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Daniel Takawambait

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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.

Gravestone of Daniel Takawambait (1652-1716) an American Indian pastor, adjacent to Eliot Church in South Natick, MA, the former Praying Town
Church site and plaque marking the work of Eliot and Daniel Takawambait

Early life and ministry

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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]

Land transaction involvement

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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]

Later ministry and death

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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]

Legacy

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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]

References

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  1. ^ "Marks and Signatures of Native People of the Northeast, 17th .. " https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?filename=17&article=1010&context=data&type=additional
  2. ^ George Parker Winship, Samuel Sewall and the New England Company, Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Third Series, Vol. 67 (Oct., 1941 - May, 1944), p. 103
  3. ^ Jim Rose, "Chief Wompatuck, Rev. John Eliot and the Praying Indians," Patriot Ledger, Jun 10, 2013
  4. ^ "Takawambpait - Natick's First Minister".
  5. ^ Daniel Gookin, An account of the Indians of New England by Daniel Gookin, a magistrate of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. (Massachusetts Historical Society, 1792), p. 50.
  6. ^ Richard W. COGLEY, John Eliot’s Mission to the Indians before King Philip’s War, p. 157
  7. ^ The Massachusetts Archives Collection (1629-1799) https://www.sec.state.ma.us/ArchivesSearch/RevolutionaryDetail.aspx?rec=VyiORR2scTyc3Vm6zeEOy5is4DYJZOWJystFrxC6hSE%3d
  8. ^ "John Eliot, Missionary to the American Indians".
  9. ^ Edward E. Andrews, Prodigal sons: Indigenous missionaries in the British Atlantic world, 1640--1780 (Doctoral Dissertation) (University of New Hampshire, Durham: 2009), p. 109 https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/215517164.pdf
  10. ^ Company for the Propagation of the Gospel in New England and the Parts Adjacent in America, Some correspondence between the governors and treasurers of the New England Company, 74-75 (accessible on google books).
  11. ^ Edward E. Andrews, Prodigal sons: Indigenous missionaries in the British Atlantic world, 1640--1780 (Doctoral Dissertation) (University of New Hampshire, Durham: 2009), p. 109 https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/215517164.pdf
  12. ^ Company for the Propagation of the Gospel in New England and the Parts Adjacent in America, Some correspondence between the governors and treasurers of the New England Company, 74-75.
  13. ^ Gail Coughlin, "Our Souls are Already Cared For: Indigenous Reactions t or: Indigenous Reactions to Religious Colonialism in Seventeenth-Century New England, New France, and New Mexico" (UMASS Master's Thesis, July 2020), p. 38 citing Jean O’Brien, Dispossession by Degrees: Indian Land and Identity in Natick, Massachusetts (Cambridge University Press, 1997), 88
  14. ^ "The Dying speeches of several Indians. Eliot, John, 1604-1690, tr" https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/evans/n00266.0001.001?rgn=main;view=fulltext
  15. ^ Craig White, "The Praying Indians' Speeches as Texts of Massachusett Oral Culture," Early American Literature, Vol. 38, No. 3 (2003), p. 457 accessible on JSTOR
  16. ^ Mass. General Court Records at State Archives, https://www.sec.state.ma.us/ArchivesSearch/RevolutionaryDetail.aspx?rec=VyiORR2scTyc3Vm6zeEOy55NhOJ1YqEItmfmZWKHVJE%3d
  17. ^ Mass. General Court Records at State Archives, https://www.sec.state.ma.us/ArchivesSearch/RevolutionaryDetail.aspx?rec=VyiORR2scTyc3Vm6zeEOy8TAaJHbpGpWA3pYjFTZlyE%3d
  18. ^ Land Sales in Nipmuc Country 1643-1724 BYU https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?filename=14&article=1010&context=data&type=additional
  19. ^ Bulletin of the Massachusetts Archaeological Society, Vol. 77, No. 1 p. 28 https://vc.bridgew.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1201&context=bmas
  20. ^ Perley, Sidney (editor) 1912 The Indian Land Titles of Essex County Massachusetts. Essex Book and Print Club, Salem, MA.p 10 (1912)
  21. ^ Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society (1826) p. 330
  22. ^ Mandell, 34-35
  23. ^ Daniel R. Mandell, Behind the Frontier: Indians in Eighteenth-Century Eastern Massachusetts, p. 34-35
  24. ^ Samuel Adams Drake, History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts (1880), p. 190 (accessible on google books)
  25. ^ Mandell, p. 35
  26. ^ Edward E. Andrews, Prodigal sons: Indigenous missionaries in the British Atlantic world, 1640--1780 (Doctoral Dissertation) (University of New Hampshire, Durham: 2009), p. 109 https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/215517164.pdf
  27. ^ William Kellaway, The New England Company, 1649-1776: Missionary Society to the American Indians (New York: Barnes and Noble, Inc., 1961), 237.
  28. ^ Mandell, 34-35
  29. ^ Andrews, p. 109
  30. ^ Letter from Cotton Mather to Sir William Ashurst, 10 October, 1712, in “Cotton and Increase Mather Letters, 1713-1726” Massachusetts Historical Society Manuscript Collection, 7; Daniel R. Mandell, Behind the Frontier: Indians in Eighteenth-Century Eastern Massachusetts (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996), 35
  31. ^ Michael J. Crawford, History of Natick, Massachusetts, 1650-1976 (1978), p. 23
  32. ^ "Takawambpait - Natick's First Minister".
  33. ^ O'Brien at p. 120
  34. ^ Julia Spitz, "An eclectic collection at Natick’s Historical Society Museum," Metro West Daily News," Feb 14, 2010 https://www.metrowestdailynews.com/article/20100214/NEWS/302149966
  35. ^ "Takawambpait - Natick's First Minister".
  36. ^ The Golden Rule and Odd-fellows Family Companion (1847), p. 92.
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