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Early Indigenous Literatures

Title page of a 1772 edition of Samson Occom's Execution Sermon

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Moses Paul's Narrative Katherine Garret was not the only condemned Native person to garner significant public attention in 18th-century New England. Another highly publicized case was that of Moses Paul, a Mohegan man condemned to die for the murder of a white settler, Moses Cook. At Paul’s request, celebrity Native minister Samson Occom delivered his execution sermon in September of 1772.[1] While Paul did not write a confession as did Garret, an account of his life was appended to several early editions of Samson Occom’s published execution sermon. The account is not attributed to any author, but an introduction reads, “the following Sketches of his Life and Character were collected chiefly from his own Mouth.”[2]

Like Garret’s confession, this text is a heavily mediated account of the life, condemnation, and quest for salvation of a Native person; also like Garret’s confession, it was used as paratext for an execution sermon, although in Paul’s case, the sermon was delivered not by a settler minister, but by an Indigenous minister. The anonymously-penned account of Paul’s life appropriates his story in service of dominant narratives of Christian benevolence and of the repentant drunken and violent “Indian”[3] who serves as an example to other Native Americans. In the title page for Occom’s sermon, no mention is made of the appended “Sketch,” and the account merely serves to provide further context for the “inquisitive” readers of Occom’s sermon.[4] Nonetheless, despite the paratextual sidelining and mediation of Paul’s story, strains of Paul’s resistance are present in the account. I argue that Paul’s authorial presence and resistance survives, albeit in limited ways, through this text.

Other scholars have attended to Paul’s voice and story, primarily through the records of his court proceedings, through which Paul appealed his conviction in an attempt to change it from murder to manslaughter. Ava Chamberlain writes:
“No one, it seems, has attempted to uncover Moses Paul's version of the story, even though that version exists in the case's judicial records. Like that of all criminal defendants, Paul's voice is mediated by his lawyer's, and it is strained by the documents that seek to formalize it. Evident, however, are Paul's efforts to persuade both the courts and the broader New England society to accept a more complex construction of racial difference than the popular image of the drunken Indian allowed.”[5]
Matt Salyer joins Chamberlain in conversation on Paul’s “narrative record,”[6] and further argues that “all figurations of selves in texts are mediated representations.”[7] I extend this claim to the notion that all authorship is inescapably mediated. This framework allows readers of the archive to see Paul as not only the object of a story, but one of several authors of his own story, albeit an author with restricted agency.

Salyer notes Paul’s repeated insistence, including on his execution day, “on accurate details and the integrity of his own version of events.”[8] The sketch of Paul’s life, as Salyer points out,[9] relays Paul’s claim that he was innocent of all other murders of which he had been accused.[10] Throughout his imprisonment, Paul was especially adamant that he had killed Cook with a club rather than a flat iron, the weapon which he was convicted of having used.[11] The sketch of Paul’s life appended to Occom’s sermon is faithful to this detail of Paul’s version of events: “he wounded Mr. Moses Cook,” it says, “with a Club.”[12] Rather than detail Paul’s protestations regarding the true weapon used, in this particularity the text adopts and transmits Paul’s narrative as the authoritative one. Paul thus figures, to a limited degree, as an authorial and authoritative presence within the text.

The "Sketch" of Paul’s life also subtly resists a simplistic narrative of the typical drunken “Indian.” The account shares the story of Paul’s time in the army: “he inlisted in the Provincial Service, in Col. Putnam’s Company, and Regiment. He says, that he contracted many sinful Habits in the Army which before his Inlistment he was a Stranger to the Practice of.”[13] The account continues, “in the Merchants Service … he got confirmed in those evil Habits which he too easily embibed in the Army.”[14] The narrator goes on to describe how years later, as a culmination of his excessive use of alcohol, Paul fatally wounded Cook. While the account does invoke the stereotypical image of a drunken and violent Native American, it also subtly subverts this stereotype by laying the blame for Paul’s alcoholism on the influence of the army and other settler-dominated environments. The word “contracted” to describe the development of Paul’s “sinful Habits” suggests that Paul was a passive victim of the negative tendencies that others in the army transmitted to him. The narrator also takes care to note that Paul showed no proclivity for these sinful ways prior to his involvement in the army, thus further blaming the military environment for Paul’s degeneration.

Moses Paul, like Katherine Garret, used what platform he had to author a narrative of his life that persists in the archive despite its mediation and relegation to paratext.

