John G. Paton: Missionary to the New Hebrides, An Autobiography

The famous Paton stories — the missionary who would rather be “eaten by cannibals” than die safe at home, the night his attackers turned away as if stopped by unseen guardians — come from Paton himself. His autobiography (1889) is the firsthand account of his mission to the New Hebrides, the loss of his wife and child on Tanna, and the winning of the island of Aniwa.

It's the primary source the modern children's biographies retell — here in a clean modern edition, with the original linked free.

John G. Paton: Missionary to the New Hebrides is the autobiography of the Scottish Presbyterian missionary John Gibson Paton, first published in 1889 and edited by his brother James. It recounts his mission to the New Hebrides (modern Vanuatu) in the South Pacific — the dangers among peoples then practicing cannibalism, the early death of his first wife and infant son on the island of Tanna, years of peril and apparent failure, and at last the fruitful work on the island of Aniwa.

The book moves from Paton's devout upbringing in a Scottish weaver's family and his years as a city missionary in Glasgow to his decision, in 1858, to offer himself for the South Seas despite urgent warnings. Much of the narrative is the drama of the field: threats on his life, the loss of his family, the slow learning of a language no European had written down, and the digging of a well on rainless Aniwa that astonished the islanders and opened the way for the gospel.

It is one of the most gripping and best-loved missionary autobiographies in English — adventure, grief, perseverance, and faith, told in Paton's own plain voice. The many later children's biographies of Paton retell the story found here.

John Gibson Paton (1824–1907) was a Scottish-born Presbyterian missionary. Raised in a devout home and trained through years of city-mission work in Glasgow, he offered himself for the New Hebrides in 1858. Famously warned that he would be eaten by cannibals, he is said to have replied that it made little difference whether he was eaten by cannibals or by worms — either way he would rise in the resurrection.

His was a missionary calling rather than a dramatic conversion; the drama is the mission. He buried his wife and child within months on Tanna and was repeatedly driven out and threatened, before settling on Aniwa, where his patient work, his translation of Scripture into the Aniwan language, and the celebrated digging of a well led the island to profess Christianity. He spent his later years raising support and recruits for the New Hebrides mission.