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1933 AMERICAN-ANDERSON NEWS 3

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Eliot's Indian Bible

THE Eliot Bible in the Leiter sale is probably the largest and finest in existence and is considered a perfect copy. It is of the second edition of the famous work, printed at Cambridge, Mass., in 1680. Of the original 2,000 copies of that edition only sixty-four are now recorded, a large number of which are imperfect. The necessity for this second edition is explained in the journal of two Hollanders:

"The best of the ministers whom we have yet heard is a very old man, named John Eliot, who has charge of instruction of the Indians in the Christian religion. He has translated the Bible into their language. We have already made inquiries of the booksellers for a copy of it, but it was not to be obtained in Boston." [And so they went to call on Eliot in Roxbury.] "...Although he could speak neither Dutch nor French, and we spoke but little English and were unable to express ourselves in it always, we managed by means of Latin and English to understand each other. He was seventy-seven years old and had been forty-eight years in these parts. He had learned very well the language of the Indians, who lived about there. We asked him for an Indian Bible. He said in the late Indian war, all the Bibles and Testaments were carried away, and burnt or destroyed, so that he had not been able to save any for himself; but a new edition was in press which he hoped would be much better than the first one, though that was not to be despised."

THROUGH the years the Eliot Bible has been a monument of missionary endeavor and prescientific study of aboriginal tongues. It is in the dialect of the Algonkian (Algonquin) Indians of Massachusetts. This great tribe produced many notable characters, among them "King Philip," Powhatan, Pontiac, Tecumseh, and Black Hawk, tales of whom so vividly color American history.

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^[[80 Baily [[?]] 1. Sq NE]]

^[[John [[?]] [[?]] ]]
MAMUSSE
WUNNEETUPANATAMWE
UP-BIBLUM GOD
NANEESWE
NUKKONE TESTAMENT
KAH WONK
WUSKU TESTAMENT.
^[[ [[illegible writing]] ]]

Ne quofhkinnumuk nafhpe Wuttinneumoh CHRIST noh afoowefit
JOHN ELIOT.
Nahohioeu onjcheioe Printeucomuk.

CAMBIRDGE.
Printeucop nafhpe Samuel Green. MDCLXXXV.

Title-page of the Leiter Copy of Eliot's Indian Bible

JOHN ELIOT was born in England in 1604 and as a young man was received into the ministry of the Established Church. When he became a Puritan, however, difficulties induced him to emigrate to Boston in 1631. Here he became inspired with the idea of converting the Indians and to this end he set about perfecting himself in the Indian dialects. He first successfully preached to the Indians in their own tongue at Nonantum (Newton), October, 1646. As soom as his initial success became known, funds for maintaining missionary activities flowed in from private sources both in Old and New England. "Convert the Heathen" was an eagerly adopted slogan. His activities extended to many localities in the Bay State, and in 1674 the official census of "praying Indians" numbered 4,000.

ELIOT was not long in seeing the necessity of a Bible and other religious literature in their language for the Indians, whom he enthu-
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