The Unintended Consequences of Education at Wheelock's School

The University of North Carolina Press recently (2010) published a collection of scholarly writings by various authors under the title Native Americans, Christianity, and the Shaping of the American Religious Landscape. The book includes a chapter by Rachel Wheeler, "Hendrick Aupaumut: Christian Mahican Prophet," and another by David J. Silverman, "To Become a Chosen People: The Missionary Work and Missionary Spirit of the [Brothertown] and Stockbridge Indians, 1775-1835." (Silverman, or, more likely, the editor of the book, likes to spell it "Brotherton," which adds to the confusion over which tribe of Christian Algonkians he is referring to.)

My attention, however, was drawn to a piece called "Print Culture and the Power of Native Literacy in California and New England Missions" by Steven W. Hackel and Hilary E. Wyss (pages 201-224). It was partly about Moor's Charity School which essentially came about after Samson Occom proved to be a particularly successful pupil of Eleazar Wheelock. Rev. Wheelock (pictured here) saw his success with Occom as an opportunity to start a school.

Unfortunately, Wheelock was not one of the truly good missionaries who always had the Indians' own best interests in mind in all of his work. According to Hackel and Wyss, Wheelock believed teaching young Indians to read and write would turn them "into docile figures eager and willing to work under the watchful supervision of white missionaries." However, "none of his students in fact turned out that way"(page 216). Wheelock's attitude could well explain why he took the money Samson Occom raised in Britain to start the historically white institution known as Dartmouth College.

Instead of striving to please Wheelock, their white master, here are some of the things Hackel and Wyss tell us that the student's of Moor's Charity School accomplished with their education:

• Hezekiah Calvin forged a pass for a slave (and was imprisoned for it).




• Samson Occom wrote "petitions for a variety of Native communities."




• Joseph Johnson, after leaving the school, gave up drinking and became a schoolmaster.

And, (also according to Hackel and Wyss, page 218), the Brothertown community itself would not have coalesced without Wheelock's school.

The graphic above is a painting by Joseph Steward (1753-1822). It is kept in the Hood Museum of Art.

Samson Occom's Last Days

While they lived in the Massachusetts mission town, all the Stockbridge Indians were members of a single congregation. Soon after their move to New York State, the falling out between their two legitimate ministers resulted in the tribe being split into two congregations.

After a few years of having two congregations, the Stockbridges held a council to discuss the situation. They decided that having their tribal church divided into two parties was a "stumbling block." Some felt that Rev. Occom (a Brothertown Indian) was "meddling too much with [their] civil government," and noted he had recently "fallen into the sin of intemperance[or drinking]" several times. They also felt he was "superannuated" or past his prime.

At that council, the Stockbridge Indians voted first to have one minister for the whole tribe and then chose John Sergeant [Jr.] to be that one minister by a twenty-two to eight margin. A committee was then formed to

inform Mr. Occom that it was not out of any ill will to him, that if he would leave us as minister of the Town...and as he had no support, if he would comply with our reasonable request and make us happy - we would unitedly do all we could to help him. But we are sorry to say he paid no regard to us. (Quoted from a letter from the Stockbridge Indians to Rev. Samuel Kirkland, June 22, 1792 in the Kirkland Papers at Hamilton College.)

Rev. Occom and his family had only moved to New Stockbridge a few months earlier. Politics may have been their reason for leaving Brothertown and the Stockbridges' letter suggests that politics had made the Occoms unwelcome at New Stockbridge. But they didn't leave.

Only a few weeks after the Stockbridge Indians wrote the letter referred to above, on July 14, 1792, Samson Occom suddenly died.

The Split Between Occom and Sergeant

You may remember that both Samson Occom and John Sergeant [Jr.] received calls to minister to the Stockbridge Mohicans towards the end of 1787. In the short run, their plan was to engage in cooperative ministry. That plan seems to have worked for a little while, at least. Eventually, however, the two ministers came into conflict. Neither one of the ministers ever fully recorded what their falling out was about, but Occom did leave some clues.

