JOHN ELIOT - The Man who Loved the Indians

by Carleton Beals

A fictionalize biography of Rev. John Eliot, a Puritan minister who helped to establish the "Praying Indian" towns in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the 17th century.

192 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1957

About the author

From Wikipedia: Carleton Beals (November 13, 1893 – April 4, 1979) was an American journalist, writer, historian, and political activist with a special interest in Latin America.[1] A major journalistic coup for him was his interview with the Nicaraguan rebel Augusto Sandino in February 1928.[2] In the 1920s he was part of the cosmopolitan group of intellectuals, artists, and journalists in Mexico City. He remained an active, prolific, and politically engaged leftist journalist and is the subject of a scholarly biography.[3]

Early years
Beals was born in Medicine Lodge, Kansas. His father, Leon Eli Beals (1864–1941), lawyer and journalist, was the stepson[4] of Carrie Nation,[5] the temperance movement advocate.[5] His mother was Elvina Sybilla Blickensderfer (1867–1954).[6] His brother, Ralph Leon Beals (1901–85), was the first anthropologist at University of California, Los Angeles.[7]

The family moved from Kansas when Beals was age three, and he attended school in Pasadena, California. After graduating from high school in 1911, he worked a variety of jobs while attending the University of California, Berkeley where he studied engineering and mining. He won the Bonnheim Essay Prize and the Bryce History Essay Prize.[8] After graduating in 1916,[9] cum laude,[8] he attended Columbia University on a graduate scholarship, earning a master's degree in 1917.[5]

Reviews

[Richard Subber · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an entertaining biography of the Puritan minister who was known during his lifetime (1604-1690) as the “Apostle to the Indians.” Rev. John Eliot was the colonial leader who was most influential in the founding of the “Praying Indian” towns in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Beals creates a fictionalized biography of convenient length. The narrative is filled with dialogue that is relevant to the story, but is, of course, completely inauthentic in the sense that there is only a fragmentary record of Eliot’s conversations with his fellow colonials and with American Indians. This isn’t a big deal. However, Beals’ conversational tone is not to my taste for serious biographical treatments.

John Eliot: The Man Who Loved The Indians is based on substantial research and offers a bibliography of 46 sources, including many that are well respected and well known to historians and students of the colonial period. There is a useful index.

Beals offers an appealing, if one-sided, complement to serious investigation of cultural and political dynamics in 17th century New England. Caveat: Beals, without apology, writes his story within the European context. To be sure, Waban and the other Indians are characters in the story.
Beals doesn’t spend a lot of time on the brutality of their demise.
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