abstractOccom records his travels from 6 December 1743, to 29 November
1748.
handwritingOccom's hand is clear and legible.
paperSeveral small sheets folded into a booklet and bound with thread
or twine are in good-to-fair condition, with light-to-moderate staining,
creasing
and wear.
inkDark-brown ink is faded in spots.
noteworthyOn one recto and 24 verso, there are doodles and scribbles,
as well as what appear to be handwriting exercises. On one recto, an editor,
likely 19th-century, adds the note: "Samson Occom's Journal from Dec.6.1743
to
Nov. 29. 1748—." This note has not been included in the transcription. On
four
recto, the identity of Mr. B is uncertain, and so he has been left untagged.
On
four verso, the identity of Da– O– is uncertain, and so he has been
left untagged. The latin sentence on five recto likely translates to: "My
mother
and her two children [or two of her children] came to remain at Mr. Wheelock’s
for
a time." On six recto, the identity of the "Queen" is uncertain, and so she
has
been left untagged. On six verso, it is uncertain as to whom "Deacon Wheelock"
refers and so he has been left untagged. It is uncertain for what "D:Inst."
is an
abbreviation, and so it has been left unexpanded in the modernized transcription.
Persons whose names are not legible have not been tagged.
I went to the Revd
Mr Wheelocks of Lebanon
Crank to Learn Som^e^ ting of the Latin tongue, and was there about a week, and was obliged to
[illegible]Come away from there again to Mohegan, and
Stayd
a bout Fortnight at mohgs and then I return'd up to Mr
Whees again. and Some time towards Spring again I went home to
Mohegan, and Stayed Near three weeks
before I return'd to Mr Wheelocks again. and
Auguſt the 7th A:D 1744 I wen^t^
a way from Lebanon to Mohegs and I got So far as Mr
Bs at
Norwitch that Night, & In the Morning I Sot out from thence, and I got home to
Mohegan
Juſt before Noon
Page 4v
2Auguſt the 13th
I went from
Mohegan to Nahantuck, and
viſited all the Indians, and I
Return'd Home again to Mohegs in the 16th of D Inſtant, and So
imedeatly up to Mr Wheelocks And September the 7th we So[illegible]t out from Lebanon for New- Haven, and we got there in the 10th of September, and there we had the ^plan^
of Seing the Scholar^s^
Commi^n^ſt, and we Return'd homeward again in the 12th of Sepr. and we Got home again in the 20th of D:Inſtant —
Novr the 7th AD: 174[illegible]4
Da– O– was taken Si[illegible]ck and I
went Down to See him in the 12 of D:Inſtant, and I Return'd again in the 17th of D:Inſtan^t^ to the Revd
Mr
weelock's —
3for Mohegan and I got there about Sun-Set and the next Day to Mothers at
bozrah — and in the
14th of D[illegible]
Inſt I return'd again ^to^ the Revd
Mr Wheelocks.
Febry the 23d
1744^[below]/5^
mater mea et Duo Libri Ejus venierunt ad Dominum Wheeloc^k^ manere ibi Tempori,
March ye
20th 1745
I went from Leba to Mohegan and I
there yt Ni[illegible]ght, and in the 4th of April AD: 1745Joſeph
John‐ſon and I went over to Groton — and there we Saw Joſept wa^[illegible][guess: u]^ the firſt time that ever I Saw him, and we Return'd home
a gain in the 6th of D:Inſtan^t^ and in the 11th of April I red home a gain up to Lebanon and June 24th AD 1745 I went Down to Mohegan and got there [illegible]that Day
^and was sick there^, and I retd again in the 14th of July to Leb
Page 5v
4Auguſt the 20th 1745
I went away from Leb– to Mohegan, and I return'd to Lebn again in 23 of D
Inſtant —
I Sot out from Lebn for
Mohegan[illegible] and ^got^ there Some
time before Night And in the 10th of Sepr we we Sot out from Mohegan for Nahantuck, and in the 12th of D:Inſtant we 'turd again to mohegan, and in
the 13th of Sepr
Page 6r
5Many of us Sot out from
Mohegan for Long-Isla and we got So far as New
London that Night, & in the Morning we Sot Sail from there, and we got t[illegible]o
the Place of our
Deſire in the Evening, and Some of us Lodg'd at Quee^ns^
Wigwaum that Night, and there we were very kindly Entertain'd by all of 'em, we had Several Meetings togather, and there was Some Stir amon^g^
'em
,— And in the 18th
Sepr We all Return'd home
a gain to Mohegan, and to Several
Places where we belong'd, and we didnt get home till
^the^19th of S
Sepr
Some tim in the Evening, And I [illegible]went
we Sot out from Lebanon Crank for
windham, and we got there at night, and
I Lodg'd at Deacon Wheelock's yt Night, and the Next day at windham, and in ye18th of Decer between 2 & 3 o' Clock in the after Noon,
the Poor Girl was Executed, and I went right
home to
Lebanon that Day —
May the 2d AD 1746
I Sot out from Crank for Mohegan, and I arived there about 3 o' Clock in the after Noon and I Return'd in 16th of may —
Auguſht the [illegible]d AD: 1746
I
Sot out from Lebanon for Mohe– and got there before Night — and Return'd again in the 8th of
Auguſt
Page 7r
7
[illegible]Auguſt the 26th AD: 1746
I went from Lebanon to mohe– and got there the Same day — And I Return'd to L– again the 27th of D Inſt —April ye
ye
6th 1747 went from [illegible]Leba– to Mohegan and got
at Night —
I went from L: to mohe. and got there the Same Day —
Tueſday
NAuguſt
ye
26th
I Return'd to Lebanon — From Laſt Spring to this Time I have Loſt 11 weeks
Novr
ye
2d
went from L: to