In Samson Occom (1935), Harold Blodgett stated the conflict was over "doctrinal differences." In order to understand what he was getting at, we'll have to address the Calvinist context. One of the central tenets of Calvinism was the "depravity of man." In other words, sin and damnation were central aspects of American religion back then. It was believed that while everyone deserved to go to hell, Christ's atonement predestined some to be saved and enter heaven. It was also believed that outward manifestations (including a conversion experience), would somehow indicate who was predestined to receive God's grace. According to The Encyclopedia of Religion (page 103), it then became common for Puritan preachers to develop some kind of "complex morphology of conversion." As a result, there were controversies over who should be baptized and over what made a person worthy of church membership and communion. (Such a controversy over communion got Jonathan Edwards thrown out of the white congregation he served before ministering to the Indians at Stockbridge, Massachusetts.)

The question of who should be baptized is the only disagreement with John Sergeant that can be found in Samson Occom's journals. I would imagine they also had other disagreements in the months that they worked together, but no other disagreements were recorded.

On July 26, 1788, Occom wrote in his journal that he expected to have a debate with Sergeant, but instead Sergeant

"declin'd and finally Concluded that everyone should have full Liberty to Choose to act according to the Light and understanding he has in religious concerns, and so we parted in Friendship, Concluded to agree and disagree."

And so I believe that the falling out was over religious ideology and not over personality or race or cultural issues. Of course there really isn't enough evidence to know that for sure. But I've put what I know on the table and if anybody can add to that, you're welcome to do so.

Occom and Sergeant: Was their Conflict About Race?

We're up to the point where both Samson Occom and John Sergeant [Jr.] had received legitimate calls to minister to the Stockbridge Mohicans at New Stockbridge, New York. It is rather well known that the two ministers eventually clashed. For that reason, I made it a point in my previous post to emphasize that they got along well for many years. It should also be noted that the two men of the cloth co-led a number of worship services together when the Stockbridges were getting settled in New York State.

Some have said that Occom and Sergeant came into conflict over racial issues. It is possible that Occom resented Sergeant for the advantages he had. It is true that Sergeant was a white minister and was paid like a white minister and Occom was an Indian minister that was seldom paid at all by church bodies. Nowadays we wouldn't blame a minority for raising Cain over that kind of inequality.

But in my mind Samson Occom was too "big" a person to get dragged into the kind of jealousy that would hurt his ministry. I think that Occom was wise enough to choose his battles. And, given what I know about John Sergeant compared to the other white people of his time, I just don't buy the argument that the two ministers had a falling out over the issue of race.

Samson Occom and John Sergeant Jr

A photo of present-day Madison County, New York (courtesy of Carleen Vandezande).
While it could be said that the white Calvinist establishment was responsible for the betrayal of Samson Occom, I don't think of John Sergeant [Jr.] as being part of the Calvinist establishment. In fact, I read somewhere that he was not even ordained as a minister until late in his career. Sergeant just didn't have enough Calvinist orthodoxy in him to be an insider. On the other hand, Samson Occom, despite being an orthodox Presbyterian, was discriminated against for being an Indian.

For quite a few years, Rev. Occom was on good terms with John Sergeant. In his journal, Occom noted a number of times in which he ate with Sergeant, or stayed at Sergeant's house while traveling [see entries from July 15, 1774 to August 30, 1786]. In one 1774 entry, Occom even referred to the son of the first missionary on the Housatonic River as "good Mr. Sergeant." The Revolutionary War would later force Occom's people, the Brothertown Indians, to retreat to Stockbridge, Massachusetts, which likely brought the two men into more frequent contact. They must have known each other quite well.

John Sergeant and his family didn't make the New York migration with the tribe. In the wake of the Revolutionary War, the philanthropists in London would no longer pay his salary and he knew the Indians couldn't pay it themselves. He just kept in touch with them well enough to make reports to other ministers in Boston. Some of those ministers eventually put together a mission society of their own. Meanwhile, beginning in 1785, Rev. Occom's Sunday worship services alternated in location between Brothertown and New Stockbridge, which were about six miles apart (Love, pages 279-280). On August 29, 1787, some Stockbridge leaders wrote to Rev. Samson Occom asking him to "settle with" them and minister to them on a more formal basis. They offered only twenty shillings, but it was something, at least. (A letter Occom wrote to clergy residing near Albany on December 26, 1791 tells us, however, that more than three years went by before he actually moved his family to New Stockbridge.)

