Samson Occom

Label

This 1872 portrait of Mohegan minister Samson Occom is a copy after a 1768 print made while Occom traveled throughout England and Scotland to raise money to support the education of Native Americans at Dartmouth College. Seated in a Chippendale chair and wearing his cleric’s clothes, Occom points to an open Bible to signify his piety and education. Notes in the book’s margins further emphasize his dedication to scripture, while the arrows on the wall affirm his Mohegan identity. The money he raised, however, mostly went to the construction of buildings that benefited White students. Occom later stated that all the money did was make Wheelock’s family “very grand in the world.” Of the American Revolution, Occom wrote that it was the “most destructive” to Native communities of any war he had seen. This reflects the reality that most Indigenous nations sided with the British against the American colonists who continually encroached on their lands.

From the 2025-26 exhibition Revolution Reconsidered: History, Myth, and Propaganda, curated by Michael W. Hartman (Jonathan Little Cohen Curator of American Art), Haely Chang (Jane and Raphael Bernstein Associate Curator of East Asian Art), Elizabeth Rice Mattison (Andrew W. Mellon Curator of Academic Programming and Curator of European Art), Ashley B. Offill (Curator of Collections), and Evonne Fuselier (Hood Museum Board of Advisors Mutual Learning Fellow)

Exhibition History

Fred Wilson, So Much Trouble in the World - Believe It or Not!, Churchill P. Lathrop Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, October 4-December 11, 2005.

Revolution Reconsidered: History, Myth, and Propaganda, Harteveldt Family Gallery and Owen Robertson Cheatham Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, October 18, 2025 - August 8, 2026.

Publication History

Nancy Roberts Trott, Dartmouth tries to make amends for 225-year-old wrong, Carlisle, Pennsylvania, Evening Sentinel, December, 1994.

Nancy Roberts Trott, Dartmouth moves to make amends with Mohegan tribe: Injustice against Indian preacher goes back 225 years, Sunday Concord Monitor, Concord, December 18, 1994, ill. p. B4.

The Narragansett. Dr. William Simmons, Chelsea House Publishers, 95 Madison Ave., NY, NY, 10016.

Catalogue of Portraits, and other works of Art at Dartmouth College, Hanover: Dartmouth College, 1932, p. 28, no. 111; illus. opp. p. 28.

George Hill Evans, Catalogue of Portraits and other works of art in the gallery of Dartmouth College, Hanover: Dartmouth College, 1901, p. 29, no. 93.

Barbara Thompson, Fred Wilson, So Much Trouble in the World - Believe It or Not!, Hanover, New Hampshire: Trustees of Dartmouth College, 2005.

Marylynn Rouse, John Newton‘s Diary: 1766 - Developing a Pastoral Ministry, An Annotated Transcript of His Previously Unpublished Diary, Kettering, England: The John Newton Project, 2021, ill. p. 19.

Provenance

Benjamin Franklin Prescott (1833-1895); given to present collection, 1892.

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