Mohegan — and Return'd to
L: again, the 9th of Sd
Inſt
Novr
ye
10th
I Left Leba–C: and went Down to Some parts of New-London, and
kep School there at ye wind‐ter
—
March the 12 AD 1748
I went up to Lebanon C:, & and got there about 3 'o C
Page 8r
9 in the after Noon — and March the 14thSir Maltby and I Sot very Early in the Morning from L:C: for Hebron, and
got there a bout 8 'o C: — And March the 16th I Sot out from Hebron for Mohegs and got there be -^at^fore Night — and Came up again to Hebron the 18th of Sd
I–
May the 22d
I went from H:n Down to Mohegan
— and ret:
tto
Hebron again ^in^ the
[illegible]2d of June —
June 17th
went from
Hebron to Mohegan — and
Return'd again in the 22d of
Sd
Inſt —
I Sot out from
Mr
Pomroy's to Lebanon,
Intending to Set out from thence to Boſton; But I was Diſappointed, and So turn'd
Page 9r
my Courſe to Mr Wheelock's; and Fryday
Novemr
ye 18 I Sot out from Mr Wheelock's for Boſton, and got So far Mr Bingham's [illegible]in
Windham, and Lodg'd there and was Very kindly Entertain'd, and Saturd–
Novemr the 19th
Sot out from thence on my Journey, and Stop't at Mr Moſley's in ScotLand, about one hour, and then went on and ^got^ So far as Mr William's in Pomfret,
and there taried over the Sabbath, and was Exceedingly Well Treated all the while I Stay'd there —
Nover the 21 Monday Morning
I Sot out from Pomfret on my Journey
Still and got So far as Hill's which is 30 Miles this Side Boſton —
Tueſday
Nover the 22d
as Soon as it was Day we Sot out from thence onward, and I Left my Company by ye way, and I got to Rockſbury
be- 2 & 3 O' C. in the after Noon So
Strait to Boſton; and Return^d^ to Roxbury in the Evening and
Page 9v
Lodg'd at Capt Williamss & was
Entertain'd with all kindneſs
&c —
Saturday Novr the 26th,
I Left
Roxbury, and Returnd Home‐ward, and So far as Natick at Night, and Lodg'd at
Decn Ephraims, and was kin^‐^dly Receivd and Entertaind, & Next Day I went to their
Publicl
worſhip, and found too much Levity as I thought and Monday I to viſiting
a[illegible]
amongſt them and [illegible] found all very kind to a
Stranger,
The first English immigrant to settle on a peninsula in a
harbor on the northeastern coast of North America the local Algonquin Indians
called "Shawmet" was William Blackstone in 1629. A year later, John Winthrop
arrived with a group of English Puritans and other settlers and named the area
Boston after his hometown in Lincolnshire, England. The colony quickly
developed representative political institutions that would help shape a
democratic nation. Over the next few centuries, Boston emerged as an
intellectual and educational center, and, because of its excellent harbor,
became a leading commercial hub and a primary port for North America. It is the
capital and largest city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and the largest
city in New England. Boston was the home for the Boards of Commissioners of
several overseas religious societies who sent missionaries throughout the
colonies in the 18th century, and was the site of many important events of the
American Revolution.
Mohegan is a village in southeastern Connecticut at the site
of the present-day town of Montville, and is the location of the Mohegan Indian
Reservation. The village gets its name from the Mohegan Tribe, or wolf people,
who split from the Pequots in the early 17th century under the leadership of
the sachem Uncas. In the 1720s, the Mohegans requested the colony of
Connecticut provide them with an English educator. An English minister and
schoolteacher named John Mason (no relation to Captain John Mason) moved to
Mohegan in order to provide English-styled education to the Mohegans, convinced
his sponsors, the New England Company, to build a schoolhouse at Mohegan, which
eventually served as a boarding school for other Native American children from
the surrounding area. During the 17th century, the Mohegan Tribe became
embroiled in a complicated controversy over control of Mohegan land — known as
the Mason Land Case or, more specifically, Mohegan Indians v. Connecticut —
that included the village of Mohegan. The Tribe claimed that it never
authorized a transfer of their lands, held in trust by the Mason family, to the
colonial government. In 1662, the colony of Connecticut was incorporated by a
royal charter, which included the disputed tribal land. The land controversy
was revived in 1704 when descendants of John Mason, the original trustee,
petitioned the Crown on behalf of the Mohegans, but the suit was finally
decided against the Tribe in 1773. Born in Mohegan, Occom became involved in
the Mason Land Case and vehemently argued for the rights of the Mohegan Indians
to maintain their land, opposing Eleazar Wheelock and other ministers in the
area. Although Occom left Mohegan for a 12-year mission with the Montauk
Indians of Long Island, he returned at the end of 1763 with his large family to
build a house in Mohegan, establishing it as his base of operations. Even after
the creation of the Brothertown settlement in Oneida country, for which he
served as minister, Occom continued to commute back and forth from Mohegan; he
didn't sell his house in Mohegan and move his family to Brothertown until 1789.
