Daniel Takawambait (c. 1652-1716) (also spelled Takawombait or Tokonwonpat or Takawambpas [1] or Tookumwombait or Tokkohwompait or Takawombpait [2] and sometimes Daniel of Natick) was likely the first ordained Native American Christian pastor in North America, and served the church in the praying town of Natick, Massachusetts from 1683 to 1716. Takawambait also advocated for indigenous land rights in colonial Massachusetts, and authored at least one publication.
Takawambait was born around 1652 to a family of Nipmuc origin. [3] He became associated with missionary John Eliot at a young age and may have attended Harvard's Indian College. [4] In 1674 Daniel Gookin wrote that "[f]or [ Quantisset (in eastern Connecticut)] we appointed a sober and pious young man of Natick, called Daniel, to be minister, whom they accepted in the Lord." [5] [6] In 1676 Takawambait signed a petition with several other Indians in Natick and Punkapoag "requesting the release of an Indian youth named Peter" who "was a servant of John Kingsley before he was imprisoned." [7]
After the War Takawambait was ordained around 1681. [8] Around the same time, Rev. Daniel Gookin, Jr. of Sherborn began preaching once a month in the Natick Indian church solely in English which proved unfruitful without a Nipmuc translator, but the congregation enjoyed worshipping with Gookin's Sherborn congregants who often joined him in the Native American church. [9] [10] In 1683 the Indigenous congregation, including Takawambait, appealed to the John Eliot using a theological argument from Paul the Apostle's letter in 1 Corinthians 14:27–28 and requested that services continue in the Nipmuc language by either Gookin learning the language or using their local interpreter. [11] [12] Eventually, "[i]n 1683, the [Natick Praying] town appointed their second minister, Daniel Takawambait, an Indigenous man, to replace John Eliot." [13] In 1685 at the request of Gookin, Takawambait wrote down the final words of several deceased Natives Americans church members (Waban, Piambohou, Old Jacob, Antony, Nehemiah, John Owussumug, Sr., John Speen, and Black James) in their native language, and their speeches were translated by Eliot and published in English in a pamphlet entitled "Dying Speeches and Counsels Of such Indians as dyed in the Lord." [14] [15]
In addition to serving as a bilingual pastor, Takawambait was a community leader and signed and witnessed deeds for various Native American land transactions. Between 1681 and 1685 Takawambait signed documents with other Nipmucs protesting the sale of tribal lands including near what is now Marlborough, Massachusetts and elsewhere in "Nipmuc country" by various Native American parties who acted without authority including Waban, Great James, and John Wompas in transferring land titles to settlers. [16] [17] Also, Takawambait witnessed a confirmatory deed by Peter Jethro and others in 1684 of lands in Sudbury and what is now Maynard, Massachusetts. [18]
After King Philip's War several Indians returned to Natick from slavery in the Caribbean including Sagamore George (Wenepoykin), who had been enslaved in Barbados, and in 1686 after George's death, Takawombait gave evidence in deposition regarding George's land at Naumkeag (Salem) and his background stating that "Sagamore George when he came from Barbados he lived Sometime and dyed at the house of James Rumley Marsh," and "he left all this land belonging to him unto his kinsman James Rumley Marsh." [19] [20] In 1692 Takawambait also deeded Natick land to the Sawin family. [21]
By 1699 many worshippers in at Takawambait's church in Natick had died or left Natick because they were impoverished and needed to live among the English to support themselves, [22] and the original meeting house, built in 1651, was falling down, so the congregation petitioned the government to allow Natick to sell two hundred acres of indigenous land in order to hire a carpenter to rebuild the meeting house. [23] Two white pastors, Grindal Rawson and Samuel Danforth, of Mendon and Taunton, visited Takawambait's church in 1698 and noted that only a small church remained with ten official members, but Takawambait was "a person of great knowledge." [24] [25] Despite Takawambait's language skills and knowledge of Christian theology, some Puritan church leaders were concerned that Takawambait had some unknown theological errors or “errata” [26] [27] which may have included incorporating indigenous traditions into the worship services. [28] By the 1712 colonial religious leaders, such as Cotton Mather, were concerned the church had diminished so much, that they discussed the possibility of removing Takawambait and blamed him and the lax membership procedures for the diminution in the church. [29] [30] Despite their concerns, Takawambait served as Natick's pastor until his death in 1716 and was one of the few Native Americans buried in the English fashion with a headstone and foot stone, and today his headstone is still viewable adjacent to the Eliot church in Natick where it was moved several feet from its original location near the intersection of Eliot and Pleasant streets, and his foot stone was moved and embedded into the Bacon Free Library building. [31] [32]
After Takawambait's death, the New England Company chose another Native American pastor, John Neesnumin of Sandwich, as a replacement in 1717, but he died two years later, and the church largely dissolved shortly after. [33] Today Takawambait's pulpit desk is on exhibit in the Natick Historical Society Museum and was built by members of his congregation as one of the earliest surviving examples of Native American-made furniture. [34] [35] In the 1800s an I.O.O.F lodge in Natick was named in Takawambait's honor. [36]
John Eliot was a Puritan missionary to the American Indians who some called "the apostle to the Indians" and the founder of Roxbury Latin School in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1645. In 1660 he completed the enormous task of translating the Eliot Indian Bible into the Massachusett Indian language, producing more than two thousand completed copies.
The Massachusett language is an Algonquian language of the Algic language family that was formerly spoken by several peoples of eastern coastal and southeastern Massachusetts. In its revived form, it is spoken in four communities of Wampanoag people. The language is also known as Natick or Wôpanâak (Wampanoag), and historically as Pokanoket, Indian or Nonantum.
The Massachusett were a Native American tribe from the region in and around present-day Greater Boston in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The name comes from the Massachusett language term for "At the Great Hill," referring to the Blue Hills overlooking Boston Harbor from the south.
