Carleton Beals (1893–1979)

From book flap:

"In the early days of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, John Eliot battled intolerance and ignorance to help the Indians. He was the first to establish model communities for them, and his translation of the Bible into their language was one of the colossal achievements of the the seventeenth century.

As a boy in England John Eliot loved all people—even the vagrants who came to his father's farm. Fulfilling a gypsy prophecy, he was ordained a minister but dared not preach, for his views were too liberal. To remain in England meant tyranny or death. Escaping the king's spies, he sailed for Massachusetts with the desperate hope that Hannah, the girl he loved, would follow him.

Hannah followed him through years of hardship and danger. In Massachusetts Bay Colony the Indians plundered and murdered; there was a scourge of epidemics. But Eliot felt that the gravest danger was from internal strife. The very colonists who had rebelled against old world bigotry were intolerant of new ideas. Few shared his compassion for the Indians, but he persisted in trying to help them. Slowly, painfully, John Eliot overcame their suspicion and he won them completely when he learned their incredibly difficult language. Gradually they brought their problems to him and he established schools and towns for them. But all he had achieved was wiped out by the folly of his own people in King Philip's War.

Caught in a web of political chicanery, Eliot was charged with sedition by the English Crown. But he did not fear jail nor even torture so much as he feared that his life work had been in vain. The Bible, which had taken him ten years to translate into the Indian language, might never appear. His towns lay in rubble; he had brought despair to his family; he could save himself only by refuting his deepest convictions.

Here is an exciting book, fast paced and full of action yet provocative through the philosophy of a man whose ideas were centuries ahead of his time. His words were thunderbolts that shook the very foundations of English tyranny. His deeds lived on in thousands of Indian hearts."… (meer)

Carlton Beals style marries interesting anecdote with political history in an enjoyable educational mix. His comments on how American intervention in Nicaragua had a completely negative impact on the country but lined the pockets of wealthy Americans, sounded all too familiar, and reminds us how much work we need to do to reverse these unwelcome assaults on other countries. Of particular interest was his journey to meet and interview Sandini, and the trouble he gets into for doing it. A great slice of South America in the late twenties.… (meer)