Back in Massachusetts, the Society for Propagating the Gospel Among the Indians and Others in North America was incorporated, and on October 25, 1787 - just two months after Occom's call. They appointed John Sergeant to work and live among the Indians at New Stockbridge and to receive a salary of fifty pounds sterling.

Bernd Peyer's "The Betrayal of Samson Occom"

Bernd Peyer is a German Historian who wrote a good article about Samson Occom which appeared in the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine in 1998. Fortunately for us, the article is also online.

Peyer's article is largely about Occom's relationship with Eleazar Wheelock. To sum it up, after learning to read the Bible on his own, the nineteen-year-old Samson Occom became Wheelock's star student, around which a boarding school was established. As you may remember, Occom was the first Indian ordained as a Presbyterian minister and he raised a lot of money for Wheelock's school for Indians on a preaching tour in England and Scotland. A big part of Wheelock's betrayal of Occom occurred when he moved his school and gave up on educating Indians. Moor's Charity School remained - but only as a poor sister to Dartmouth College.



After he returned to the United States, Occom realized that Wheelock had used him and even looked upon him as something of a freak or "creature." You'll understand that better if you read Peyer's article.

The white Calvinst establishment should have done more to support Rev. Occom and his large family. Throughout most of his career, Rev. Occom was forced to support his family through fishing, hunting, gardening, picking ginseng, and with money earned from binding books, and making wooden items such as spoons and urns.

In upcoming posts, I'll address Rev. Samson Occom's relationship with Rev. John Sergeant, Jr.

The Stockbridge-Munsee Community, Genealogy, and a lot more

Do you remember this magazine cover? In 2006, Time named "You" as their person of the year. Blogs are part of the "social media," and Algonkian Church History is no exception. Although I have lots of ideas about where this blog is headed, I also like to respond to your questions and comments. I've had a few of them recently, plus a few that I've put on the "back burner," so let's get to it.

Scott Seaborne pointed out that the tribe which I refer to here as the "Stockbridge Mohicans" legally adopted "Stockbridge-Munsee Community" as their name in their 1937 constitution. He asked me if I knew why and added that he'd heard that the federal government expected or required once-unrecognized tribes to use the word "community" in their name. I don't know how the name "Stockbridge-Munsee Community" was chosen, or who chose it. All I can say is that the tribe is in the process of writing a new constitution now and maybe they'll give themselves a different name.

Genealogist Debra Winchell has agreed to write a guest-post for Algonkian Church History. She is from New York State and one of a number of people that I had a chance to talk to when I attended the Algonquian Peoples Conference in Albany during the spring of 2007. Starting from nothing more than a rumor that there was Indian blood in her family, Debra researched her ancestors all the way back to John Van Gelder, a Mohican-Wappinger.

I'm also looking forward to a guest post from an accomplished blogger whose screen name is Dumneazu. Since he has formal training in Algonkian languages, his contribution should be valuable.

Daniel Burr is trying to prove that he's a descendant of both the Housatonic Mohican Chief Konkapot and the renowned Mohegan/Brothertown minister Samson Occom (also spelled Occum). Although I do not question that some of his ancestors were named Konkapot, one expert, Lion Miles, of Stockbridge, Massachusetts, says that not all of the Konkapots were descendants of the original Konkapot. One family apparently took on that name in honor of the chief. Whether or not Daniel Burr is descended from Samson Occom depends on the truth or falsehood of a statement preserved in the old book Samson Occom and the Christian Indians of New England by W. DeLoss Love.

I'll quote from Daniel Burr's e-mail here:

I am looking for a Samson Occum who was a grandson of Rev.Samson Occum from his son Andrew Gifford Occum.W. Deloss Love's book Samson Occom and the Christian Indians of New England states this under Rev Samson's family son Andrew Gifford, born 1774 went to Brothertown, and had a lot there which he leased April 12,1792. He married, and his death occurred before 1796, when "widow Patience Occum" was given lot 41. They had a son, Samson Occum, who lived at Brothertown, received part of lot 19 in 1827, and removed, it is said, with his wife Elizabeth to the White River, Some Indians say he joined the Stockbridge tribe. Writing his name Yoccum,and has descendants among them.

