleagues Samuel Green and Marmaduke Johnson, but omits the critical and necessary work of (at least) these four Indigenous persons.

This historical work of literature is one of the principal sources - along with many other early Colonial-era documents - of the present resurgence of the Wôpanâak (Wampanoag) language within those communities. The contributions of these ancestors have sustained life and continuance to this day, true to the cycles of spirit in these Lands.

In the informative webpage shared above, one finds this unfortunate quote: "The "Eliot Indian Bible," however, symbolizes the tragic failure of the Puritan colonists to accomplish their "principall ende" to christianize the New England Native Americans and reshape their lives in the image of the colonists."

This exemplifies the biases built into conventional histories: that "tragic failure" is tribute to the relevance and resilience of Indigenous ways of being in their homelands. Askwa n'daoldibna iodali - we are still here.