From its beginning in 1629, the Massachusetts Bay Colony had a mission to convert Native people to Christianity.
For England, Protestant missionary work was key to gaining imperial power over Spain, a Catholic country, in North America. The Bay Colony’s seal (left, 1629) depicted an Indigenous man with a bow and arrow saying “Come Over and Help Us.” The seal illustrates how the English viewed their purpose, as well as a deep-seated paternalism towards Native people.
By the mid-1640s, the Bay Colony lacked the funding to meet its mission. In fact, the Colony was in debt. After Puritan minister John Eliot was selected to lead a new missionary effort in 1646, fundraising became central to his work. In 1647, he wrote the first of many letters and reports that were circulated among potential funders in London. These writings, now called “The Eliot Tracts,” help historians understand this time period.
John Eliot Learns Algonquian Languages
John Eliot had moved to the Massachusetts Bay Colony from England in 1631 at the age of 27. He became minister at a church in Roxbury, now named First Church. Sometime after 1634, he began learning Algonquian languages, such as Nipmuc and Massachusett. Eliot believed that learning Native languages was central to his missionary work and he studied with Indigenous linguists all his life.
One of Eliot’s earliest language teachers was Cockenoe, a Montauk man who had been taken captive by the English during the Pequot War in 1636 and brought to Boston. After Cockenoe left the colony, Eliot began working closely with Job Nesuton, a Massachusett man who lived in Cohannet (now part of Newton). Nesuton and a Nipmuc man named James Printer later became key partners to Eliot in a decade-long project to translate the Bible into Algonquian languages.
A First Meeting
By late summer 1646, Eliot felt he had learned enough from Cockenoe to conduct his first missionary outreach in an Algonquian language. At Dorchester Mill, Eliot delivered a sermon to Cutshamekin, chief sachem of the Massachusett in Neponset, and his followers. Though Eliot had some assistance from an unnamed interpreter, the meeting did not go well.
Eliot suspected that Cutshamekin had encouraged his followers to resist missionary efforts, and no second meeting was arranged. Instead, Eliot returned to his parish in Roxbury and planned a meeting with Waban, a Massachusett leader, and his followers at Cohannet — now the location of Newton Corner.
Header Image: Quinobequin (Charles River), Spring 2020. Image courtesy of the Natick Historical Society.