Return to the "POINTER VIEW"
                         November 16, 2001

Native-American History Month

A biographical sketch of Samson Occom

By Capt. Kevin Clark
Dept. of History

While dime-novels and westerns have stereotyped Native Americans in popular culture as savage warriors, Samson Occom made his mark as a scholar and missionary. Occom was a Pequot, born in 1723 in New England. Once a powerful neighbor of the Puritans, disease and warfare wiped out 95 percent of the tribe in the late 17th Century.

By 1700, Europeans had long since developed resistances to small pox and other infectious diseases. Natives had not been exposed to illness and, in some case, died from such things as the common cold. Early settlers had no understanding of germ theory and transmitted wave after wave of disease to the unsuspecting natives. Responses to these unexplained killers varied. Some tribes stayed together and supported each other in their hour of need -- the worst thing to do in the face of an epidemic. Some avoided human contact and fled to remote areas. Survivors struggled to cope with guilt and social disruption created by rapid depopulation. Cultures that relied upon elders to pass on the knowledge and traditions of the people had to innovate or die.

Some natives fell victim to amoral Europeans who sold them alcohol in an effort to cheat them of their land. Others hoped to gain spiritual power to overcome their problems and converted to Christianity. On the one hand, missionaries hoped to "tame" the savages while saving souls. On the other hand, natives such as Occom seized upon Christianity as a means of finding the power to survive.

After converting at age 17, Occom taught himself to read and write English and proceeded to learn Latin, Greek and Hebrew before the age of 20. His phenomenal intellect astounded the English. However, no one wanted to grant him equal status and send him to Yale as he deserved. Undeterred, Occom dreamt of converting and educating his people so that they might gain the legal savvy to protect their land. He entered a school run by Eleazor Wheelock, who saw in Occom the meal-ticket he needed to raise money for a school to educate native missionaries.Wheelock figured native missionaries could be paid much less than whites and were much more pliable. Indeed, Wheelock and his sponsors failed to pay Samson for two years of missionary work on Long Island. When they did pay him, he received 1/6th the regular salary and was accused of living beyond his means when he and his family sank into debt.

In 1765, Wheelock convinced Occom to go on a fund-raising tour across England for his dream school. Occom wowed English audiences and succeeded beyond Wheelock’s wildest dreams, raising a stupendous amount of money. He returned to New England only to find his family starving because Wheelock would not provide for them decently. Wheelock ultimately built his school but abandoned the idea of educating natives there.

Occom gave up on Wheelock and his sponsors and successfully created his own Native Christian community in upstate New York in 1785. There he organized the first Native Presbytery at Brothertown. Ironically, while the Brothertown Nation still fights for federal recognition, the school that Occom built has become one of the most prestigious in the nation: Dartmouth College.

(For more information on Samson Occom visit (http://www.gonzaga.edu/faculty/campbell/enl310/occom.htm).