Importance and Impact

The Cambridge Printing Press is important because it printed the first Bible translated into a Native American language, and it printed the first Bible in the United States. The John Eliot Bible was the only Bible printed in an indigenous language until 1862 (Dippold).

Printing the Algonquian Bible was critical to John Eliot’s mission to convert indigenous peoples to Christianity and introduce them to European culture. The significance of the Bible is evident in Eliot’s writings to England, “Because there were no books in the Massachusetts’ own language, he realized that this plan involved teaching them all to write, and read written hand (handwriting)—a comment that took into account the difficulty of reading script rather than print” (Monaghan 52). It was much easier to understand type rather than handwritten texts.

Eliot believed that learning indigenous language allowed Europeans to experience and appreciate new ways of understanding language and expand their own linguistic world. By printing this Bible, Eliot created a medium where Europeans could learn from Native Americans and vice versa.

While some of this indoctrination was voluntary, it is also important to mention the pain and suffering Native Americans have experienced and continue to experience because of European settler colonialism. The reasoning behind many atrocities committed by white Europeans was because they saw themselves as the more civilized and distinguished race. Native American history is American history, and I do not want the genocide committed to be drowned out by the technological accomplishments of Europeans.