Praying Indian is a 17th-century term referring to Native Americans of New England, New York, Ontario, and Quebec who converted to Christianity either voluntarily or involuntarily. Many groups are referred to by the term, but it is more commonly used for tribes that were organized into villages. The villages were known as praying towns and were established by missionaries such as the Puritan leader John Eliot and Jesuit missionaries who established the St. Regis and Kahnawake and the missions among the Huron in western Ontario.
The Nipmuc or Nipmuck people are an Indigenous people of the Northeastern Woodlands, who historically spoke an Eastern Algonquian language. Their historic territory Nippenet, "the freshwater pond place," is in central Massachusetts and nearby parts of Connecticut and Rhode Island.
Waban was a Native American of the Nipmuc group and was thought to be the first Native American convert to Christianity in Massachusetts.
Praying towns were settlements established by English colonial governments in New England from 1646 to 1675 in an effort to convert local Native Americans to Christianity.
The Hassanamisco Nipmuc Band is the sole state-recognized tribe in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. They were recognized in 1976 by Governor Michael Dukakis via Executive Order 126. They were briefly known as the Nipmuc Nation, a union of the Hassanamisco Nipmuc and the Chaubunagungamaug Nipmuck bands, during their attempt to receive federal acknowledgment as a Nation. The Hassanamisco Nipmuc Band owns three and a half acres of reservation land in what is present day Grafton, Massachusetts. The Nipmuc are native to Central Massachusetts, Northeastern Connecticut, and parts of Rhode Island.
The Chaubunagungamaug Reservation refers to the small parcel of land located in the town of Thompson, Connecticut, close to the border with the town of Webster, Massachusetts and within the bounds of Lake Chaubunagungamaug to the east and the French River to the west. The reservation is used by the descendants of the Nipmuck Indians of the previous reservation, c. 1682–1869, that existed in the same area, who now identify as the Webster/Dudley Band of the Chaubunagungamaug Nipmuck. Together with the Hassanamisco Nipmuc, both have received state recognition under the Massachusetts Commission on Indian Affairs.
The Nashaway were a tribe of Algonquian Indians inhabiting the upstream portions of the Nashua River valley in what is now the northern half of Worcester County, Massachusetts, mainly in the vicinity of Sterling, Lancaster and other towns near Mount Wachusett, as well as southern New Hampshire. The meaning of Nashaway is "river with a pebbled bottom".
The Massachusett dialects, as well as all the Southern New England Algonquian (SNEA) languages, could be dialects of a common SNEA language just as Danish, Swedish and Norwegian are mutually intelligible languages that essentially exist in a dialect continuum and three national standards. With the exception of Massachusett, which was adopted as the lingua franca of Christian Indian proselytes and survives in hundreds of manuscripts written by native speakers as well as several extensive missionary works and translations, most of the other SNEA languages are only known from fragmentary evidence, such as place names. Quinnipiac (Quiripey) is only attested in a rough translation of the Lord's Prayer and a bilingual catechism by the English missionary Abraham Pierson in 1658. Coweset is only attested in a handful of lexical items that bear clear dialectal variation after thorough linguistic review of Roger Williams' A Key into the Language of America and place names, but most of the languages are only known from local place names and passing mention of the Native peoples in local historical documents.
Daniel Gookin was an American pastor. He was the Librarian of Harvard from 1674 to 1676 and from 1679 to 1681.
Tantamous was a well-known Native American Nipmuc leader in seventeenth century Massachusetts. Tantamous was a powwow who lived near the Assabet River, later in Nobscot. Tantamous "...may have gotten his English name for his good advice."
Wenepoykin (1616–1684) also known as Winnepurkett, Sagamore George, George No Nose, and George Rumney Marsh was a Native American leader who was the Sachem of the Naumkeag people when English began to settle in the area.
Peter Jethro was an early Native American (Nipmuc) scribe, translator, minister, land proprietor, and Praying Indian affiliated for a period with John Eliot in the praying town of Natick, Massachusetts.
Quinnatisset was a Nipmuc village in Connecticut which became a praying town through the influence of John Eliot and Daniel Gookin. The town was located near what is now Thompson, Connecticut or Pomfret, Connecticut possibly near Thompson Hill Historic District. The name "Quantisset" means "little long river."
Black James was a Nipmuc constable and spiritual leader of the Chaubunagungamaug Nipmuck at the Chaubunagungamaug Reservation in colonial Massachusetts and Connecticut. Daniel Gookin appointed James to be a constable for the praying towns after he had become a Christian. In 1675, James signed a treaty agreeing not to assist King Philip, but may have supported him during King Philip's War. After the War, Black James deeded various parcels of land to settlers in Nipmuc country including at Quantisset and Maanexit in what is now eastern Connecticut near Rhode Island. His dying speech was recorded by Rev. Daniel Takawambait and later published and by 1686 a deed was signed by his heirs indicating that Black James was deceased, but another Indian used the name "Black James" until 1708.
Maanexit was a Nipmuc village on the Quinebaug River and Old Connecticut Path in Connecticut. The town was located near what is now Fabyan in Thompson, Connecticut and Woodstock, Connecticut. The name of the town means either "where the road lies" or "where we gather" which may have been "alluding to a settlement of Christian Indians in the immediate vicinity." The village became an Indian praying town through the influence of John Eliot and Daniel Gookin.
Magunkaquog was one of the Christian indigenous praying towns established by the missionary John Eliot near the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Magunkaquog was established in 1660. The name came from the oaks and chestnuts which were growing in the area.
The Praying Indians of Natick were a community of Indigenous Christian converts, known as Praying Indians, in the town of Natick, Massachusetts, one of many Praying Towns. They were also known as Natick Indians.