Many members of his family remained in Mohegan, including his sister Lucy
Tantaquidgeon, who lived there until her death at 99 in 1830.
Lebanon is a town located in the state of Connecticut
southwest of the town of Hartford. The land that became Lebanon was inhabited
at least 10,000 years ago based on the archeological record. By the 1600s, the
land was permanently inhabited by the Mohegan Indians, who used the area
primarily for hunting. Lebanon was officially formed in 1700 when English
settlers consolidated a number of land tracts, including several land grants by
the Connecticut General Assembly and lands purchased from the Mohegans.
However, these purchases were controversial. In 1659, the Mohegans entrusted
their reserve land to Major John Mason, and in the following year, Mason
transferred this land to the Connecticut colonial government with the
understanding that there would be enough land left for the Mohegans to farm.
The Mohegans claimed that they never authorized a transfer to the colonial
government and only Mason’s heirs were entrusted with their land. In 1662,
Connecticut, which included the Mohegan land that had been entrusted to the
Masons, was incorporated by a royal charter. Based on this charter, the colony
argued that the land was now the property of the government. In 1687, the
colony began granting the Mohegan land to townships, and in 1704 the Masons
petitioned the Crown on behalf of the Mohegans, claiming that such transfers of
land to townships were illegal. Between the years of 1705 and 1773 legal
disputes and controversies persisted, finally ending in a verdict by the Crown
against the Mohegans. In 1755, Wheelock received property and housing in
Lebanon that he would use as his house and school. While Lebanon was originally
incorporated as a part of New London County in 1700, in 1724 it became a part
of New Windham, before once again becoming a part of New London County in 1826.
Lebanon was central to the American Revolution with half of its adult
population fighting for the colonists and hundreds of meetings convened in the
town for the revolutionary cause.
Lebanon Crank was the name of an area in the northwest part
of the town of Lebanon, Connecticut, on both sides of the Hop River, which was
created by the Connecticut legislature in 1716, in response to the demand of
residents who did not want to travel to the First Church in Lebanon proper for
services. It was also known as Lebanon North Parish and the Second Society or
Second Church in Lebanon, names that refer to religious organizations of the
Congregational Church. The two dozen families who started the parish built
their first meetinghouse near the site of the present structure, around which
the religious and political life of the community revolved. Eleazar Wheelock
served as minister in this parish from 1735 to 1769, and his house, built
around 1735, is the oldest building still standing. Lebanon Crank played a
major role in his life. It was his base of operations when he became an
itinerant mininster during the religious awakenings of the 1730s and 1740s, and
he presided over a revival in the Second Church in 1740. His Indian Charity
school was located nearby in Lebanon, and his students attended the Second
Church in Lebanon Crank as part of their education. The parish was so invested
in Wheelock's School that they tried to keep him from moving it up to New
Hampshire when he founded Dartmouth College, but failed. Lebanon Crank was
subsequently renamed Columbia and established as a separate town in May
1804.
Groton is a town located in southeastern Connecticut between
the Thames and Mystic Rivers. This land was originally settled by the Niantic
tribe, who were forced out in the early 1600s by the Pequots. During the Pequot
War in 1637, Captain John Mason’s soldiers and Indian allies attacked the
Pequot’s Mystic fort, burning down the fort, killing mostly women and children,
and largely displacing the Pequots. John Winthrop Jr. and his Puritan followers
first settled Groton in 1646 as part of New London. In 1705, the General Court
allowed the Groton inhabitants to incorporate as a separate town due to its
increased population. The town was named Groton after Winthrop’s England
estate. Farming, shipbuilding, and maritime trading sustained the Groton
economy throughout the eighteenth century. Beginning in 1712, land disputes
between the Connecticut government and the Pequot tribe in Groton ensued, and
the Pequots sent many petitions and grievances to the Connecticut government.
Legal battles concerning the colonists’ leasing of the 1,700 acres on which the
Pequots lived continued throughout the 18th century, as missionaries came to
the area to teach religion and establish schools. After the Revolutionary War,
many Groton Pequots joined other Connecticut tribes and moved to the
Brothertown settlement in upstate New York.
