Description
Originally published in 1899, W. Deloss Love’s biography of Samson Occom is a work of its time. This classic account reveals one of the most unusual actors to step on stage in the eighteenth-century American colonies. Mohegan yet Christian, a native speaker of Mohegan and fluent in English—and literate in Greek, Latin, and French—Occom strode across the cultures of his time and place.
Occom was a man passionate about his advocacy for Native Americans in education and religious training. An ordained Presbyterian minister, he was a spiritual and educational broker among cultures immersed in an era of tumultuous change. As a businessman, he secured the funding necessary for the creation of Dartmouth College. He proved to be a dominant and influential presence in the eighteenth-century world of the Great Awakening of the 1740s, the War of Independence, and the emergence of the Young Republic.
Table of Contents
Introduction, Margaret Connell Szasz
Preface
1. The New England Fathers and Indian Civilization, 1620-1723
2. A Mohegan Youth, 1723-1749
3. The Indian Teacher at Montauk, 1749-1761
4. Wheelock’s Indian Charity School, 1754-1770
5. Occom’s Missions to the Oneida Indians, 1761-1764
6. Samuel Kirkland and his Indian Friends, 1765-1768
7. The Mohegan Land Case and Samson Occom, I764-1769
8. Indian Preacher in England, 1765-1768
9. Dark Days at Mohegan, 1768-1771
10. Occom’s Sermon, Hymns and Hymn Book, I772-1774
11. Seven Settlements of Christian Indians, 1717-1776
12. The Plan of Emigration to Oneida, 1771-1776
13. Indian Friends at Stockbridge, 1734-1783
14. The Missionary of the Wilderness, 1783-1789
15. The Trials of Occom’s Last Days, 1785-1792
16. Indian Town Government, 1785-1842
17. The Last Remove, 1809-1898
Appendix: Family History of the Brothertown Indians
About the Author
W. DeLoss Love was a Congregational minister, a history scholar, and businessman. He was educated at Hamilton College and Andover seminary.
Margaret Connell Szasz is professor of history at the University of New Mexico. She is the author of Indian Education in the American Colonies, 1607-1783 and editor of Between Indian and White Worlds: The Cultural Broker.
June 2000