FOR the present publication the Society have to thank the liberality of Sir Rainald Knightley, Bart., the manuscript from which it was taken having been preserved in the library at Fawsley. Some years ago it was examined by our late Director, whose opinion has been carefully preserved on a sheet of paper lying amongst the first leaves of the book, and has since been printed in the third Report of the Historical MSS. Commission, p. 254. A more lengthened examination than Mr. Bruce appears to have been able to give to the MS. only served to corroborate the favourable opinion which he formed of it; and, even though much of its contents are anticipated by the considerable extracts from Eliot's Negotium Posterorum, printed by Mr. Forster in his biography of Sir John Eliot, there is even now quite enough of independent information to be gained from it to warrant its publication, especially as the debates reported in it are of such extreme historical importance.
John Eliot, long known as ‘the apostle of the North-American Red Men,’ and other Englishmen early in the seventeenth century, laboured to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ to the heathen natives of New England in their own Indian language, and in doing so, found it necessary to carry on civilisation with religion, and to instruct them in some of the arts of life. Their writings, and more particularly some of the tracts known as the ‘Eliot Tracts,’ aroused so much interest in London that the needs of the Indians of New England were brought before Parliament, and on July 27, 1649, an Act or Ordinance was passed with this title :—‘A Corporation for the Promoting and Propagating the Gospel of Jesus Christ in New England.’
The life and labours of John Eliot, together with those of his Nazing associates, occupy no small space in the evangelical annals of New England. As a pioneer and reformer, Eliot stands prominent among the settlers and founders of the New World, surrounded and supported by a galaxy of Essex Nonconformists of the purest type.
This chapter details John Wompas's youth in the town of Roxbury. Although Roxbury was an English town, it had a decidedly Indian side. Because Roxbury was the home of John Eliot, the “apostle to the Indians,” the town was a destination as well as a way station. It stood at the heart of the English effort to bring “civility” and Christianity to the Indians, a project that would frame much of John Wompas's life. John Eliot, Daniel Gookin, and colleagues from surrounding towns used several different approaches to converting and “civilizing” the Indians. These approaches include establishing Christian Indian towns, preparing Indians to form their own Puritan congregations, recruiting Indian children to live and work within English families, and shepherding a small number of Indian children through English grammar school to enroll at Harvard College.
New England Puritanism was decisive in preparing for the “Great Century of Missions.” Reaching the Native Americans was a leading rationale for the Puritans crossing the Atlantic in the first place. John Eliot established precedents that were looked to as models of missionary practice. David Brainerd joined Eliot as a model missionary, mostly through the writings of Jonathan Edwards, the last great Puritan. To that, Edwards added his emphasis on prayer and his theological struggles for an evangelistically minded Calvinism. His writings were key in teaching English Particular Baptists, among others, that God used means “for the conversion of the heathen.”
While working on the papers of Sir John Eliot at Port Eliot in St. Germans, Cornwall, I came across this interesting inventory of the personal property of the great parliamentary radical of the early seventeenth century. It is written in an official hand on a parchment roll thirty-two feet long, and is an inventory of his movables not only at Port Eliot but also at Cuttenbeake. In fact, a glance at this document will show that Cuttenbeake was the principal residence of the Eliots in the early seventeenth century, while Port Eliot at this time can hardly be considered in that light. This may be partially explained by the fact that Cuttenbeake was situated on a hill, while Port Eliot was half a mile away in the damp valley of the Tiddy River.
This chapter outlines some of the benefits of collaborative research. It draws on the experience gained and the lessons learned from close to a decade’s collaboration between the Fiske Center for Archaeological Research at the University of Massachusetts Boston and the Nipmuc Nation of Massachusetts. Close collaboration as part of the Hassanamesit Woods Project between Nipmuc archaeologist Dr. D. Rae Gould of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, a member of the Hassanamisco Nipmuc, and the author has resulted in numerous ontological shifts. One of the more noteworthy has been a reassessment of the history of the seventeenth-century “Praying Indian” communities of colonial Massachusetts and Connecticut that have always been viewed as having been “established” by English missionary John Eliot. Such a view, long held by historians and archaeologists alike, was challenged as an outgrowth of collaborative dialogue resulting in a reassessment of notions of community and deeper connections to traditional Nipmuc lands. As a result, research examined deeper connections between the seventeenth-century community of Hassanamesit and earlier Nipmuc use of the area. Through a series of analytical studies, it was determined that cultural and spatial continuity could be demonstrated between recent Nipmuc communities and a deeper past.
Origin of the New England Company, London, With an Account of its Labours on Behalf of the North-American Indians.