21 May: Boreham on John Eliot

A Morning Star
Among all the outstanding examples of forgotten greatness there is none to rival the case of John Eliot, the anniversary of whose death was commemorated yesterday. One historian calls him the Morning Star of Western Civilisation. Although he lived a couple of centuries before Fenimore Cooper and Longfellow threw a golden haze of glamorous romance about the North American Indians, John Eliot took the red men to his heart, recognised the splendour of the possibilities that they represented, and spent the best energies of his life in their service. In his monumental “History of the United States,” Bancroft devotes considerable space to the penetrating and permanent influence that Eliot exerted on the aboriginal tribesmen of America. He particularly stresses the magnetic and transforming effect upon the coloured men of Eliot’s engaging personality. His patience with the people of the wigwams was inexhaustible. His tenderness of heart completely captivated them.

John Owen, the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University, the official preacher to the House of Commons and the personal friend of Cromwell, was lost in admiration at all that filtered through to England of Eliot’s work in the Western forests. At the point of death, Richard Baxter wrote to Eliot to say that “there is no man on earth whose work I think more honourable than yours.” But by far the most eloquent tribute to his winsomeness and charm was paid him in his early days by the Essex farm folk who knew him best. Having taken his B.A. at Cambridge, he was appointed a teacher at a school kept by the Rev. Thomas Hooker at Little Baddow near Chelmsford. The country people became exceedingly fond of him and begged him to exercise his gifts for the benefit of those who had already learned to love and admire him.

Commanding Authority Of Knightly Character
It was, however, an iron age. The Mayflower had just sailed, and Eliot’s sympathies were with the Pilgrim Fathers. If, he reasoned, the Old World could offer them no spheres of happiness and usefulness, was it likely to treat him more generously? Like the pilgrims, he therefore turned his eyes towards the West. Hearing of his intention, his Essex admirers startled him with a proposal that took his breath away. If, they inquired, they followed him across the Atlantic, and settled down together in one of the vast solitudes of the New England woods, would he then become their minister? The fantastic scheme materialised. The people of Little Baddow, including his sweetheart, Harriet Mulford, set out on the great adventure. They settled at Roxbury, Massachusetts; he became their minister; and, marrying his faithful Harriet, remained to the end of his long and useful life.

During the first 14 years at Roxbury, his thought of the Indians remained a nebulous dream. The project that made him famous was secretly forming and incubating in his mind. It was in 1646, whilst the green fields of England were being crimsoned by the horrors of the Civil War, that he set to work, first to learn the Indian language, then to conduct a religious service in the great wigwam of Waban, and finally to translate the Scriptures into the tribal tongue. All authorities agree with Bancroft that Eliot's achievement in translating the entire Bible into the Indian idiom is one of the greatest feats of application and endurance on record. When the titanic task was completed, Eliot signalised his triumph by presenting a beautifully bound copy of his translation to Charles the Second. By this time his authority was amazing. The Indians regarded him as their father; they gathered about him; submitted to him their problems and sought his arbitrament in their quarrels. His word was law. He taught the men to grow gardens and plant orchards; he taught the women to knit and spin. He received the most touching evidences of the effectiveness of his work.

An Epic Of Unconscious Altruism
Two good stories are told of him, the one illustrating his absorption in his work; the other his open-handed philanthropy. On opening the back door of his home one day, three cows confronted him. Wondering how he could return them to their owners, he called his wife. “Oh, John,” she exclaimed, “You’re hopeless Why, they’re ours!” The other story tells how, on visiting his church treasurer one evening, that official took the opportunity of handing him his stipend. Fearing, however, that his minister might be tempted to dispense the money on his way home, he carefully wrapped it in a handkerchief, tying the knots with all his strength. On his road to the manse, Mr. Eliot called upon a family whose necessitous condition deeply affected him. He drew out the handkerchief and fumbled frantically with the unyielding knots. At length he gave up the struggle in despair. “Here, my dear,” he said to the distracted young mother, “heaven evidently means it all for you; please take it?”

The heart-break of his life overwhelmed him in his 72nd year. War broke out between the red men and the whites. Eliot’s Indians were between two fires. The English attacked them because of their race, whilst the Indian chiefs treated them with suspicion and animosity because they were under the white man’s influence and had learned the white man’s ways. Happily, he lived to see the cruel storm pass, whilst his Harriet was spared to him almost to the end. He lived to be 86. He dreaded death; the horror of leaving his work unfinished haunted him as the bleakest of tragedies. The Indians always asked him anxiously if his children would continue his work after his departure, but they nearly all predeceased him. However, his task was complete. He had lived a life that was a real adornment to the foundations of American history, and, among the honoured names of the Western pioneers, there is none that shines with a brighter lustre than his.

F W Boreham

Image: John Eliot