explain how Occom builds a case about his own treatment without ever stating a grievance directly, and cite the exact sentences that do that work.
Instruction
Samson Occom was Mohegan, born in 1723 in what is now Connecticut. He became a Presbyterian minister, ran a school, and in 1765 sailed to England and Scotland on a fundraising tour. Over two years he preached more than three hundred sermons and raised roughly £12,000 — an enormous sum, and the largest amount ever raised for Native education to that point.
The money was used to found Dartmouth College, which educated almost no Native students. Occom returned to find his own family in poverty and his school effectively abandoned.
In 1768 he wrote an account of his own life. It was not published until the twentieth century. He wrote it, as far as scholars can tell, because rumors were circulating about his background and his competence, and he wanted a record in his own words.
That is the rhetorical situation, and everything about the prose follows from it.
What the narrative does. It is short, plain and almost entirely factual. He gives his birth, his upbringing, his conversion, his schooling, his ordination, the years of teaching and preaching, and — in careful detail — what he was paid. He records that he taught, preached, served as a judge among his people, wrote letters for them, and was paid a fraction of what white missionaries doing less work received.
He does not editorialise. He itemises. And then, at the very end, the restraint breaks into a single passage that is one of the sharpest in eighteenth-century American writing: he tells a short story about an Indian who was accused of being lazy, and concludes that he supposes the reason he was paid so little was “I am a poor Indian.”
Why the restraint is a technique and not a temperament. Consider who could read this. Occom’s livelihood depended on white church societies. A document of open complaint could be dismissed as ingratitude — the charge that was, in fact, made against him. So he does what a lawyer does: he establishes the facts, in order, from a source nobody will dispute (himself, on matters of his own labor and pay), and lets the conclusion form in the reader.
The analytical question for this lesson. Not “was he treated unfairly?” — the account settles that. The question is: what does a writer do when the grievance cannot be stated, and where in the prose can you see the cost of not stating it?
Keep a two-column chart as you read. Left: the fact, quoted. Right: what a reader concludes from it that Occom never says.
Reading: A Short Narrative of My Life — the accounting, and the ending
Samson Occom (Mohegan), written 1768; first published in the twentieth century · Public domain
Read twice. The second time, mark every sentence that reports a number, a date or a duty — and notice how many sentences in the whole account are anything else.
I was Born a Heathen and Brought up In Heathenism, till I was between 16 & 17 years of age, at a Place Called Mohegan, in New London, Connecticut, in New England. …
… I kept School as I did before and Carried on the Religious Meetings as often as ever, and attended the Sick and their Funerals, and did what Writing they wanted, and often Sat as a Judge to reconcile and Decide their Matters Between them, and had visitors of Indians from all Quarters…
… In the Fall of the Year I Set out on my Journey … and I was Sick and Lame … What I got from the Boston Commissioners … was Fifteen Pounds a year. … I can’t Conceive how these gentlemen would have me Live.
… I Can’t help my Colour, you know it is not my fault. … I am ready to forgive your Ignorance, and I would wish you had Learning enough to spell my name right. … I Believe it is because I am a poor Indian. I Can’t help that God has made me So; I did not make my self so.
Who kept the record here, and in what language
Occom wrote in English, for English readers, because that was the only record that would count where he needed it to count. Every nation has its own answer to the question of who kept its record, in what form, and what happened to it.
This slot asks who kept the record of this nation, in what form and in what language, and what happened to it. Your nation’s own account is the best answer there is, and your school may bring it to you. Until then, work the slot yourself by one of the three routes below — all three earn full credit. Two rules hold on every route. Write about the nation as what it is today: a sovereign government with citizens, offices and a press of its own. And if the nation has not published something, that is your answer and you record it; you do not go hunting for it somewhere else.
Your route — choose one. All three earn full credit.
- Route A — What the nation publishes about itself now — Open the Tribal Leaders Directory at bia.gov/service/tribal-leaders-directory, find the nation whose homeland your school stands on, and follow the link to the nation’s own website. Read, in this order, its history or heritage pages, its language program, its archive or museum if it has one, and its newspaper or newsroom. Write 200 words on who keeps this nation’s record today — which office, in what language or languages, and for whom. Quote only what the nation itself has published, and cite it the way you would cite any government’s own website. If the nation publishes nothing on one of these, say so plainly and name the pages you checked: a documented silence is a finding, and it is not an invitation to look elsewhere.
- Route B — The Native press, in the nation’s own type — The Cherokee Phoenix, first published in 1828, was the first newspaper published by a Native nation, and it printed in English and in the Cherokee syllabary in parallel columns. Read one issue at the Library of Congress (loc.gov/item/sn83020866 for the 1828–1829 run, loc.gov/item/sn83020874 for Cherokee Phoenix, and Indians’ Advocate, 1829–1834). Then open the Library of Congress research guide Native American Newspapers (guides.loc.gov/native-american-newspapers), which lists papers written by and for Native peoples by region, state and city, and search Chronicling America (loc.gov/collections/chronicling-america) for papers from your own state or region. Write 200 words on what a nation printing its own paper controls that it cannot control when someone else writes about it.
- Route C — The federal record, and who was holding the pen — Open the National Archives research page Native American Heritage at archives.gov/research/native-americans and read the topic sections: Treaties, Census Records, Tribal Rolls, Allotment Records, School Records, Correspondence Files. Then search the National Archives Catalog (catalog.archives.gov) for the name of the nation, or of the Indian agency that administered it, and open one digitized record. Write 200 words answering three questions about that document: who wrote it, in what language, and who were they writing for. Then name one thing about this nation that a federal clerk’s file would never contain, and say how you know it is missing rather than absent.
For the school — how this slot gets filled
Who holds this: A tribal historian, archivist, language program or cultural department of the nation this school serves.
- Ask the tribal historic preservation office, cultural department, tribal college or language program before the unit is scheduled, not during it. A request made in week three becomes a request for a favor under deadline.
- Ask what may be shared with students and what may be published in a course that other schools can see. Those are two different permissions and the second is the one that catches people out.
- Agree attribution in writing — the person, the office, the nation — and agree who may revise the material later.
- If the answer is that this material is not for a course, that answer is the end of the matter. Teach the slot as it stands, with the explanation that the knowledge exists and is held by the community.
Formative check
Work through these before moving on. They are not graded — they tell you, and your teacher, whether the standard below has landed yet.
Occom spends most of his narrative listing duties and sums of money rather than describing how he felt. Before reading on — why?
Occom writes: “I would wish you had Learning enough to spell my name right.” What is this sentence doing?
Because Occom’s narrative was never published in his lifetime, it tells us nothing about how he wrote for an audience.
Withholding the expected intensity so that a reader supplies the judgment is ; the speaker, audience, purpose and occasion that determine what a text is doing are its rhetorical .
Build the two-column chart: quote four facts Occom reports, and for each write in one sentence what a reader concludes that he never states. Then answer: the restraint breaks in the final paragraph. What changes in the prose at that moment — name a specific feature, not a feeling — and what does the break cost him?
How confident are you that you can explain what a writer’s restraint is accomplishing, using the exact sentences rather than the general situation?