Windham is a town in Windham County in the northeastern
corner of Connecticut. Historically, the area was home to the Nipmuck Indians,
but when the English began to settle Connecticut in 1634, possession of what
would become Windham passed to the Pequots. In 1637, following the Pequot War,
the English-allied Mohegans took possession of the area and eventually sold
what would become Windham County to John Winthrop Jr. in 1652. The town of
Windham, named for Wyndham in England, is at the southwest corner of this land
purchase and was incorporated in 1692. Eleazar Wheelock was born in Windham in
1711, the son of a prominent farming family. He lived on his family’s 300-acre
farm until leaving for Yale in 1729. After graduating and moving to to Lebanon,
CT–-a mere 6 miles from Windham-–Wheelock often returned to his hometown to
preach and do other business. When Wheelock needed support to advance his
“great design,” he turned to his friends in Windham, many of whom were members
of the Windham Association, a group of Congregationalist ministers who examined
and ordained area ministers. The Windham Association examined Occom in
preparation for his ordination in 1757 at Wheelock’s Lebanon home. Like
Wheelock, Occom also travelled through and preached in Windham throughout his
life. After a period of growth due to mills and textile factories, Windham was
incorporated as a city in 1893. A village within the modern-day city of Windham
still keeps its Algonquin name, Willimantic or “land of the swift running
water.”
Hebron is a town located in central Connecticut, on the
Connecticut River. The area was occupied by the Mohegan Tribe in the 17th
century. During the Pequot War, the Mohegans under Chief Uncas allied with the
English against the Pequots, and after the war, the Mohegans fought neighboring
tribes with the help of the English. Following these battles, Chief Uncas and
his two sons, Owaneco and Attawanhood (who was also known as Joshua), deeded
particular Mohegan land to the English colonists. Attawanhood and Oweneco
further aided the English settlers during Metacom’s War, and upon his death,
Attawanhood’s will granted the land that would comprise Hebron to a variety of
English colonists. The first English settlers of the deeded land came from
Windsor, Saybrook, Long Island, and Northampton; the town of Hebron was
eventually incorporated in 1704. But because some of those who were granted the
land did not settle there and because of some Mohegan resistance, the town was
slow to grow. With the help of the local government, the town grew large enough
by 1711 to sustain a meeting house and a minister. A letter written in 1764 to
the Committee of Correspondents with the Scotch Society appoints a number of
representatives for the organization within Connecticut, including Benjamin
Pomroy from Hebron. In 1768, missionary Aaron Kinne wrote a letter to Wheelock,
who was staying in Hebron, to inform him of the state of the Indians in the
Kanawalohale Indian School in upstate New York. Also, in a 1771 letter to his
father Eleazar, Ralph Wheelock expresses his sorrow at the loss of his brother
but informs him that all else is well in Hebron where he recently
visited.
New London is a city located in southeastern Connecticut
along an estuary of the Atlantic Ocean called Long Island Sound. The area that
would become New London was inhabited by the Pequots who called it Nameaug when
the Europeans arrived in North America. Pequot villages bordered Long Island
Sound and the Tribe had authority over the neighboring Tribes of the Mohegans
and Niantics (all Algonquian-speaking tribes). The Dutch first explored this
land in 1614 and established trade with the Native peoples, but the English
soon gained possession of the land east of the Hudson in the 1630s. English
animosity toward their Indian neighbors led to the Pequot War (1634-38), part
of which took place in the present city of New London. The Pequots lost the war
and their population deteriorated due to the violence and disease. The General
Court of Massachusetts granted John Winthrop possession of Pequot territory in
1644 after which it was to be opened for settlement. By 1646, which is
considered the official year of its founding, New London had permanent colonial
inhabitants and municipal laws, and jurisdiction was granted to the colony of
Connecticut in 1647. In 1658, the inhabitants renamed the town New London after
London, England. New London was the colony of Connecticut’s first trading port
and was a hub of trade with the West Indies and other colonies. Though
initially part of the town of New London when it was first settled by the
colonists, Groton, Montville, and Waterford were each separated from New London
in 1705, 1786, and 1801 respectively. Present-day Salem was also part of New
London when it was settled, but in 1819, it became a separate incorporated town
composed of parts of Lyme, Colchester, and Montville. Occom kept a school in
New London in the winter in 1748. New London was the home of Captain Nathaniel
Shaw, one of the wealthiest merchants in the area, who gave money to Occom in
the 1750s for the missionary cause and also sold materials to Occom for the
building of his home. However, their positive relationship ended when Shaw
refused to provide supplies for Mary Occom while Occom was in England. New
London served as the port from which Occom and other missionaries traveled to
reach Long Island. During the American Revolution, New London’s location and
its status as a seaport made it both vulnerable to invasion and integral to
colonial naval operations as well as the exchange of prisoners.New London was
incorporated as a city in 1784.
