[1] The book is the first published colonial study of a Native American language in English.

He believed that the king had no right to grant title to Indian land without paying for it.

He interacted extensively with the Narragansett and Wampanoag tribes as a missionary, friend, and trader.

According to J. Patrick Cesarini, Williams also published the book to rebut Massachusetts' distorted claims in New England's First Fruits (1643) about the first Indian conversions to Christianity (particularly that of Wequash Cooke, a Pequot in Connecticut Colony) and to thereby halt Massachusetts Bay's claims to Rhode Island's territory.

[3] The book helped to popularize and introduce numerous American Indian loan words into the English lexicon,[4] including: