SOURCE: “Introduction: Samson Occom's Sermon Preached by Samson Occom … at the Execution of Moses Paul, an Indian,” in Studies in American Indian Literatures, Vol. 4, Nos. 2 & 3, Summer/Fall 1992, pp. 75-81.

In the following excerpt, Brown Ruoff explores Occom's Sermon in the context of the genre of the “execution sermon.”

I. Background

Occom (1723-92) was raised as a traditional Mohegan, the northernmost branch of the Pequots and fiercest of the New England tribes. For a brief period in the mid-seventeenth century, the Mohegans, then numbering 2,000, greatly expanded their territory. By the end of the seventeenth century, this territory had been greatly decreased by land cessions. Because the settlers regarded the nomadic Mohegans as idle thieves, they issued orders to remove the Indians from the towns. By the end of the seventeenth century, Mohegans were no longer independent. The first successful attempt to gather Mohegans into villages was made in 1717. Eight...