New Haven is a city in south central Connecticut on New Haven
Harbor and the Long Island Sound. The Quinnipiac Indians, specifically the
Momauguin band of the Algonquin-speaking Tribe, were the area’s original
inhabitants. The Quinnipiacs lived along the banks of Connecticut's many
rivers; fittingly, Quinnipiac means long water country. After Dutch explorer
Adrian Block first sailed up the Connecticut River in 1614, Quinnipiac lands
and peoples began to dwindle, especially as English settlement expanded. In
1638, Reverend John Davenport and Theophilus Eaton, a London merchant, sailed
into New Haven Harbor from Massachusetts Bay Colony and formally established
New Haven as a Puritan settlement. Though he did not have a royal charter for
his new colony, Davenport signed a treaty with Quinnipiac sachem Momauguin in
1738, which gave the English formal ownership over the land. Davenport had left
Massachusetts in the midst of the Anne Hutchinson controversy, likely coming to
Connecticut to found his own Puritan theocracy. New Haven existed as its own
colony distinct from Connecticut until 1665, when Charles II united the two
under the Colony of Connecticut. From then on, New Haven referred to the city
specifically, which in 1701 became the co-capital of Connecticut along with
Hartford. In 1716, the college that would become Yale, where Eleazar Wheelock
received his degree in 1733, moved to its permanent home in New Haven. From its
creation, Yale was committed to training Christian missionaries; several of
Wheelock’s Anglo-American missionaries studied at Yale while many of his
Anglo-American students from Moor’s went on to study there. Wheelock took Occom
to New Haven in 1744 to see Yale's commencement exercises, but due to terrible
eye strain, Occom never attended the College. Because New Haven was the
co-capital of Connecticut, any of Occom's or Wheelock’s dealings with the
Colony of Connecticut often involved New Haven. By the Revolutionary War, the
city had a population of 3,500, almost none of whom were Quinnipiac Indians.
New Haven remained co-capital of Connecticut until 1873, when it lost to
Hartford in what is known as the "single capital contest."
Niantic is a village located in East Lyme, a seaside town in
southeast Connecticut on the Long Island Sound. The land was occupied by the
Niantic tribe when the Europeans arrived. The Dutch claimed the area in the
17th century, but when the British claimed this same land as part of their
colonies, the Dutch forfeited it to the British in a 1627 trade agreement. The
village housed both preachers and a schoolhouse, and missionaries came to the
village for the purpose of converting and assimilating the tribe. This effort
intensified in the 1740s with the influence of the First Great Awakening.
Increasingly dispersed and dispossessed of land, many Niantic Indians followed
Occom and Joseph Johnson to upstate New York in the 1770's where they settled
Brothertown.
Norwich is a city in New London County in the southeast
corner of Connecticut. It was founded in 1659 when Major John Mason and
Reverend James Fitch led English settlers inland from Old Saybrook, CT, on the
coast. They bought land from Uncas, sachem of the local Mohegan tribe, and
divided it into farms and businesses mainly in the three-mile area around the
Norwichtown Green. In 1668, a wharf was built at Yantic Cove and in 1694 a
public landing was built at the head of the Thames River, which allowed trade
with England to flourish. The center of Norwich soon moved to the neighborhood
around the harbor called "Chelsea." During the revolutionary period, when
transatlantic trade was cut off, Norwich developed large mills and factories
along the three rivers that cross the town: the Yantic, Shetucket and Thames,
and supported the war effort by supplying soldiers, ships, and munitions.
Norwich was the largest town in the vicinity in which Occom, Wheelock and their
associates lived and worked, and it was possible to get there by water because
of the harbor and access to the Long Island Sound. Lebanon, CT, the site of
Wheelock's school, is 11 miles north and present-day Uncasville, the center of
the Mohegan tribe, is a few miles south of Norwich. James Fitch did missionary
work among the Mohegans in Norwich until his death in 1702, and Samuel
Kirkland, the most important Protestant missionary to the Six Nations trained
by Wheelock, was born in Norwich in 1741. On his evangelical tour of North
America in 1764, George Whitefield planned to travel to Norwich to meet with
Wheelock. The Connecticut Board of Correspondents of the Scottish Society for
the Propagation of Christian Knowledge frequently met in Norwich, and many
letters by people involved in the missionary efforts of Wheelock were written
from Norwich.
Lyme is a town in southern Connecticut located along the
Connecticut River. The Niantic tribe inhabited the area when, around 1590, the
Pequot Indians displaced them. The area that became Lyme was founded as part of
the Saybrook settlement, which is located at the mouth of the Connecticut
River. The Earl of Warwick established Saybrook in 1631, but it was not yet
settled by the English. The Dutch purchased the Saybrook territory in 1633 from
local Native peoples, but in 1665, before the Dutch could fully occupy the
territory, Governor Winthrop of the colony of Connecticut sent armed men to
prevent the Dutch from holding the land. Subsequently, the English settled and
named the land Saybrook. In 1665, the land on the east bank of the Connecticut
River was formally separated from Saybrook, and the General Connecticut Court
named the separated land Lyme after the town of Lyme Regis in England. In 1669,
the colonists purchased an eight square mile area of river valley from a
Mohegan Indian named Chapeto and then purchased the Joshuatown area from the
son of the Mohegan sachem, Uncas. In 1839, East Lyme became a separate town,
and in 1854, Lyme was regionally divided into Old Lyme in the south and Lyme in
the north.
