ABSTRACT
This chapter demonstrates how Eliot's and Williams' political models, different though they may be, are both rooted in a seventeenth-century frame of interpretation as differing responses to the story of man's fall with Adam and his restoration with Christ. Eliot, whose writings suggest a man ever aware of message and audience, may not have been reporting the sachim's meaning exactly, or the sachim himself may have been giving the missionary the words he knew he wanted to hear. The chapter focuses on the Indian writings reflects contemporary interest in the lives of the Indians, their physical appearance, and their polities. For Williams the primary source will be A Key to the Language of America, his Indian vocabulary augmented with detailed observations on their lives and customs. However, when Eliot and Williams are reproducing or imagining religious conversations with and between the non-Christian or newly converted Indians, it is notable that the story of Adam's creation and fall is absolutely central.
