The Long But Thin History of Harvard and the Red Man

SOMEWHERE on Cape Cod there are Indians who owe their salvation to Harvard.

Harvard has been spreading the gospel among Massachusetts Indians since 1716, when the Rev. Dr. Daniel Williams of London left an annuity to Harvard for the "blessed work of converting the Indians." The Corporation still splits the annual balance of the fund (last year $1,530) between the minister of the Indian church at Mashpee on Cape Cod and the Society for Propagating the Gospel at Boston.

Dr. Williams' annuity is all that is left of one of Harvard's finest enthusiasms. In the 1640's, during an era when college presidents flirted with social activism, President Dunster dreamed of making Harvard the Indian Oxford. Idealism triumphed in 1656, when a school to train Indians as missionaries was established in Harvard Yard beside what is now Matthews Hall.

The story of how Harvard got money from small farmers all over England to educate the Indians of Massachusetts is still a poignant one. It begins with the publication in 1647 of a tract by two Englishmen, "The Day-Breaking, if not the Sun-Rising of the Gospell with the Indians in New England." The tract proposed that Harvard be made the trustee of funds contributed by the English for Indian education and conversion.

The Silver Stream

The idea appealed to the English almost as much as it did to Harvard: in 1649, a number of Londoners organized the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in New England (the parent organization of the present Boston foundation). An intensive drive for funds over the entire English countryside yielded 16,000 pounds. But instead of turning the money over to Harvard, the Society gave it to the Commissioners of the United Colonies to distribute. In 1651, as Samuel Morison put it, "President Dunster inquired of the Commissioners whether some small trickle of this silver stream might not irrigate the College Yard?"

TWO years later the English Society agreed to cover the costs of educating the Indian students and of building the Indian College (the cost of the building not to exceed 120 pounds, "besides glasse"). But President Dunster carried out plans on a more ambitious scale, and the Society ended up paying nearly 400 pounds for the building. (To some modern eyes, the whole Indian project appears to have been a blind to get a new building for Harvard.)

The local Indians did not share the enthusiasm of their benefactors--only six appear to have enrolled at Harvard over the entire colonial period. For the first comers, Harvard hired two Indian-speaking tutors who were to teach Greek, Latin and theology. Their careers were brief: One tutor disappeared soon after he arrived and the other was dismissed for "slinging stones at Mr. Stedmans glass Windowes...as also giveing base and filthy language." President Chauncy, fearing the same outcome if he hired new tutors, appealed to the London Society to pay larger salaries to instructors who "have to deale with such nasty savages." London seems to have refused--in any case, no new tutors were hired.

Only One Success

For Harvard's trouble on behalf of the Indians, the College turned out only one Indian preacher. The single success, John Sassamon, attended Harvard for just one term in 1653 before he left to preach to the Wampanoags at Natick. (Sassamon is remembered less for his preaching than for his murder, which touched off King Philip's War.)

The first four-year students--Caleb Cheeshahteaumuck and Joel Iacoomis (both class of 1665)--died before they could carry their Harvard education to the pulpit. A few days before Commencement, Joel was killed in a ship-wreck off Nantucket in which those who escaped drowning were "murthered by some wicked Indians of that place." His classmate Caleb survived long enough to become Harvard's only Indian College graduate--but died a few months later.

In 1665 the Society was notified that "a towardly lad and apt witt for a scholler" had entered the Indian College. This was John Wampus, a Nipmuc Sagamore, who quit before the year was out and spent the next few years in and out of jail for debt and drunkenness. He later settled down as a roving realtor in Massachusetts, and managed to sell the entire township of Sutton--which he did not own.

Wampus was followed by Eleazar, class of 1679. Disease killed Eleazar before graduation, but he left as proof of his academic progress an elegiac poem in Latin and Greek on the death of the Rev. Thomas Thacher.

"Up-Biblum God"

Before long, Harvard's enthusiasm for Indian education dwindled to a level which met the Indians'. Only a year after the College was built, President Chauncy began to hint that the building--empty most of the time--might be put to better use. A Harvard historian records that it was shortly being used principally "for to accomodate English scholars."

IN 1659, the entire Harvard printing plant moved in with the English students. Harvard apparently justified the transfer of the press on the grounds that they were about to publish John Eliot's translation of the Bible into Algonquin. (The Eliot translation of the Bible--Mamusse Wunneetupana-tamwe Up-Biblum God--came out in 1663. Scholars are not sure there were any Indians who could have understood it.)

When the College building began to show signs of decay, the English students moved out. Eventually--no repairs were made--the presses also had to be removed. The Corporation finally offered 5 pounds to anyone who would pull the building down, but there were no takers.

In 1698 Harvard did the job of razing the Indian College itself. The Indians were not forgotten, though: in return for the use of the Indian College bricks to build Stoughton Hall, Harvard promised a study-room and living quarters in Stoughton to any Indians who might show up.

Only one more did--Benjamin Larnel, class of 1716. According to President Leverett, Harvard's last Indian student was "An Acute Grammarian." On top of that he was "An Extraordinary Latin Poet, and a good Greek one." But he did not survive the Cambridge winter of his freshman year.

Benighted Parts

After Larnel's death the sponsoring Society in London had no more busi- ness with Harvard. It remained active, however--until, with the outbreak of the Revolution, Englishmen began to feel uneasy about saving the souls of native Americans. Consequently the foundation was dissolved.

The Americans were at the time more interested in mobilizing Indians than in converting them, but when peace was restored they began to feel pangs of Protestant responsibility brought on by the recent abdication of the Londoners. A group of Bostonians in 1787 established the present foundation to take up the work dropped by the London Society. A typical contributor to the new Society for Propagating the Gospel was one Colonel Alford, who, according to the executor of his will, "was desireous the Aborigines should be both civilized and christianized; that the Gospel should be sent into the dark, benighted parts of the land."

In the course of nearly two centuries, the Boston Society has reduced its scope as its beneficiaries have dwindled. It still actively propagates the gospel--but recently it has been running into financial difficulties. Even with half the balance of Dr. Williams' annuity, the Society's income (from contributions and from the interest on $100,000 in assets) amounts to barely enough to pay half the salary of a Protestant field representative and to pay for repairs and insurance of the church at Mashpee