There was a Housatonic Mohican living in the 1700's whose name was spelled "Yocun," "Yokun," "Yocon," "Yokim," and "Yocum," (according to page 367 of Shirley Dunn's book The Mohican World 1680-1750,) it is more likely (in my opinion) that Daniel Burr is descended from that Housatonic Mohican than he is from Samson Occom.

Another reader, Carleen Vandezande, has taken the trouble to get me some papers form the Madison County Historical Society in New York. According to one of the papers, Samson Occom returned from his preaching tour in Britain with a gold-plated walkingstick. There was also a lot of information on an Iroquois chief named Skenendoah. As a convert to Christianity, his story could become the topic of a future post.

Rich Walling's New Jersey Delaware Site

I've met Rich Walling and seen some of his research in print form, but I was not aware of his website until today. He claims that it is a "new site and still under construction," but it is already loaded with material.


The title of the site is:
Brotherton and Weekping Indian Communities of New Jersey.

The purpose of the website, as Walling makes clear, is to put primary source documents related to the New Jersey Delaware Indians online. The bulk of those documents, are from a "hitherto untapped archival source," from the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. Other documents came from the Quaker Collection at Haverford College, PA, and the New York Historical Society.

This sign, although accurate in what it says, neglects to point out that, by moving to the Oneida's land, the Brotherton Indians were also joining the Stockbridge Mohicans' church.

The Brotherton Delawares in New Jersey were not cut off from other Christian Algonkians. See, for example, these documents in which Rev. Samson Occum is called to be the Brotherton's minister. Included farther along under that link are journal entries from Occum's travels among the New Jersey Indians and some other material related to Captain Hendrick Aupaumut and other Stockbridge Mohicans.

I wholeheartedly recommend Rich Walling's Brotherton and Weepking site.

See my post introducing the Brotherton Delaware Indians.

The Collected Writings of Samson Occom and Other Book Recommendations

Books -->

discussed on another blog:

Searching the blogosphere, I came upon some book recommendations that are highly relevant to Algonkian Church History.

The books include the following:

• On Our Own Ground: The Complete Writings of William Apess, a Pequot

• The Collected Writings of Samson Occom, Mohegan: Literature and Leadership in Eighteenth-Century Native America

• To Do Good to My Indian Brethren: The Writings of Joseph Johnson 1751-1776

• The Tutor'd Mind: Indian Missionary-Writers in Antebellum America

Please see:
Native Voices from the Revolutionary Era: New Primary Source Texts (Post title)

In RELIGION IN AMERICAN HISTORY (Blog title)

Paul Harvey is the author and Blogmeister.

The State of Christianity at New Stockbridge: Fall, 1787

It is well known that a split in the Stockbridge tribal church occurred as a result of a falling out between Samson Occom and John Sergeant Jr. But it is seldom said that the two men were allies, if not friends, for a long time before their falling out. They both had a legitimate claim to being the minister to the Stockbridge Mohicans and although we can't know for sure what their disagreement was about, I think Harold Blodgett was correct in saying it had something to do with "doctrinal differences." I'll explain why I think so in another post. On the other hand, Sergeant did have some advantages on account of being a white man. As I said, both men had legitimate claim to ministering to the Stockbridges, but I don't think the brand new Society for Propagating the Gospel Among the Indians and Others in North America (SPGAIONA?) even considered appointing Samson Occom. In an October 25th, 1787 letter, John Sergeant was appointed to live and work among the Indians at New Stockbridge and to receive 50 Pounds Sterling as salary.

In another letter, written by a Mr. Wigglesworth to a Mr. McFarlan on November 13, 1787, the following account of the state of Christianity at New Stockbridge, New York is given:

More than twelve families regularly maintain the worship of God morning and evening; and catechize their Children with as much Propriety as is done by more civilized People among them. On Lord's days, when they have no Preacher among them they assemble together for Religious Worship. Besides Singing, praying and [illegible] together on religious subjects, some portion of the scriptures and other books of piety are read by those who can understand the English language and translated into Indian. Some of them are so fully appraised of the importance of religious Instruction that they [illegible] and their Future prosperity will greatly depend on the Continuance of a Missionary among them.

Maybe Wigglesworth didn't know that some of the tribal leaders had recently invited Rev. Occom to be their minister. Over the next nine months, Rev. Sergeant and Rev. Occom carried on a cooperative ministry. Their falling out is something that I'll save for a later post.

