Occom, Samson

(1723–92)

   Missionary.

   Occom was born in Mohegan, Connecticut. As a young man, during the course of the ‘Great Awakening’, he had a conversion experience. He determined to dedicate his life to the care of the American Indians. Between 1749 and 1764 he ministered to the Montauk Indians on Long Island. He then spent three years in Great Britain and raised ten thousand pounds, then an enormous sum, for his missions. He returned to America in 1768 to continue his work. He is remembered for establishing the Indian town of Brotherstown in New York and for producing an Indian hymnal. Occom was perhaps the best-known of the eighteenth-century Indian missionaries.

   R.F. Bekhofer, Salvation and the Savage (1965).