On Oct. 28, 1646, The Rev. John Eliot, the minister of First Church Roxbury, gave his second missionary sermon to local indigenous people.

His first attempt the previous month in Neponset had not gone very well. But he was ready to try a new location: a Nipmuc village called Nonantum (today’s Newton Corner).

He was joined by three other Englishmen and a native interpreter. The English asked the Massachusett: if they saw a great wigwam, would they think it was built by raccoons, or built by a great workman, even if they could not see him?

Thus began Eliot’s mission to evangelize the native peoples of what would become known as Massachusetts. One of those Nipmuc he met in Nonantum was Waban, a tribal leader. Until 2025, the Newton City Seal depicted Eliot evangelizing Waban and his compatriots.

Eliot had not come to the Massachusetts Bay Colony to be a missionary. Rather, like other Puritans, he had come to freely practice a strict, austere form of Protestant Christianity.

The Puritans were technically still members of the Church of England, unlike their neighbors to the south in Plymouth. But the election of a new Archbishop of Canterbury in 1633 brought changes to the established church that Puritans could not abide by–things that they thought were reminiscent of the Roman Catholic faith, which they found idolatrous, like candlesticks on the altar.

Many of them left England. But in their new land, they met people who had no Christian faith at all. This would not do. But until Eliot, no minister was willing to volunteer to evangelize; there were several failed attempts to find volunteers in 1644 and 1645. Eliot, however, quickly warmed to his new role.

He visited Nonantum again several times in the fall of 1646. The General Court began to pass laws fining the Nipmuc for violating the expectations of good Puritans. The Puritans were horrified that Nipmuc men regularly beat their wives, and that women did most of the agricultural labor while men were idle. They were also horrified by men having long hair, women having short hair, women being shirtless and men and women having premarital sex.

Waban was responsible for enforcing new rules. He would become an evangelist, although he would later confess that he was not sure if he truly believed.

Not everyone, of course, wanted to become a Christian, and this divided families. The Puritans told them that love for a Christian stranger was greater than love for a non-Christian relative. Many did convert; although not necessarily solely from a love of Jesus. Some Nonantum Nipmuc saw how much land the English had already taken from the natives and hoped that if they listened to the English and prayed, more land would not be taken. The promise of literacy was also alluring. Some saw the English books and wanted to be able to read themselves. And Waban sent his son to a school in Dedham.

Eliot would not only arrange for the Nipmuc to be taught to read English. He would also learn the Massachusett language, and over 14 years, translate the entire Bible into it. This was a language that was notoriously difficult for an English speaker to learn: Cotton Mather said that demons that knew Greek, Hebrew and Latin could not learn Massachusett. But Eliot managed it, and the first Bible printed in British North America was one in Massachusett.

He also removed the Nipmuc from their home: in Natick, he set up the first of what would become known as ‘Praying Towns,’ where Christian natives could relocate. He hoped that they could be self-governing Christians like the English were; but his fellow colonists were suspicious of their ability to do so.

Christian colonizers throughout the Americas wanted to evangelize the peoples they met. But Eliot had a unique reason to do so that Catholic and Anglican missionaries did not. In 1642, a fellow Puritan named Oliver Cromwell had overseen the execution of King Charles I. Eliot was pleased: he was opposed to the British monarchy, and he thought the correct governance system would be based solely on the laws of Israel as depicted in the Old Testament. He also saw this as the beginning of the new millennium, during which Jesus would come to rule on Earth.

While he initially thought that the new millennium would begin in England, after careful study of Scripture, he came to the conclusion that it would actually begin in New England. He also concluded that the native peoples were descendants of one of the lost tribes of Israel. Other Protestant ministers at the time thought that the new millennium could not come until Jews had been evangelized to Christianity. The Rev. John Cotton even argued that evangelizing the native people should only come after the evangelization of the Jews.

But Eliot’s argument was that, in fact, it could come through the evangelization of the native people in the Americas, since they were descendants of the Israelites. Some of this can be seen in the confessions of faith the Nipmuc made before the church elders of Roxbury. “God made his Covenant with Abraham, and with all the seed of Abraham: now I desire to have this Covenant, and to receive this Commandement [sic] of Christ. Abraham was strong in faith, and followed Christ; and my heart doth desire to follow Christ, because he hath dyed [sic] for us,” said Monotunkquanit.

Waban, along with many other indigenous people from the Praying Towns, was imprisoned on Deer Island during King Philip’s War. He was released in 1676, and he died nine years later.

Eliot died in 1690, after a long life of mission. Shortly before he died, he donated land for the Eliot School in Jamaica Plain, still open today, and hoped it would enroll black and native children alongside white ones. In the 21st century, his Bible translation has been used to revive the Massachusett language.