Windsor is a town located in central Connecticut north of
Hartford. The town is situated where the Farmington and Connecticut Rivers
meet. These rivers served as fishing sources, and a means of transportation for
the fur trade for the local River Indians, who called this place Matianuck. In
1631, the River Indians traveled to Massachusetts Bay Colony and Plymouth
hoping to create an alliance with colonists that would help protect them from
the powerful and aggressive Pequot and Mohawk tribes. The River Indians’
descriptions of the land that would become Windsor enticed the colonists to
settle in the area. This settlement occurred after the English colonists
learned that the Dutch had settled in Hartford; led by William Holmes, a group
of colonists in Plymouth journeyed to Connecticut to establish a trading post
in what would become Windsor in 1633. The town was incorporated in the same
year. The English named the settlement Dorchester. In 1636, the colony of
Connecticut authorized John Mason of Windsor to command an offensive against
the Pequot Indians during the Pequot War. This is the Mason to whom the
Mohegans entrusted their lands in what would become the important Mason Land
Case in which Occom was embroiled. Land in Windsor was divided among families,
and the town served as a significant port throughout the 17th and 18th
centuries. The land that made up Windsor was so vast (16,000 acres) that
townships continued to split from Windsor up until 1854.
Longmeadow is a town in southern Massachusetts at the
Connecticut border. The town was inhabited by Agawam Indians when William
Pynchon and other Puritans arrived in 1636. Pynchon purchased the land, which
was rich in beaver. The name Longmeadow is derived from the Agawam name
Magacksic, which literally means long meadow. In 1645, the long meadow of the
town was divided into lots, and around the same time settlers finished building
a road from Springfield, MA to the meadows in order to transport beaver pelts.
Longmeadow was considered a part of Springfield until 1703 when settlers began
to establish their own community in the area. In 1714, a former captive of the
1704 battle at Deerfield, Reverend Stephen Williams (the brother-in-law of
Wheelock’s first wife Sarah) was hired to serve as the minister for the first
church, which he did until his death in 1782. As homes continued to be built,
the population grew, and shops and businesses supplemented the farming economy
of the town. As the town increased in size, residents of Longmeadow pushed for
incorporation, but their plans were impeded by the outbreak of the American
Revolution. Many residents of Longmeadow fought as both Tories and Patriots
during the Revolutionary War. In 1783, the new Commonwealth of Massachusetts
incorporated Longmeadow. In 1894, the East Village of Longmeadow split from the
town and formed East Longmeadow.
Enfield is a town located in Connecticut on the Massachusetts
border in present day Hartford County. The Dutch were the first Europeans
encountered by Native Americans in the Enfield area, but soon the English
colonized the land. In 1674, the General Court of Massachusetts gave land to
the town of Springfield that stretched into present day Enfield. The town was
officially incorporated in 1683, and in 1688, the people purchased the town
from Notatuck, a Podunk Indian, for 25 pounds sterling. Within a century after
the arrival of Europeans, the native inhabitants of the area had died off or
migrated. In 1642, Enfield was considered a part of Massachusetts Colony, but a
1695 survey revealed this to be an error, and in 1750 Enfield officially
seceded from Massachusetts and became a part of Connecticut. Enfield became a
central location for the Great Awakening of the mid-18th century; Jonathan
Edwards preached his now famous sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,”
at Enfield’s second meeting house.
Hartford is the capital city of Connecticut, located in the
central part of the state. The land that would become Hartford was first
inhabited by the Saukiog Indians (Saukiog was also the name of a village on the
Connecticut River) along with the Podunks to the east and the Tunxis to the
west. The Dutch explorer Adriaen Block was the first European to visit Saukiog,
and by the early 1620s, the Dutch had established a fort in the area. They
brought with them a smallpox epidemic that killed many Native Americans. By the
mid-17th century the Dutch, outnumbered by the English, had retreated south. In
order to protect themselves against the powerful Mohawk and Pequot Indians,
tribes around Saukiog allied with the English. By 1635, the Puritan preacher
Thomas Hooker and one hundred of his followers moved into the area, first
calling their new home Newtown but later changing it to Hartford after
Hertford, England. In a 1638 sermon, Hooker claimed that the new Connecticut
government should authorize itself according to the consent of the people,
words that inspired Connecticut’s Fundamental Orders, considered America’s
first written constitution. Missionaries began to preach to the Tunxis near
Hartford in 1670. By 1734, Indians at Hartford requested and received English
ministers for reading and religious instruction, and used the missionary
interest in their community to their advantage in several ways. Minister Samuel
Woodbridge reported that Indians at Hartford would attend his church and learn
to read if they had the proper clothing, and the New England Company sent
blankets and primers as encouragement. Hartford served as the meeting place for
Congregational ministers associated with Wheelock and his School to examine the
acceptability of Native missionaries, such as Mohegan minister Samuel Ashpo. In
1775, Joseph Johnson went to the Hartford Assembly to deliver letters declaring
the allegiance to the colonists of the Indians who had moved to upstate New
York.
Long Island is an island located in southeast New York State.