[1] Matt Salyer, “‘Between the Heavens and the Earth’: Narrating the Execution of Moses Paul,” in American Indian Culture and Research Journal 36:4 (2012), 77.
[2] Samson Occom, “A sermon, preached at the execution of Moses Paul, an Indian, who was executed at New-Haven, on the 2d of September 1772, for the murder of Mr. Moses Cook, late of Waterbury, on the 7th of December 1771. Preached at the desire of said Paul,” 4th edition (printed and sold by T Green, New London, 1772), 24.
[3] Ava Chamberlain, “The Execution of Moses Paul: A Story of Crime and Contact in Eighteenth-Century Connecticut,” in The New England Quarterly 77, no. 3 (2004), 414. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1559825.
[4] Samson Occom, “A sermon, preached at the execution of Moses Paul, an Indian, who was executed at New-Haven, on the 2d of September 1772, for the murder of Mr. Moses Cook, late of Waterbury, on the 7th of December 1771. Preached at the desire of said Paul,” 4th edition (printed and sold by T Green, New London, 1772), 24.
[5] Ava Chamberlain, “The Execution of Moses Paul: A Story of Crime and Contact in Eighteenth-Century Connecticut,” 416.
[6] Matt Salyer, “‘Between the Heavens and the Earth’: Narrating the Execution of Moses Paul,” 79.
[7] Ibid., 80.
[8] Ibid., 81.
[9] Ibid., 81.
[10] Samson Occom, “A sermon, preached at the execution of Moses Paul, an Indian, who was executed at New-Haven, on the 2d of September 1772, for the murder of Mr. Moses Cook, late of Waterbury, on the 7th of December 1771. Preached at the desire of said Paul,” 4th edition (printed and sold by T Green, New London, 1772), 24.
[11] Ava Chamberlain, “The Execution of Moses Paul: A Story of Crime and Contact in Eighteenth-Century Connecticut,” 449; Matt Salyer, “‘Between the Heavens and the Earth’: Narrating the Execution of Moses Paul,” 81.
[12] Samson Occom, “A sermon, preached at the execution of Moses Paul, an Indian, who was executed at New-Haven, on the 2d of September 1772, for the murder of Mr. Moses Cook, late of Waterbury, on the 7th of December 1771. Preached at the desire of said Paul,” 4th edition (printed and sold by T Green, New London, 1772), 24.
[13] Ibid.
[14] Ibid.
Samson Occom’s Paratexts Samson Occom is often considered the “first Native American who wrote deliberately for print.”[1] Occom held far more power over his authorial output than did Garret or Paul. Yet, as a Mohegan writer in the pre-copyright era, his authority was limited: Occom did approve of and receive compensation for the first edition of his execution sermon published in 1772, however, he had no control over or remuneration from later editions.[2] Weyler also invites us to consider that while Occom was the “sole author” of the execution sermon for Moses Paul, he spoke on behalf of multiple communities: in addition to representing the Church, he spoke as a Mohegan and as an “ethnic Indian.”[3]

In his writing and life Occom exercised agency in navigating his liminal positionality as a Native American minister;[4] however, publishers came to structure the paratexts of Occom’s works in order to position him more firmly within settler Christian narratives. While Occom’s writing did not quite become paratext for the works of white settler authors, the paratexts for his sermons worked to decenter his authorial voice over time.

Early editions of Occom’s execution sermon did give pride of place to the sermon, with a preface and an introduction written by Occom and the appended "Sketch" of Paul’s life. Consider the title pages for these 1772 and 1773 editions, in which Occom is the only author listed:

A later edition of the sermon, published in 1788 in New Haven and reprinted in 1789 in London, frames Occom’s sermon in a different way. Occom’s sermon is compiled together with a “SHORT ACCOUNT OF THE LATE SPREAD OF THE GOSPEL AMONG THE INDIANS” as well as a text entitled “OBSERVATIONS on the LANGUAGE of the MUHHEKANEEW INDIANS,”[5] written by Jonathan Edwards, a white settler minister of greater stature than Occom. The title page does not frame Edwards’ text as an appendix to Occom’s sermon; instead, the format of the title page gives Edwards pride of place as an author.

By pairing Occom's sermon with these settler-authored texts about Indigenous peoples, this edition serves to defang Occom as a critic of the settler Christian community’s attitudes toward Native Americans. This edition is a “composite”[6] text, but one in which Occom’s writing is appropriated for settler narratives without his consent.

