Sources and Interpretations

John Eliot's "A breif History of the Mashepog Indians," 1666

J. Patrick Cesarini

The native Christian church at Mashpee in Plymouth Colony was formally established in 1670. Yet an equally important event in the church's history occurred in July 1666, when a group of seven praying Indians made their public confessions before an audience of referees that included Governor Thomas Prence, several Plymouth magistrates, and a group of ministers and church officers from neighboring towns. Until now the only nearly contemporaneous account of this event in print was Nathaniel Morton's brief description in New-England's Memorial, first published in 1669. Morton described the proceedings in general terms, naming only some of the English participants and none of the Indians, but carefully reported that the occasion's expected outcome had not been achieved. He explained that the "judicious persons" present decided that the Mashpee Indians' confessions should be written down, copied, and distributed to neighboring Plymouth churches for their approval prior to granting church fellowship to them. Morton concluded by declaring his confidence that "the Passages of these things will be in due time published by a better Pen." The better pen—or one of them—turns out to have belonged to John Eliot, who was present at and instrumental in the Mashpee enchurching on July 11, 1666, and who produced most of the account he titled "A breif History of the Mashepog Indians" (Figure I).1	1
Figure I Title page from John Eliot's "A breif History of the Mashepog Indians." Courtesy, Royal Society, London.
Robert Boyle, the presumed recipient of the account, was a founder of the Royal Society and, from 1662 to 1689, the governor of the Company for Propagation of the Gospel in New England. The New England Company (as it was known), in concert with the commissioners of the New England Federation, oversaw the funding of the Puritan mission to the Indians and the publication of works related to it. As the mission's de facto spokesman in the colonies, Eliot was in frequent contact with Boyle. He probably expected that the company would publish his manuscript because, like the gathering of the first Indian church at Natick (Eliot's two accounts of which the company published in 1653 and 1660), the gathering of a new Indian church at Mashpee was an important event. But beginning in the 1660s, the company shifted its publishing emphasis from texts aimed at English readers and intended to garner contributions toward the New England missions to texts aimed at Indian readers, which would more directly foster the native Christians' spiritual development.2 Though Eliot and his assistant, Daniel Gookin, later wrote several other narrative accounts of the mission's progress that were intended for an English readership, the society only published one more of these tracts, Eliot's 1670 A Brief Narrative of the Progress of the Gospel.	. . .