Occom's Most Remarkable Sermon

The reference book, Notable Native Americans provides us with a good two-plus page biography of Rev. Samson Occom. It tells about his most famous sermon. Moses Paul was an Indian who, after being thrown out of a tavern, "enacted revenge on the first person to emerge"(page 295). Paul requested that his execution sermon be preached by Samson Occom and such sermons in those days attracted a lot of people, including Indians and white authorities (lawyers, etc.). The book describes the situation Occom was in:

"...an Indian preacher having to preach a sermon for a condemned Indian on the topic of sobriety to whites and Indians that, from a rhetorical standpoint, demanded formidable skills of balance in referring to the effects of alcohol; he realized how the English used strong drink to weaken the spirit of his people"(295).

Occom quoted scripture first, then addressed Moses Paul, then the whites, and finally reminded the other Indians present of the seriousness of the sin of drunkenness.

I think I read somewhere that this sermon marks the first time that an Indian's intellectual property was published and Notable Native Americans calls the printing history of this sermon "phenomenal." In a period of eight years it went through ten printings!

Occom's descendants migrated to what is now Wisconsin in the 1820's. To a large extent, the Brothertown Indians are now scattered throughout the country, but nevertheless, Fond du Lac, the nearest city to their old reservation, serves as their capital. I talked to one of the Brothertown elders over the weekend. He told me that a few of Occom's descendants still live in Fond du Lac and, ironically, the family business lately has been tavern keeping.

----Today, almost three years after that post was written, it received its first comment from Diane Sampson who says that "only a small percentage" of Occom descendants in Fond du Lac make their living from tavern keeping.

Well, Diane, I hope you didn't take offense at what I wrote, it was not meant as an insult, but I'm sorry for having made it seem that many, most, or all of the family was involved in the hospitality business. Thank you for correcting my error.

Stockbridge Mohican Church History Timeline: Part II

This timeline is based on a multitude of sources. Ask me if you want documentation for anything:

1773: John Sergeant [Jr.] takes on the mission work in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.

1782: Ninety innocent Christian Indians are massacred in Gnadenhutten, Ohio by a renegade frontier militia.

August, 1787: Tribal leaders call an old friend, Rev. Samson Occom, a Mohegan Indian, to be their minister in New Stockbridge, New York.

October, 1787: John "Sergeant [Jr.] - also an old friend - is appointed by a new mission society to live and work at New Stockbridge.

July, 1788: A dispute between Rv. Occom and Rev. Sergeant splits the Stockbridge Mohicans into two churches.

July 1792: The result of Rev. Occom's unexpected death is a reunited church.

August, 1805: Having traveled across the Atlantic, Dorothy Ripley, an Englishwoman not connected with any church body, preaches to the New York Indians. She is especially well received by the women of New Stockbridge.

1818 to 1829: A period of western migration. Deacon John Metoxen is the leader of a new church organized with Rev. Sergeant's help. The Stockbridge Mohicans conduct their own worship services when no missionaries are around.

1824: John Sergeant [Jr.] dies at New Stockbridge, NY.

Circa 1826: Tribal leaders write a letter asking that a missionary be sent to their new location.

1828: Having already replaced Sergeant in NY and visited the tribe on the Fox River (what is now Kaukauna, WI), Jesse Miner moves his ministry to what is now Wisconsin.

1830: Calvin Colton, a Presbyterian minister, observes that the Stockbridge Mohicans treat their tribal Bible with reverence.

1830 - 1848: Cutting Marsh replaces Miner as missionary. After a honeymoon period of a few years, the Indians find Marsh to be rather stern and stubborn. Marsh found it difficult to stay out of tribal politics which became very contentious in the last 11 years of his tenure.

1833: John Metoxen, John N. Chicks, two other Stockbridges and Cutting Marsh conduct a mission trip to the Sauk Indians in and around Davenport, Iowa.

1833-1834: Tribe moves to what is now Calumet County [WI].

1837-1839: A faction of the tribe breaks away from Marsh's church and holds their own Baptist services. Eventually this group emigrates to what is now Kansas under the treaty of 1939.

