Saving a Language

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The title page of MIT’s second-edition copy of the Eliot Indian Bible, which was published in 1685. The two editions of the Eliot Indian Bible were the first--and only--Bibles printed in America until the Revolutionary War disrupted transAtlantic commerce. Credit: Courtesy of Jeffrey Mifflin

Eliot wanted the Native Americans to give up the ways of their ancestors and adopt those of "civilized" European Christians; indeed, some of his translations smack of propaganda, such as his use of the native term for a person in charge of indigenous religious ceremonies as the word for "witch." And his cause was aided by epidemics that ravaged Native American communities, leaving survivors demoralized and disconnected from their culture. By 1675, about 20 percent of New England's Native Americans had converted to Christianity.

The encroachment of European culture and religion angered the Wampanoag sachem Metacomet, called King Philip by the English. Metacomet was particularly enraged when Eliot's sometime assistant John Sassamon attempted to convert him at the Englishman's behest. Sassamon's body turned up in a frozen pond, three Wampanoags were tried and executed for his murder, and in 1675, the tensions erupted into what became known as King Philip's War.

By the time English militias crushed the uprising in 1676, most of Eliot's Bibles had been destroyed; just 37 are known to exist. So Eliot had the Bible reset and published a second edition in 1685. One of at least 53 surviving second-edition copies ended up in the special collections of MIT's archives, a gift from I. Austin Kelly '26.

Wôpanâak, a language almost identical to Massachusett, had not been used for 150 years when the MIT linguist's chapter of the story got off to its bumpy start. A year after her first vision, Baird helped organize a meeting of Mashpee and Aquinnah tribe members interested in reclaiming Wôpanâak. She was somewhat taken aback when a man who was clearly not a citizen of either tribe addressed the assembly on the possibilities of using native-language texts to rediscover the lost language. She'd never met Ken Hale, who spoke more than 50 languages and had an uncanny ability to absorb new ones quickly. And she didn't know that he was a tireless advocate for cultural preservation who believed that letting a language go extinct was like "dropping a bomb on a museum." So when he made an absent-minded error in discussing Wôpanâak, Baird pounced on his mistake and made it clear that he wasn't welcome.

Two years later, Baird got a fellowship to study at MIT. Seeking an advisor, she discovered that the professor whose research interests matched hers was Hale. Given her earlier inhospitable behavior, she was apprehensive about making an appointment to see him. But Hale, who remembered the incident well, apologized for what he called his own rudeness. Their effort to restore Wôpanâak to its 17th-century richness began immediately. Thus Hale (a descendant of Rhode Island founder Roger Williams) and Baird (a descendant of Nathan Pocknett, an 18th-century Wampanoag opposed to the colonists' missionary work) became collaborators and close friends.