In 1824, historian Silas Wood claimed that 13 different tribes inhabited the
island when the Dutch and English arrived in 1639: the Canarsie, the Rockaway,
the Matinecock, the Merrick, the Massapequa, the Nissequoge, the Secatoag, the
Seatuket, the Patchoag, the Corchaug, the Shinnecock, the Manhasset, and the
Montaukett. This is the commonly accepted tribal history of Long Island, and
Wood’s theory is taught in New York textbooks today. Yet, in 1992, historian
John Strong challenged this dominant narrative, arguing that tribal systems did
not develop on Long Island until after Europeans arrived. Based on Dutch and
English colonists’ accounts, the Algonquian communities on western Long Island
likely spoke the Delaware-Munsee dialect and those to the east spoke languages
related to the southern New England Algonquian dialects. These indigenous
peoples organized themselves by language and kinship, but beyond village
systems and the occasional alliance, there existed no formal tribal structure.
Rather, internal structures arose among the Montauks, the Shinnecocks, the
Poospatucks, and the Matinnocks to cope with English settlers, and became
integral to these peoples’ survival. Although new diseases and land
negotiations severely encroached on the freedom of Long Island’s Native
population, these groups that developed tribal structures retain a sense of
community today. By the 18th century, much of the island had fallen into the
hands of the English, who were the sole European power on Long Island once the
Dutch relinquished their claims to the land after the second Anglo-Dutch War in
1664. During the Great Awakening of the 18th century, Occom spent 12 years
serving as a missionary to the Montaukett Indians of Long Island, along with
Presbyterian minister Azariah Horton. Today, the western half of the island is
densely populated due to its proximity to Manhattan, and its eastern half is
mainly devoted to resort towns. The Shinnecocks and the Poospatucks retain
autonomous reservations on Long Island.
Samson Occom was a Mohegan leader and ordained
Presbyterian minister. Occom began his public career in 1742, when he
was chosen as a tribal counselor to Ben Uncas II. The following year, he
sought out Eleazar Wheelock, a young Anglo-American minister in Lebanon,
CT, in hopes of obtaining some education and becoming a teacher at
Mohegan. Wheelock agreed to take on Occom as a student, and though Occom
had anticipated staying for a few weeks or months, he remained with
Wheelock for four years. Occom’s academic success inspired Wheelock to
open Moor’s Indian Charity School in 1754, a project which gave him the
financial and political capital to establish Dartmouth College in 1769.
After his time with Wheelock, Occom embarked on a 12-year mission to the
Montauk of Long Island (1749-1761). He married a Montauk woman, Mary
Fowler, and served as both teacher and missionary to the Montauk and
nearby Shinnecock, although he was grievously underpaid for his
services. Occom conducted two brief missions to the Oneida in 1761 and
1762 before embarking on one of the defining journeys of his career: a
fundraising tour of Great Britain that lasted from 1765 to 1768. During
this journey, undertaken on behalf of Moor’s Indian Charity School,
Occom raised £12,000 (an enormous and unanticpated amount that
translates roughly to more than two-million dollars), and won wide
acclaim for his preaching and comportment. Upon his return to Mohegan in
1768, Occom discovered that Wheelock had failed to adequately care for
his family while he was gone. Additionally, despite the vast sums of
money that he had raised, Occom found himself unemployed. Wheelock tried
to find Occom a missionary position, but Occom was in poor health and
disinclined to leave his family again after seeing the treatment with
which they had met while he was in Britain. Occom and Wheelock’s
relationship continued to sour as it became apparent to Occom that the
money he had labored to raise would be going towards infrastructure at
Dartmouth College, Wheelock’s new project, rather than the education of
Native Americans. After the dissolution of his relationship with
Wheelock, Occom became increasingly focused on the needs of the Mohegan
community and increasingly vocal in criticizing Anglo-Americans’
un-Christian treatment of Native Americans. In September of 1772, he
delivered his famous “Sermon on the Execution of Moses Paul,” which took
Anglo-American spiritual hypocrisy as one of its major themes, and which
went into four printings before the end of the year. In 1773, Occom
became further disillusioned when the Mason Land Case was decided in
favor of the Colony of Connecticut. The details of the Mason Case are
complicated, but to summarize: the Colony of Connecticut had gained
control of Mohegan land early in the 18th century under very suspect
circumstances, and successfully fended off the Mohegan’s 70-year-long
legal challenge. The conclusion of the case came as a blow to the
Mohegans, and further convinced Occom of Anglo-American corruption.
Along with David Fowler (Montauk Tribe), Occom's brother-in-law, and
Joseph Johnson (Mohegan), Occom's son-in-law, Occom helped found
Brothertown, an Indian tribe formed from the Christian Mohegans,
Pequots, Narragansetts, Montauks, Tunxis, and Niantics. They eventually
settled in Oneida country in upstate New York. Occom moved there with
his family in 1789, spending the remaining years of his life serving as
a minster to the Brothertown, Stockbridge, and Mohegan Indians. Harried
by corrupt land agents, the Brothertown and Stockbridge groups relocated
to the eastern shore of Lake Winnebago, though Occom died in 1792 before
he could remove himself and his family there. Occom's writings and
legacy have made him one of the best known and most eminent Native
Americans of the 18th century and beyond.
