Samson Occom

Samson Occom (1723 – July 14, 1792; also misspelled as Occum and Alcom[1][2][a]) was a member of the Mohegan nation, from near New London, Connecticut, who became a Presbyterian cleric.

Occom was the second Native American to publish his writings in English (after son-in-law Joseph Johnson (Mohegan/Brothertown) whose letter to Moses Paul, published April 1772, preceded Occom's by 6 months), the first Native American to write down his autobiography, and also helped found several settlements, including what ultimately became known as the Brothertown Indians.

He began to study theology at the "Lattin School" of Congregational minister Eleazar Wheelock in 1743[5] and stayed for four years until leaving to begin his own career.

The Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge also gave Occom a stipend for some time, but he lived in deep poverty for much of his life.

[12] In 1768, Occom wrote A Short Narrative of My Life, a ten-page manuscript now held in Dartmouth College's archive collection; however, it was not published until 1982.

All of these documents provide a very different perspective on the relations between colonists and Native Americans from Mary Rowlandson's narrative of her captivity in similar areas a century earlier.

After Wheelock's betrayal, Occom together with son-in-law Joseph Johnson, brothers-in-law David and Jacob Fowler, and others, worked to organize the Christian (or “praying”) Indians of New England and Long Island into a new tribe in Upstate New York.

Occom, his son-in-law Joseph Johnson (who had been a messenger for General George Washington during the American Revolution), and his Montauk brother-in-law David Fowler led the people back to rebuild their settlement (near what is now Waterville, New York) called Brothertown.

The Oneida also invited other Christian Indians to live with them, namely the Stockbridge Mohican from land claimed by western Massachusetts and two Lenape groups from the southern New Jersey area.

[16] Occom not only assured that these villages received official civil charters in 1787, but also evicted white settlers from Brothertown on April 12, 1792.

[19] The Occom Commons community space is part of Goldstein Hall in the recently opened McLaughlin Residential Cluster.