This is the second edition of John Eliot’s famous “Indian Bible,” the first Bible printed in North America. Eliot (1604–1690) was a Puritan minister who immigrated to Boston in 1631. He became heavily involved in Christian missionary work among local native tribes and, with significant help from native linguists, began translating parts of the Bible into Wôpanâak. This language, sometimes known as Massachusett, is part of the Algonquian family of languages. He completed his translation of both the Old and New Testaments in 1663. This copy of the second edition, published in 1685, belonged to several prominent clergymen in Massachusetts’s early history, including the first secretary of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.