The New Testament of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (trans. into the Indian language by John Eliot, 1604-1690)

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The New Testament of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (trans. into the Indian language by John Eliot, 1604-1690)

Printer Samuel Green and Marmaduke Johnson, Cambridge, Mass

Place of OriginUnited States

Date1661

MediumPrinted book

ClassificationBooks

Credit LinePurchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey

Object number

1946.16

Not on View

Label TextPuritan missionary John Eliot immigrated to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1631 and began studying the language of the local Algonquin peoples. In the mid-1640s Eliot enlisted the help of a young Native American man named Cockenoe, who had been captured in 1637 during the war between the Pequot tribe and English colonists allied with the Narragansett and Mohegan tribes. The Pequot were defeated, with hundreds killed and hundreds more sold into slavery in the West Indies. Cockenoe himself was forced to become a slave in the household of an English colonist. With Cockenoe’s assistance, Eliot began translating Christian Bible scriptures into the Massachusett language with the intention of converting Algonquin tribes to Christianity using a language they understood. By 1663 Eliot had translated the full Bible into Massachusett, a language spoken today by only about 15 people. Produced at the first print shop established in the American Colonies (which had been set up by Elizabeth Glover in 1638 and owned by her until her death in 1643), it was the first Bible printed in the Americas.Exhibition HistoryToledo Museum of Art, The Art of the Bible, The Bible as Art, Hitchcock Gallery, Nov, 2001-Jan. 2002.