I Did Not Make Myself So. . .’: Samson Occom and American Religious Autobiography

Document Type

Book Chapter

Publication Date

1998

Publisher

Palgrave/Macmillan

Abstract

In 1772, Samson Occom composed what LaVonne Ruoff calls the “first Indian best-seller”: an execution sermon before the hanging of his fellow Christian Mohegan, Moses Paul (62).¹ The most famous student of Eleazar Wheelock—a New England preacher turned Indian educator—Occom himself had become a missionary, teaching and preaching to Native Americans, and raising significant sums of money on a British tour on behalf of missionary efforts among Native Americans.² An articulate and persuasive speaker, Occom was successful in ministry and marketing, inspiring jealousy in white colleagues (who worried that his popularity undermined theirs) and generosity for “Wheelock’s Indians”...

Chapter of

Christian Encounters With The Other

Editor

John Hawley

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