This edition opens not with Occom’s preface, as did the earlier editions shown above, but with an “Advertisement” by I. Rippon. The advertisement clearly favors Edwards’ writing over Occom’s, stating, “The following Sermon might perhaps, have been altered in a few places for the better, but it is presumed that good judges will overlook the defects of it and wonder they are so few.”[7] Jonathan Edwards receives nothing but praise as a “worthy minister,” in contrast.[8]

Following Occom’s preface is an “Introduction,” which features a fictional conversation between Occom and Paul on the night prior to Paul’s execution.[9] This text blatantly and falsely appropriates Occom’s and Moses’ voices in service of a settler-authored narrative. The dialogue portrays Paul as a wretched figure, fearing his earthly and divine punishment yet unable to muster the conviction to “pray aright.”[10] Not only does the act of appropriating Occom’s and Paul’s voices strip them of their authorial agency, but the imagined dialogue itself depicts Paul as a figure who fails to grasp any agency in his own salvation and Occom as thus an ineffective minister to Paul.[11]
Following the execution sermon, Jonathan Edwards’ text receives its own title page:

This text by Edwards is notable as a precursor to the settler-authored ethnographic work about Indigenous peoples that would become prominent in the 19th century. Edwards presents himself as an authority on the Muhhekaneew language, and claims that the text was authorized by members of the tribe.[12] He thus positions the text as a collaborative one, but with himself as the ultimate authoritative and authorial figure.

Another example of the diminishment of Occom’s authorial presence in favor of settler authorship is a 1766 publication entitled, “EXTRACTS OF Several SERMONS, Preached EXTEMPORE At different Places of Divine Worship, in the City of BRISTOL, BY THE Rev. Mr. NATHANIEL WHITAKER, Minister of the Gospel at Norwich, in New-England, AND THE Rev. Mr. SAMSON OCCOM, An Indian Minister, Who are appointed to solicit Benefactions from the People of this Island, for the Establishing, &c. of an Indian School in America. As taken down by a YOUTH.”[13] The title page positions Whitaker and Occom equally as authors of the compiled text. Yet this equivalence is misleading, as Occom is the author of four of the included sermons, and Whitaker of only one. The title page thus decenters Occom’s authorial voice in a text primarily authored by him. Whitaker is also granted a more distinguished and specific title than Occom: where Whitaker is described respectfully as a “Minister of the Gospel” in a particular town, Occom is tokenized as an “Indian Minister.”

While Occom exercised significant agency in authoring his sermons, his lack of ownership over his work allowed publishers and editors to appropriate and sideline his voice. The following page will turn to an early example of a Native American proprietary author, Pequot writer William Apess. I will consider how Apess’ 1829 autobiography, A Son of the Forest, subverted print culture’s paratextual sidelining of Indigenous authorship.

[1] Karen Weyler, “‘Common, Plain, Every Day Talk’ from ‘An Uncommon Quarter’: Samson Occom and the Language of the Execution Sermon,” 127.
[2] Ibid., 134, 137.
[3] Ibid., 127-128.
[4] Ibid., 116.
[5] Samson Occom,“A sermon at the execution of Moses Paul, an Indian: who had been guilty of murder, preached at New Haven in America,” Printed in New Haven, CT, 1788. Reprinted and sold in London by Buckland, Paternoster-row; Dilly, Poultry; Otridge, Strand; J. Lepard, No. 91, Newgate-street; T. Pitcher, No. 44, Barbican; Brown, on the Tolzey Bristol; Binns, at Leeds; and Woolmer, at Exeter, 1789, i.
[6] Phillip Round, “Toward an Indian Bibliography,” 16.
[7] Samson Occom, “A sermon at the execution of Moses Paul, an Indian: who had been guilty of murder, preached at New Haven in America,” ii.
[8] Ibid., ii.
[9] Karen Weyler, “‘Common, Plain, Every Day Talk’ from ‘An Uncommon Quarter’: Samson Occom and the Language of the Execution Sermon,” 137.
[10] Samson Occom, “A sermon at the execution of Moses Paul, an Indian: who had been guilty of murder, preached at New Haven in America,” iv.
[11] Ibid., iv.
[12] Ibid., Edwards Preface, iv.
[13] Samson Occom and Nathaniel Whitaker, Extracts of Several Sermons, Preached Extempore at Different Places of Divine Worship, in the City of Bristol (Bristol, 1766), title page.