Dakayenensere, Isaac

last name (variants): Takayenersere; Dekayenenzere
Birth: Unknown.
Death: Unknown.
Affiliation

Oneida Tribe

Education

Literate in Mohawk

Faith

New Light Congregationalist

Nationality

Oneida

Occupation

Informal religious and educational leader at Onaquaga; Member of the council at Onaquaga

Residence(s)
  • Onaquaga
Biography

Isaac Dakayenensere was a chief and spiritual leader at Onaquaga. Dakayenensere worked closely with Good Peter to minister to the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) community at Onaquaga, a predominantly Oneida town with a diverse population. After converting during the 1740s, both men took up the mantle of evangelism and Christian education at Onaquaga. They cooperated with Gideon Hawley, an Anglo-American missionary, throughout his missions in the 1750s, and in the 1760s they began writing to Wheelock for missionaries and assistance with farming. They received Joseph Woolley, who kept school at Onaquaga from late August/early September of 1765 until his death at the end of that November, but they do not seem to have received the promised farming assistance. Dakayenensere’s daughter, Neggen Aoghyatonghsera (alias Margaret or Peggie) married Joseph Brant, a Moor’s alumnus and famous Mohawk war chief. In some scholarship, Isaac is misidentified as a Mohawk.

Sources

Chase, Frederick. A history of Dartmouth College and the Town of Hanover, New Hampshire. 1891: Conversion. Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online, Volume V, “THAYENDANEGEA (Joseph Brant),” http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?&id_nbr=2686 : Daughter. McCallum, James. The Letters of Eleazar Wheelock’s Indians. Dartmouth College Press 1932: Literacy, potential Mohawk affiliation, work at Onaquaga, move to Otsego (79-80). Wheelock, Eleazar. A continuation of the narrative of the Indian charity-school : begun in Lebanon, in Connecticut ; now incorporated with Dartmouth-college, in Hanover, in the province of New-Hampshire. Hartford 1766: Occupation, literacy, conversion. Andrews, Edward E. Native Apostles: Black and Indian Missionaries in the British Atlantic World. Cambridge: Harvard University Press 2013.