1844: Wesson Miller, a Methodist circuit rider, holds a revival meeting in Jacob Chicks' barn. Some members of the Citizen Party leave Marsh's church to become Methodists.

1845: Jeremiah Slingerland - a Stockbridge Mohican - graduates from Bangor Theological Seminary. He moves back to Stockbridge, Wisconsin Territory, and takes on the work of schoolteacher and assistant to Rev. Marsh.

1848: The Indian Party makes a treaty to move west of the Mississippi, Citizen Party members are on their own. After much conflict between Marsh and Slingerland, Marsh leaves his post and dissuades the mission society from supporting Slingerland's ministry.

1850 - 1857: The Indian Party stays put and pays Slingerland and two white ministers to preach.

1856: A treaty brings the Indian Party and the Citizen Party, plus remnants of other tribes - especially Munsees - together on a new reservation in Shawano County [WI].

1857: Jeremiah Slingerland and his wife move to the new reservation. Worship services ae held in their home.

1859 - 1863: Jeremiah Slingerland preaches in the town of Shawano before the first white minister comes to town.

1866: More than twenty years after graduating from the seminary, Jeremiah Slingerland is finally ordained as a Presbyterian minister.

1867: After conducting their worship either informally, or in cooperation with the Methodists, the Stockbridge Mohicans finally have their own Presbyterian church again.

1881: Stephen Gardner and others attend Roman Catholic midnight mass on Christmas Eve on the Menominee Reservation. Under Gardner;s leadership, Roman Catholicism gains a foothold among the Stockbridge Mohicans for the fist time.

1884: Rev. Slingerland dies and the Presbyterian church fades without his leadership.

Occom's "Short Narrative of My Life"

Samson Occom wrote a brief (26 pages) autobiography in 1768 and a much-briefer one (only one page) in1765. His motivation for writing (historians believe), had something to do with his preaching tour of England and Scotland, in which people were puzzled over the reality that an Indian could actually be both educated and "civilized" according to white standards. If a man could preach and behave that well, they wondered, could he have ever been a true "wild" Indian?

Thus Occom's autobiography begins: "I was born a Heathen and brought up in Heathenism, till I was between 16 & 17 years of age, at a place called Mohegan, in New London, Connecticut... My parents livd a wandering life, for did all Indians at Mohegan, they Chiefly Depended upon Hunting, Fishing & Fowling for their living and had no connection with the English, excepting to traffic with them in their small trifles."

Occom acknowledged that preachers sometimes came into the area, but they did not appeal to him until "When I was 16 years of age, we heard a Strange Rumor among the English, that there were Extraordinary Ministers Preaching from Place to Place and a Strange Concern among the White People." As Bernd Peyer explains in a footnote, Occom was describing what is known to history as " 'the Great Awakening,' a massive religious revival which began in Europe around 1720 and then spread along the entire English-speaking Atlantic seaboard during the 1730's and 1740's."

Given the remarkable person Samson Occom was, I can guarantee more posts to come about him. His autobiography is on the web. [Bernd Peyer's background notes are found in American Indian Nonfiction: An Anthology of Writings, 1760s - 1930s, (University of Oklahoma Press, 2007). ]

Occom's Preaching

Samson Occom is unquestionably one of the biggest heroes of Algonkian Church History. According to Colin Calloway (New Worlds for All, 1997), there were 133 Christian Indian preachers in the thirteen colonies before they claimed independence from the British. But of course, there is a difference between being a "preacher" and successfully going through the rigors required for ordination.

In 1759, Samson Occom, a Mohegan, was the first Indian to be ordained as a Presbyterian minister (by the Presbytery of Suffolk). There is so much to say about Rev. Occom, not only did he shatter many stereotypes, but he also preached a famous execution sermon, achieved fame and raised a fortune in a preaching tour of Britian and Scotland, and led a collection of Algonkian Christian remnants to form a new Indian nation called Brothertown. Each of these achievements deserves its own post on the blog.

One of Occom's biographers described his preaching:

"He was prone to dwell in the fashion of his time upon the peril of the soul. He gauged the success of his pleading by the tears he produced, by the degree to which auditors were aroused to fright and alarm over the terrible question of salvation. His chief aim was to arouse the conviction of sin" (Samson Occom, by Harold Blodgett, 215).