Sarah Occom was Samson Occom's mother. There is some
evidence that she was a member of the Groton Pequots, a remnant of the
once powerful Pequot Tribe that was decimated by the war with the
Puritans in 1636-37. (The Pequots and Mohegans were once a unified
people until the Mohegan chief Uncas and a band of followers split off
after a dispute with Sassacus, who became sachem of the Pequots.) One
genealogy gives Sarah's birthdate as 1694, her maiden name as Wauby
Sampson, her father as Sabientouset II (known as General Samson) and her
mother as Hannah Wequot Uncas, of the line of the Mohegan's first
sachem. Sarah married Joshua Occom (or Tomockham), a Mohegan, and they
may have had up to five children: Joshua Jr., Samson, Jonathan, Lucy,
and Sarah. In Samson's "Short Narrative" of his life, he notes that his
parents "led a wandering Life up and down in the Wilderness" around
Uncas Hill. Sarah was an early convert to Christianity during the
revivals that swept the area, and Occom recounts that when he told her
he wanted education in order to serve his Tribe, she went to Wheelock in
nearby Lebanon, CT, because she heard "he had a Number of English youth
under his Tuition," to request he take in her son. By 1743, Sarah was a
widow, and Samson continued to visit and stay at his mother's house in
Mohegan through the 1760s, though one source gives her death as
1782.
Eleazar Wheelock was a New Light Congregationalist
minister who founded Dartmouth College. He was born into a very typical
Congregationalist family, and began studying at Yale in 1729, where he
fell in with the emerging New Light clique. The evangelical network that
he built in college propelled him to fame as an itinerant minister
during the First Great Awakening and gave him many of the contacts that
he later drew on to support his charity school for Native Americans.
Wheelock’s time as an itinerant minister indirectly brought about his
charity school. When the Colony of Connecticut retroactively punished
itinerant preaching in 1743, Wheelock was among those who lost his
salary. Thus, in 1743, he began operating a grammar school to support
himself. He was joined that December by Samson Occom, a Mohegan Indian,
who sought out an education in hopes of becoming a teacher among his
people. Occom’s academic success inspired Wheelock to train Native
Americans as missionaries. To that end, he opened Moor’s Indian Charity
School in 1754 (where he continued to train Anglo-American students who
paid their own way as well as students who functionally indentured
themselves to Wheelock as missionaries in exchange for an education).
Between 1754 and 1769, when he relocated to New Hampshire, Wheelock
trained approximately 60 male and female Native American students from
nearby Algonquian tribes and from the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) of
central New York. At the same time, he navigated the complicated
politics of missionary societies by setting up his own board of the
Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge, although he
continued to feud with the Boston Board of the SSPCK and the London
Commissioners in Boston (more colloquially called the New England
Company). By the late 1760s, Wheelock had become disillusioned with the
idea of Native American education. He was increasingly convinced that
educating Native Americans was futile (several of his students had
failed to conform to his confusing and contradictory standards), and, in
late 1768, he lost his connection to the Haudenosaunee. With his
inclination and ability to sponsor Native American missionaries largely
depleted, Wheelock sought instead to fulfill his ultimate ambition of
obtaining a charter and opening a college, which he did in 1769. To fund
this new enterprise, Wheelock drew on the £12,000 that Samson Occom had
raised for Moor’s Indian Charity School during a two-and-a-half year
tour of Great Britain (1765 to 1768). Much of this money went towards
clearing land and erecting buildings in New Hampshire for the Charity
School’s relocation — infrastructure that also happened to benefit
Dartmouth. Many of Wheelock’s contemporaries were outraged by what they
saw as misuse of the money, as it was clear that Dartmouth College was
not intended for Indians and that Moor’s had become a side project.
Although Wheelock tried to maintain at least some commitment to Native
American education by recruiting students from Canadian communities, the
move did a great deal of damage to his public image. The last decade of
Wheelock’s life was not easy. In addition to the problems of trying to
set up a college far away from any Anglo-American urban center, Wheelock
experienced the loss of relationships with two of his most famous and
successful students, Samson Occom and Samuel Kirkland (an Anglo-American
protégé). He also went into debt for Dartmouth College, especially after
the fund raised in Britain was exhausted.
Benjamin Pomeroy was a school friend of Eleazar
Wheelock and a lifelong supporter of his cause. Like Wheelock, he was a
New Light evangelical and a staunch ally of James Davenport, a radical
New Light preacher whose beliefs got him in trouble with the law. After
graduating from Yale in 1733, Pomeroy received the ministry at Hebron,
CT, in 1734, and assisted Wheelock in myriad ways until his own death in
1784. He kept Wheelock's school during 1746, when Wheelock's first wife,
Sarah, was dying, and he tutored Occom (primarily in Hebrew) after Occom
had completed his studies with Wheelock. Pomeroy also supported Wheelock
as a trustee of Moor's, and, later, Dartmouth, and as a member of the
Board of the Correspondents in Connecticut for the Society in Scotland
for Propagating Christian Knowledge. Pomeroy and Wheelock also had close
family connections: Pomeroy was married to Wheelock’s sister, Abigail,
and one of Pomeroy’s daughters, Hannah, married David McClure, one of
Wheelock's most illustrious graduates. Outside of his liturgical career,
Pomeroy served as an army chaplain in the French and Indian War and the
Revolution.