In 1753, Hawley accepted a position from the commissioners of Indian affairs to establish a mission among the Six Nations at the town of Oquaga on the Susquehanna, near what is now Windsor, New York, in the area where another Yale graduate, Rev.
He then went to Boston and joined the army as chaplain of Colonel Richard Gridley's regiment, and attempted after this campaign to return to the Iroquois mission, but the enterprise proved too hazardous.
He spent the winter in West Springfield, Massachusetts, and tried to rejoin his mission in the spring of 1757, but an outbreak of small pox there prevented him from returning.
The commissioners of the Society for propagating the gospel appointed him pastor of the Indian tribes at Mashpee, Massachusetts, where he was installed in April 1758 and remained as a missionary until his death in 1807.
Timothy Dwight IV in his Travels in New England and New York, writes about his visit with Hawley on October 2, 1800, and his correspondence with him afterward.
Gideon Hawley 1807 In memory of Rev Gideon Hawley who was born at Stratford, Connecticut, Nov 5 O S 1727 graduated at Yale College 1749 ordained in Boston July 31, 1754 a missionary to the Indians at Onohaguage or the Six Nations installed at Mashpee April 10, 1758 died Oct'r 3 1807 AEt 80 There the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest